We started the day with a stroll to the Kurhaus, the large building that houses the headquarters of the spa and the casino.
The Kurpark behind the Kurhaus is lovely….and the visitors aren’t bad either.
There was also an antique car show, with some very cool old sleds…like these Alfa Romeo Spiders.
Sure, I’ll admit it: I’d like to own a bathtub Porsche…but I never will.
From the Kurpark we took bus and train to Mainz, a kind of second home town for me. While on foreign study in spring 1971 I lived with a family named Busse…and have considered the whole clan part of my extended family ever since. Peter Busse was 23 when I lived with his family; he’s now 75. He picked us up at the train station and took us on a tour of all the places I’ve ever lived in Mainz. First his parent’s lovely home on the Wilhelmiterstraße. Here is the house as it looked in 1971. The gate on the right opens directly on to the city park.
The we saw the house on Eisgrubweg where David Bradley and I lived in 1973 / 1974 when we worked in Mainz. The house once belonged to the German dramatist Carl Zuckmayer; when David and I rented one big room (with a bathroom and truncated hall for our hotplate and mini-fridge) in the cellar, the upper floors belonged to a fraternity.
And, finally, we saw the apartment building in the Jahnstraße in Mainz-Gonsenheim where Sue and I lived in 1979-80.
And here’s that house as it looked in 1979:
We then went to lunch in the square below Mainz’s magnificent Romanesque cathedral.
That’s Peter now. Here he is with his family (including his younger brother Dirk) in 1971, and then again with me and Dirk the same day.
And here are Peter and his wife Anna at our wedding in 1976 (with me and my friend Phillip Blackerby).
After our tour of the city we headed to the village of Laubenheim where Peter and Anna now live in the house where she grew up. When we pulled up, I got a wonderful surprise: my friend Udo Schieferstein, whom I hadn’t seen for many years, had driven down from Nordrhein-Westfalen to see me!
In the house, not just our old friend Anna, but all of Peter and Anna’s children and grandchildren were there to greet us! Some had come from a long way off, and we were deeply touched by this gesture of enduring friendship.
We all braced ourselves for the kind of meal always served in this house–first by Anna’s mother, and now by Anna with the help of her kids–which is to say multi course and delicious! In the best tradition of the house, we started with Kaffee und Kuchen, and, after an indecently short break, dug into the main meal which was followed by…dessert. But who’s complaining? It was a wonderful evening among friends young and old.