What good are plans if not to be changed?

Eight days since my last blog, and oh my, what changes have occurred.  What good are plans if not to be changed.  God laughing and all of that.  My original plan was to return to the states on August 6th, three whole months in Europe.  However, now I'm coming home July 4th.  There will be fireworks for me, parades, parties in all the neighborhoods...but wait, you say those events aren't for my return.  Silly you.  Of course they are.  It is a 17 hour trip, through several significant time zones, from Frankfurt to Washington Dulles, then from there to Colorado Springs.  I get in at 6:30 PM, but that will be 2AM in the time I'm used to living in.  They have not perfected time-travel, it is still quite hard on the mind and body.  It will take me a couple of days of sleeping weird hours, stumbling around the house, going back to bed.  Fuzzy brain and all.  

Tonight Steffi and I are going to Aqua Fitness, aerobics in a pool, I love it.  And today I will go on another walk of about 4 miles I think.  I know the secret ways through the middle of Old Frankfurt, and love to walk there. I cross the Bridge with Locks, go into the Romer Platz, a few more blocks to Hauptwache, then along a street to the Tor, or Tower, where there's a Subway.  They have wraps there, tortillas in Germany.  I usually rest halfway through where the Purvian Pan Pipe players are, sometimes get a frapachino from Starbucks (yes, they are everywhere and that's a good thing, ordering a coffee, even a latte, sometimes turns out to be an expresso, so dark and bitter one can not even drink it).  Steffi is much braver than I am when it comes to drinking coffee.  Last weekend we went to a gigantic flea market along the river, where I bought a new suitcase from a man from the Middle East who got is masters from the University of Nebraska. He spoke great English. The wheels on my old one broke, so we've been hunting for a new one.  I also bought a colorful necklace which I'm thinking of wearing home.  To go with the fireworks.

There's a lot of building going on here, high rises everywhere.  There are tall featherless birds disguised as building cranes all across the horizon.  They all have a light on top so planes don't fly into them at night, I think of it as an eye that never closes.  bye for now.