Goodbye Frankfurt: Hello Prince George [soon]

Right now, I am sitting in my friend Martin's apartment in Frankfurt, spending the last couple of hours of my holiday, waiting to go the the airport to return to Canada... while it will be good to be home and to see Melinda, this trip has gone by far too fast.

Yesterday, Martin, Arabella, Arabella's mom, and I went to Wiesbaden for the day. We saw a schloss [beautiful, with a huge park with parrots in it, situated right on the Rhine], visited the German Film Archives [where Martin currently works... they just moved into new digs and things are mildly chaotic there... but there are LOTS of films, and it was very cool to be able to visit], and visited a wine festival right in the middle of town. We had a bunch-o-wine from a number of different producers [there were only 135 or so stands there... where's the dedication to selection?]. We had originally meant to go to the monastery where The Name of the Rose was filmed, but ran out of time... I guess it is good to leave something for the next trip.

This has been an interesting voyage, because I spent so much of the time visiting people... it is quite something to have friends all over to go see; it makes a trip special to be able to share it with folks who are familiar with the sights from a local perspective. Sometimes, the draw of acquaintance takes us places we might otherwise overlook. This made me go to Brittany for the first [and not the last] time, for instance... I would like to thank Rosemary and Frederic, Nicole and her family, Claudio and the myriad Massini's, and Martin and Arabella for making my visits so dandy... without these friends, this would have been just another grand tour of the major sites and not the participatory experience that it has been.

Next stop, Vancouver, then Prince George on Monday!