Old Friends--and Some New Ones

Germany, July 11-15

“You can’t make old friends,” someone said, and we certainly agree. This led us to embark on a five-day detour to Bonn and Stuttgart, stopping first at Aachen to see Charlamagne’s cathedral, whose Byzantine core is still impressive despite the many Gothic accretions—and to find a barber for Todd.


Aachen cathedral

In Bonn we enjoyed the generous hospitality of Christoph Hinz, the retired head of the shipping bureau of Germany’s Transport Ministry and a close and highly valued colleague of Todd’s at many OECD and UNCTAD meetings. To use NASCAR language, Chris was the crew chief for what turned out to be a major pit stop on our ramble, for he took Georgia to a magnificent laundromat (all Miele machines!) and arranged an appointment at the local VW dealer for Valeriu, whose dashboard had been blinking “SERVICE JETZT” since the Netherlands. Needless to say, the shop’s diagnostic equipment found a mechanical problem that needed repair so Valeriu emerged two days later, presumably healthier, while we were definitely poorer.

These demands did not, thank heavens, prevent us from enjoying Bonn and the adjoining Rhine Valley. The highlights were dinner at Rolandsbogen, a restaurant above the Rhine, where we were joined by old friend Klaus Groeger and his wife Ullla, and a trip down the valley to the Romanesque monastery at Maria Laach and the fascinating town of Bacharach, which epitomizes a Rhenish village. Driving back up the Rhine past the famous landmarks, Todd periodically—but briefly at popular request--broke into “Die Lorelei,” learned in high school German class. We were accompanied on these excursions by Roswitha Schmitt, Chris’s delightful companion, with whom we enjoyed a final dinner at her home.


Maria Laach Abbey


With Christoph and Roswitha at Maria Laach Abbey


Bacharach


Rhine Valley

From Bonn it was on to Stuttgart to celebrate the birthday of Jenny Bergsten, one half of the couple who introduced us. Her husband Fred is the director (and Todd’s former boss) at the Institute for International Economics. We stayed at the US Army’s Patch Barracks with Amb. Mary Yates, the State Department’s political adviser (“POLAD”) at the European Command (“EUCOM”), and her husband Amb. John Yates. Jenny, Fred and Georgia were together at Central Methodist College, while John, Fred and Todd were classmates at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The first evening the Lord Mayor of Stuttgart, Dr. Schuster, a good contact of both Fred’s and Mary’s, had given us six tickets to “Madame Butterfly,” a superb production of the Stuttgart Opera, which has been ranked Number One in the German-speaking countries for more than five years. We returned to the barracks late that evening but were up early the next morning to drive to Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber, an imperial free city that plummeted in importance after the Thirty Years’ War and thereby retained its architectural integrity since little new building took place. “Scenic” would be a mild adjective for this wonderful town on the “Romantische Strasse.”


Rothenburg city gate


Rothenburg


Jenny's birthday celebration in Rothenburg (with John, Mary, Fred and Jenny)


Uh, oh--in trouble again!

We returned to Stuttgart in time to prepare ourselves for the birthday dinner at the Hotel “Graf Zeppelin,” where the mayor and his charming wife joined us. After a fine meal His Honor invited us for a drink (a Brazilian rum punch) on the “Sky Beach,” a rooftop terrace with sand and deck chairs atop a leading department store. We were about 45 years older than the Sky Beach crowd—and certainly dressed differently with our jackets and ties—but they took us in stride and appeared delighted to find that the mayor was joining them.


On Sky Beach with Lord Mayor Schuster and Fred

Heading for Alsace the next day, we stopped in Freiburg, another old imperial free city, which underscored the common experience of such communities in the Middle Ages, regardless of national identity (if any),


Freiburg cathedral