My body, confused as it may be, accepts the numbness caused by time travel and really needs sleep. The trip home was long starting at 6:00 am on the 9th in Mainz, Germany. After a rented car, two planes, golf cart, coach line bus, taxi, and then a personal shuttle, I am now home on the next day, petting cute little Tucker and Tyson on their heads. They were surprised, and happy to see me. Neither had a heart attack when they realized the person sneaking into the house in the sleepy morning hours, was me, their nomad mother. Today they are staying by my side.

The lower loft is layered with a three month dusting of time. A cobweb attached my guitar case to the wall. Once I brushed it away and opened the case, my fingers, surprisingly moved with delicate and soothing precision on the strings of my guitar making a sound I haven't heard for three months and a sound that I didn't know my fingers remembered how to make.

Bagged and padded with a Verona theatre seat cushion, cardboard, toilette paper, Canada socks, flip flops and Britt's summer clothes, aside from a series of scratches, Wilson fared well on the trip and arrived in one piece. I filled the tires with air this morning and took a quick spin around the block. Stoneybrook roads are sure a lot smoother than the roads in Italy and the ride was fast and breezy.  It is nice to have the bike in Canada.  Wilson expects to be invited for dinner too.

Those of you who have asked me over to see pictures from the trip, be careful what you ask for as there are 50,780 of them! I will be happy to show them to you but you might have to provide permanent residence for me and a lot of wine so you can see them all. 

Thank you for following the blog. The stats show that over the three months the blog site had 12,900 hits.  I don't know how that can be possible. Maybe you all went there a 1290 times each? Thank you for your comments, emails and participation with me during the trip. The discipline of writing the blog each night for you, helped me keep the three months in order so I can remember as much as possible when I am showing you the 50,780 photos.

I am taking it easy today; unpacking slowly and having sporadic naps. It's kind of weird being home.

My multitasking abilities in Germany: Driving the car, programming the GPS, taking photos out the car window, keeping the car on the road and I only was honked at once!  We toured everywhere today starting in Mainz, cross-countrying to  Wiesbaden, Nieder-Olm, Mommenheim, Russelshaim and ending in Frankfurt.

We are in the room early tonight getting mentally prepared for tomorrow's return trip.  We will leave Mainz at 11:00 AM for a 2:25 PM flight to Amsterdam, then on to Toronto.  Robert Q says I will be home by 11:45 PM London time, which will be 5:45 AM the next day my body time.  Perhaps it is a good thing that two brave souls are picking me up at my mom's!

I won't write anything too profound tonight, as I know you all are expecting... Instead, I think I might look around for a bottle of red wine!

Your mission for the day should you choose to accept it: Find Cuckcoo clocks!
After no luck in two towns and hours of driving, I turned the car toward Rothenburg as I saw billions of cuckoos there the other day when I was with Britt and Christine. I have been to Germany twice and now Rothenburg three times! I don't need to go there anymore!  !  Anyhow, the clocks were found and purchased and we were on our way.  Now, don't be getting too excited all you folks reading this blog thinking that the clocks are for you!.. they are not!  No room in my knapsack for cuckoos! 

Rothenburg was jammed with folks as it was the annual festival of some sort.  No one could really tell us what the festival was but there were loads of people dressed in olden day clothes happily singing and dancing through the streets.  Some were drinking beer and some were carrying swords.  We didn't stay long enough to get terribly involved. 

The car that is rented, known lovingly as Opel, was great on the autobahn today; easily reaching 180 but averaging out at 160.  Slowing to 100 km per hour seemed so slow.  I will have trouble coming home to the 401!

Picture this,  Maunchenheim 1690: Hans Bahl was born. He married, had children and lived and worked in Mauchenheim.  Finally, some generation of the family left the country to escape religious persecution and headed to England.  From England they emigrated to the US where they owned property that has now become "Wall Street". They participated in the Revolutionary war then emigrated to Canada becoming United Empire Loyalists. They served with General Brock in the War of 1812 at Niagara on the Lake.  John Ball fired the first canon in the Battle of Niagara. They hung around with Laura Secord. They were given General Brock's uniform hat when he was killed. One section in the Niagara on the lake Museum is the Ball Wing. They owned the property that is now known as "Balls Falls"  One of them was the father of my grandfather. My grandfather was the father of my mother. I am now in Mauchenheim picturing this, 1690 Hans Bahl was born.

The purpose of this part of the trip is to see the town where it all started. Mom and I have been talking about coming here for years.  I wandered through the only graveyard in town and Bahl is not on any of the headstones; but the current cemetery was started in 1900.  There is no sign of an old cemetery.  No one in town that we can find, speaks English and we don't speak any German.

It is a cute little town; simple houses that appear to be mostly new and by that I mean post WWII. Maybe the town didn't fare well in the war? There is the odd building that looks significantly older and like it might have been around in 1690 but I can't tell as I can't recognize the style of anything except for two Lancet windows.

We drove on every street.  I wandered and took some detail architectural photos.  I spoke with a 10 year old girl who told me the correct pronunciation of Mow-en-hime.  She had a big smile on her face when she told me as neither of us could speak the other's language.  It was cute. 

