Rest by the Main

It's been a week since I left home and found myself on a 13 hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany.  I see layovers as orphaned hours lost in space, wanting to be found.  And as soon as I arrived I made way to the bottom level of the airport where the train station was, got a ticket, and boarded.  I was surprised at how natural it felt and yet realized that metros are kind of all the same and I'm getting used to them.  Even from traveling in the states.  

I love train station maps so much I would frame one and hang it on my wall.  I think I will.  It all happened when I watched the Helvetica documentary and realized that I'm not the only person in the world to have a serious love affair with the alphabet.  This is an interview (from the documentary) with Erik Spiekermann, who designed (or at least had a large part in designing) the typeface for the German rail system. He is one of those people that comes to mind for me when people ask the "what celebrity would you like to sit down to dinner with" question except that he isn't really a celebrity.  But he should be.   

      

How can you not be impressed by a man who has favorite letters of the alphabet? And I really agree with what he has to say about culture:  "That stuff is what makes a nation's culture, the visual surroundings.  Good architecture, good food, and good timetables or good announcements on the walls of stations."  There is more to culture than this, but it's true that the visual details make a lasting impression to the world. 

Am I the only person who walks through train station thinking, "Thank God for Erik Spiekermann?"  

Ok.  I can deal with it.  Anyway, so I was walking through the train station going, Thank God for Erik Spiekermann and enjoying the peace of mind that orderly station notices bring and wishing that someone would attend to the public toilets next.   

In my usual wandering way I found the river.  I sensed it, smelled it maybe, a block away, even when I wasn't entirely sure it was the right direction.  But there it was, lined with a nice park full of runners and cyclists and one old man playing an accordion.  

Across the bridge I was delighted to find the Stadel Art Museum.  I was so thrilled.  The museum had about 700 pieces, including (less well-known) ones from well-known artists like Delacroix and Monet and Cezanne.  Oh boy.  It was bliss.  I loved art history but there is always just this projector that can only feebly echo the world of textures and colors on that canvas.  Now it was real and rich and my eyes drank it up.  I am not so interested in the people or places the paintings represent.  It's the fabrics, the patterns, the look of velvet without being velvet, the look of water without being water, the look of light without being light. 

Afterwards I recrossed the bridge, smiling at the amiable-looking accordion man, and went in search of food.  I had just enough Euros from my return train and didn't want to change more, AND none of the yummy looking Turkish restaurants were taking my debit card.  So as a last resort I bought a long piece of pizza where this girl and I waded through the purchase with about equal offerings of English and German (I remembered how to ask for the pizza, but why oh why didn't I learn the numbers?)  Paying for it is important.  Well it was to her.

I got my pizza and traced the same path back to the river, and there, relieved of my over sized backpack that makes me feel like a turtle with its home on its back, I settled in for a fabulous picnic.  I thought about the people I had just left and the people I was about to see and how odd it is to be stranded between them, even for a few hours.  How beautiful it is to be alone, and yet how much better to be together.  The time I spent out of the airport enjoying art and nature refreshed me far more than any of the ten hours I spent trying to sleep on the plane.  Soon it was back to the train and onto a plane and through the skies again.