On Friday we said a lot of farewells. Our friends from Paderborn were scheduled to leave in the early afternoon, and there was nothing else on the schedule until “goodbye ice cream” in the evening. I decided to stroll on down to the Goethe House in the morning on my own.
For those not in the loop, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a pretty famous German author. He’s not talked about nearly enough in American public schools, but you might know him as “The Faust Guy.” Anyway, his childhood home in Frankfurt was converted into a museum, and my host from Cologne recommended I check it out.
Now the unfortunate part here is that the house was actually destroyed by bombs during World War II. Luckily all of its furniture and other accessories were saved in storage though, so at some point it was rebuilt and restored to look how it did in the past. This is the kind of museum where it really just is a house, but there are written guides explaining the significance of every item in every room . Without an actual tour guide, the whole experience was over pretty quick.
One more note on Goethe though: The whole time I was there I never actually saw the exterior of the house. It was surrounded completely by tall modern buildings under construction, and the entrance was through a separate smaller building. Even the courtyard was blocked by temporary wooden walls. Otherwise I’d have pictures.
Next up I strolled on down to SKYLINE PLAZA with Michael. We didn’t really find any shopping of interest, but we got a good workout and some ice cream to cancel it out.
And speaking of ice cream, the whole class of us got even more at night! It was a bittersweet ice cream social if I’ve ever seen one. We exchanged stories of our day before separating for one final time. Of course, we would continue to awkwardly run into each other until taking flight, but I guess that just shows that nothing is ever final.
