New This Week, Parts 30 Through 37

What you are reading now is the result of countless attempts to write another “New This Week” article. I started some of them at home, some in my head and one or two even at work, the latter of which were, unexpectedly enough, by far the most useless. I can't put into words how hesitant I have been to even get started, and as time progressed it seemed less and less sensible to even try any more. I figured correctly that if I have this much difficulty to even remember one week's novelties, I could as well try to dance on the ceiling if I wanted to recall the novelties of five weeks ago.

So naturally I started thinking about what had been holding me off. One of the reasons is certainly that creating a blog entry with colorful pictures and such takes quite some work. Even browsing Flickr to find images I may use takes quite some effort, and formatting an entry on Blogger is in fact not that enlightening. You have a tiny message window, the interface adds images never where your cursor is but always at the beginning of a post, which causes a lot of effort to move the pertaining HTML space. Not to speak of the fact that the images can't be sized the way I want them for my post by default.

But what's actually much more important is the fact that the original purpose of the novelty listing is not matched any more by simply listing what new bar I went to, or what new food or restaurant I tried. When I lived in Düsseldorf it was alright. When you live in a city for a while and feel like spicing up your standard routine a bit, listing the occasional new bar or restaurant is spicing up your life already. Frankfurt, however, has been challenging and exciting to me in so many ways that listing a few places or events that I attended hardly does my life justice.

So at least for now, the only half-way realistic way to fit my life into this cute blog frame is to concentrate on the things that are really important, selecting merely a variety of novelties and rather sharing my thoughts with you than simply naming restaurants and such. I'm not sure whether I'll keep up the New This Week format at all; time should tell.

I actually wrote this article on the trains from London to Exeter and back. Weird that I have to fly this far to get it done, isn't it?

Frankfurt City

Frankfurt is a fantastic city. Whoever claims different either hasn't seen anything but the junkie-and-hooker area near the main station, or hasn't kept up with the city's pace. In the past years, I am told time and time again, there has been an incredible development, and apart from a few areas that I have seen so far, the inner city of Frankfurt is gorgeous, period. You can get anything and everything you want here, from bars to supermarkets, great architecture, history, parks, all sorts of activities such as street festivals, sports events, and cultural ones too, such as theater and cinema, even in English, or the opera.

And if you happen not to like the city any more, you might have noticed you're in the best-connected city in Germany. Any German million-inhabitants city and various major European cities are right within 4-hour distance by train. Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Dresden, Brussels, Amsterdam, Zurich, Luxemburg, Prague, and many more are right there at your reach. Oh, and do I need to mention the airport serving 125 airlines?

Regardless of that, there are a few things that suck in Frankfurt, the most important of which seems to be street traffic. Car traffic, to be precise. God be my witness, the way traffic lights are set up and (not) synced in Frankfurt must be the worst on Earth, I'm not kidding. And for those of you who assume that this is due to the city's endeavors to make people use public transit, here are two facts for you. The monthly public-transit pass currently comes at, to my knowledge, 72 Euros for an adult. Not quite the price you would assume in a city that wants to drive people to use public transit, is it? And what's more, you cannot cancel tickets anywhere but have to get them immediately before your trip. No books of four or so. If you don't have a monthly ticket, day pass or so, you have to buy your single-ride ticket at the machine before each ride. Unless the city of Frankfurt can come up with a really good financial excuse, this is deliberately planned to drive people away from taking public transit.

However, you can move from side to side of Frankfurt by bike in approx. 45 minutes. Try that in any other city of this format. Weirdly enough, this is assuming that you don't stop at red lights but yield to crossing traffic and go when it's gone. I haven't tested this hypothesis but I would bet that you can hardly make it in this time by car.

Frankurt Citizenship

In the meantime I have officially become a citizen of Frankfurt. And by the way, when I had the city alter my city of residence in my passport as well (on top of my ID card) I noticed that I had in the meantime been in the US with my passport that didn't even state my correct residence in Düsseldorf but my previous one, and nobody gave a sh*t. So it is safe to say that your city of residence really doesn't matter at all in the passport.

