Day 2 Frankfurt

Julius and Doerte Neubronner

Gorgeous day in Ffm - temperature in the low 90s - too much to report - I'll have to be selective. I called Julius and Doerte Neubronner just as they were about to leave their house. They abruptly changed their plans so we could be together for the day. Ernst came to the hotel, we had lunch, and took an extended walking tour through the sites, sounds, and smells of the city I once called home. Ffm is not the same city. Then it was one big constuction site as 90% of it had been destroyed in the war. Back then we referred to it as the armpit of Europe. A month ago Mercer rated it as one of the top ten "most liveable cities" in the world, a distinction with which I would certainly disagree, but admittedly, the city has come a long ways.

One of our stops was at the former IG Farben building, now part of a modern sprawling Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat campus. It was here in 1972, the building had become the Eisenhower headquarters for the European theater, I came face to face with terrorism - the Baader Meinhof gang set off a bomb that killed an officer and wounded thirteen others. An excellent movie that tells the story of this deranged anarchist group is "Baader Meinhof Coomplex." Other than a spruced up facade the building and its surroundings have not changed. The ghosts of its troubled history, I'm sure, continue to haunt its halls. During the war IG Farben used slave labor to manufacture the gas that killed the jews.

We took the tram out to Bad Homburg where the Neubronners live. What is so remarkable and in such contrast to my own experience is nothing, absolutely nothing, had changed in 35 years. Yes, they're older, they have five grandchildren - one who's turned 24, but other than that, it was deja vu 1975. We talked non-stop, mauling over every aspect of our lives - extending through a late dinner out. We spoke only German and by the end of the night I felt as though my brain was fried and had to force myself to squeeze out the simplest of German expressions. Nevertheless, it was a perfectly wonderful day.