This whole trip has been one continuous, giant square dance with partners changing on every new song!  Britt and Christine were successful catching the morning train to Berlin and my mom arrived at Frankfurt airport ready to sprint through Germany. ...Allemande left with the corner maid.. Meet your own and promenade.

PS - It's Friday morning as I write this PS - I received an email from Britt late last night - they made it to Berlin, found their hostel, visited the Jewish Museum and saw Check Point Charlie and parts of the Berlin Wall.

We fired up the GPS and looked for Rothenburg in the list of towns.  There were at least 16 Rothenburgs listed in the GPS all in Germany.  We chose the one that was 1 hour 36 minutes away even though we knew the one we wanted was 1 hour 48 minutes away.  You would think that Britt and I would have learned our lesson by now and questioned timing.  But no, we headed to Rothenburg.

We had a lovely drive down wonderfully paved roads, seeing beautiful valleys and we were sure  that we saw Robin Hood in the Black Forest. We landed in a tiny town, that was a lovely little Rothenburg, but not the one we wanted.  We reprogrammed the GPS but this time spelled it Rottenburg.  Rottenburg ob der Tauber, the one we wanted, was listed.  It was 1 hour 29 away from where we were.  We turned the car around and headed for Rottenburg. In the meantime, I had to stop the car so Britt could steal apples off a tree at the side of the road.

Massive stone town walls with 42 towers, half-timbered houses and cobblestones streets welcomed us. We wandered through the town for the afternoon and of course we climbed the tower!  The steps in this tower were pretty cool as they were made of wood that was  extremely worn down and uneven.  The final set of steps was more like a ladder than steps and when you finally burst through the door at the top you almost banged your face on the thin and wobbly iron rail that stopped you from falling to the pavement below.  Okay, Christine says it wasn’t wobbly, but she is not afraid of heights or pending death. The platform at the top was one person wide and you were only allowed 5 minutes at the top.  We squeezed our way through the others at the top and stayed about a half hour.

Tonight, we are drinking wine and celebrating Britt’s last night with me and the beginning of her trip with Christine and other friends. They catch the 9:13 AM train to Berlin in the morning. My mom arrives at 4:50

We dragged Christine around Frankfurt central for the afternoon. She did very well considering she just got off an airplane from Toronto and hasn't had any sleep for a day. We followed the Rhine river to get to the old town and started to look at buildings and churches. It sure is a different type of architecture in Frankfurt.  Some of the buildings are just too "Alpine" for me, while others are beautifully detailed and interesting.  The churches are mostly tall and simple in design.  We have been noting the Gothic and Romanesque features that we can recognize, but then, all of a sudden the architect threw in some weird design in the ceiling that is completely foreign to us.  The churches and the buildings in the main square were bombed during WWII and rebuilt or extensively renovated in the early 1950's. The modern buildings are beautiful especially the Hilton Hotel near the airport.  Frankfurt is very big but not unreasonably busy or overrun with tourists.

Christine and Britt climbed 328 steps to get to the top of the St. Batholomaus tower. I waited on a bench at the bottom.  My knees enjoyed the pleasant and restful wait.

Once again weinies adorned a dinner plate; this time addressing Christine's palate.  It was all washed down with local beer that looked better than the weenies!

Christine arrived this morning bringing some sunshine into town!  The airport arrival was slow but smooth. Both Christine and her luggage arrived each in one piece.

We are now at the room getting ready to walk around Frankfurt to see just what is in this town Check the blog later to see what we found!

Today was a long day.  We weren’t sure how we were going to get to Frankfurt in the first place.  We both were dreading the 6 hour train ride from Innsbruck as we didn't have seats reserved, which meant that we would be likely in separate train cars and possibly standing for a portion of the trip.  Wilson is making light travel a little more difficult so train travel would also be a challenge to get Wilson through the train station and onto the train. Britt has a train pass so her costs are covered and my ticket would have been 248 Euros. It ended up that Hertz had a car, with German plates, (which seems to be an issue) that we could drive from Innsbruck to Frankfurt for $103 Euros and the cost of desiel fuel was 41E.  So for less than the cost of a train ticket we drove a lovely Fiat 500L all day. We left Innsruck around 1:00 and arrived at 8:30.

We have no pictures from today as it rained the entire the way with the sun only peeking out for a bit.  We hoped that when we crossed the border into Germany the sun would suddenly burst through the clouds for us.  It did not.  However, it did stop raining enough for us to enjoy driving on the Autobahn.  No speed limit is fun!

We are now in downtown Frankfurt.  Our hotel is across from the train station which is perfect for when Britt and her friend Christine, who arrives tomorrow morning, leave me to for Berlin, Prague, Amsterdam, Paris, London and Iceland (barring volcanoes)

I am drinking free german beer from the complimentary bar fridge and Britt is doing laundry.  We are safely tucked in for the night.

NOTE: It is now Tuesday morning - the internet wouldn't connect last night - we are just on our way to the airport to pick up Christine.