Networking Got Me a New Potential Boyfriend

Ladies and gentlemen, I love being vague and making jokes out of everything, sometimes out of my fear of showing interest and affection that might turn out to be disappointed some time later. But I must admit that I have met a very special man about a month ago at a gay birthday party. For the sake of this Blog, let's call him Robert.

Before I share some information about Robert with you, let's do a step back and see how I got into the situation to meet him.

I had gotten to know one of my landlord's ladyfriends – Trish – a while back. He had tried to reach her on the phone several times, and after one of his short visits in Frankfurt she called when he was already gone again. I answered the phone, and as I knew her name and had heard good things about her I said, “Hey there, no, I'm sorry, he's already gone again but don't you think that having heard so much about each other already, we should meet?” She was all up in flames about the idea, and we started seeing each other regular for about a week like we had been friends for years.

I was happy not only to have a chance for a new friend but it turned out she was apparently the fag hag of Frankfurt. She knew tons of gay men. Actually, even now I wouldn't be able to swear that she knew anybody else but gay men. I hadn't moved to Frankfurt because of the gay scene but certainly it wouldn't hurt to be introduced to a variety of friends, amongst which might be my next boyfriend, I thought. So we'd go to gay events for a while, like a spot at the Saturday Konstablerwache wine market or the FVV (gay sports club) forest summer festival where the good old sissylympics disciplines of purse-throwing and other nonsense were celebrated. And on top of all that, it was her birthday with evening party in the first week after our initial meeting that about 95% gay men went to. In short, where gay men were, Trish would not be far. She was popular, I am sure, also because she knew an abundance of lines and jokes that you would otherwise only hear on Will & Grace and Absolutely Fabulous. Sometimes she would go so far as to idealize gay men, which I assumed to have its roots in a series of disappointments she must have had with straight men.

Now, at her birthday party I met a friend of her whose birthday party was coming up on Saturday, and when she suggested I'd come, I assumed it was fine with her friend, and went. I noticed Robert immediately when I came in. He was standing in a door frame talking to people, and I just made sure to include this group of people in my round of saying hi and introducing myself. For the whole evening I didn't think he'd be interested in me, and as an acquaintance of mine had told me before that he had a partner, I didn't think there was a chance of anything beyond a nice talk.

I was talking to a lady acquaintance for a while before I actually made a move towards him. She and I were joking about him, and when she left I told her I'd go over and talk to him, she grinned and said I should have fun with him. I'm sure I made a “You got that right, girl” gesture.

I actually did talk to him and his friends for quite a bit, about where all of us were from, who did what for a living, and a lot about what sparetime activities he recommended I do in order to get to know Frankfurt. At one point when a lot of people had already left the party he and I decided to leave as well, and downstairs when we both were about to drive off to our homes, and gave each other a good-bye hug that was remarkably long.

Ever since that evening, Robert and I have spent the majority of our free time together – not counting the week he was on vacation with friends and this weekend that I had booked already to attend a Demoscene event in Southern England. We have spent various noon breaks together, which gives me a peace of mind I was not familiar with. And being able to get together for lunch just like that is actually a huge novelty for me, just like being able to spend the weekend with each other without having to think about catching a train back home that will take at least four hours is.

Robert is wonderful for a variety of reason, two of which are his smile and wit. When he smiles the sun rises, I'm not kidding. He should be working for solar power companies. And he's intelligent, smart and, by all means, funny. If you ever get a chance to hear him throw lines back and forth with his friends you will wonder whether I can keep up with it. But don't worry about the last part. :)

As many of you must have guessed, he's again older than I, but this time it's only 13 years. Not that big a deal, and we have gotten the oddest comments. One of them was that we looked like we were equally old. By all means, this is just not true but he does look younger than 45, and I have been assumed to be older than I am for years already, so no surprise there.

But he's also great in many other ways. What's also great about him is the fact that he doesn't buy bullshit from me. He can tell when I act in order to hide fears or moods. He also has a great imagination and phantasy, and we agree on many things and levels when it comes to common interests and values. And on top of all that, most of the time he is quiet and centered. Sometimes I get to him though, especially when I pour my heart out about what's been bothering me at work, or when I'm concentrating on negative things. I know I shouldn't do that but it sometimes still happens.

Nothing is carved in stone but the steps we have taken so far are promising, I think, even though we have uttered doubts already that I, however, naïve as I sometimes am, think are minor details that we could easily work on. I am willing to take the next steps, and when I get back home from London tonight, I'd love to see him again.

One Additional Miracle

I had come back from Exeter to London with my friend, and we had hung out at the Westfield shopping mall for a while before he took me to the Wood Lane underground stop. From there, he went home and I took the underground to the Heathrow airport. As I was sitting in the underground and watching the stops go by slooooowly, and the train actually slowing down and stopping time and time again, I started getting worried about making it in time. One hour beforehand you're supposed to be at the check-in, even for domestic flights, and mine was an international one.

My plane was scheduled to depart at 6:08PM, and when the underground rolled into Terminal 1 where I was to check in, it was 5:33. I ran as fast as I could, along the platform, through the tunnels, up the escalators, alongside the check-in counter phalanx until I finally ended up in the Lufthansa check-in room. Tons of people there. My last chance, I figured, was using one of the check-in machines. So I pulled out my ID card and scanned it. “We are sorry but it is too late for automatic check-in. Our staff at the check-in counters will help you.” So I looked around. All counters had long lines in front of them. Wait, not all of them. One first-class counter ticket (not even check-in) counter was free. What the hell, I would surely miss my flight if I didn't try. I went up to the counter. Behind it, there were two women sitting and chatting. “Excuse me, Miss”, I had no chance but to interrupt the first-class one. “I am late for a flight to Frankfurt. Do you think you could help me out?”

She checked my passport in her system. “I'm sorry, sir, but the doors closed five minutes ago.” It was still 20 minutes or so to go before scheduled departure. From this moment on, things went fast and I hardly remember anything. She typed quite a bit on her computer, and every now and then shook her head. “All the flights are overbooked”, she explained her headshakes. I hardly spoke a word but just stood there waiting for what she would come up with. I remembered my friend Larry's words who works for Delta Airlines and who said that check-in personnel is able to do all sorts of things for customers if they want. I was doing my best to be friendly and polite, still breathing heavily from the running.

At one point she asked me to stay there, and disappeared for a short while. When she came back she asked me to follow her to one of the check-in machines where she tried something that anyhow didn't seem to work. As she was trying to do whatever she was doing she said, “I can't do that over there at the counter because we've been telling everybody that the flights are overbooked.” I sensed that she was going out of her way to help me, I just didn't have an idea what exactly that was.

She went back to the counter to do something and asked me to stay there. “I'm trying to get you on the 7PM machine”, she assured. Once more she disappeared, and I waited longer. My breath and pulse were slowly but steadily quieting down. I don't know any more how long I must have been standing there but I think it wasn't more than a minute before I was tapped on my shoulder from behind. It was her, smiling and handing me a boarding pass for the 7PM machine. “There you are, sir. All you have to do is checking your bag over there.” She pointed to the line that I had initially seen, the one that assembled next to a sign saying “Baggage Drop-Off”. I thanked her several times, and I truly hope that my voice showed the relief that had come over me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

So I took my stuff and went over to stand in line. But not for long, as it would turn out. About five minutes later a female voice said to me, “Sir?” I turned my head, and it was my angel check-in lady again. “Yes?” I acknowledged. “Please come with me”, she said, and I followed her to a counter on the other side of the room, to an empty baggage drop-off counter. “One bag?”, she asked, and I nodded, smiling. I'm not sure whether I asked her why she was doing all this for me, or whether I just thought it and she heard it. “You look like an old friend of mine”, she said. I smiled and put my bag onto the conveyor belt. After about 20 seconds I asked, “What is he like?” She replied, “He passed away a while ago.” I'm not sure whether she heard my “I'm sorry.” but she added, “He had a car accident.” We finished the drop-off, and she concluded our wonderful short encounter by saying, “All you have to do is going through security.”

Thanking her with a smile that must have conveyed both gratefulness and sympathy, I went over to the entrance to security, looking back and catching eye contact with her once more before I walked around the corner.

I did catch the 7PM flight, and when I entered the plane I wished the staff a marvelous evening, just like the one I was having.