Dr. Ruby Dunlap’s Uganda Fulbright Blog
That Ireland has no snakes is hardly more remarkable than that Germany has few enough flies and mosquitoes to make the leaving open of windows and doors during pleasant weather a practical option. The meeting of wind with curtain, the outdoor garden with indoor polished wood unimpeded by inelegant mesh screens, is one of the pleasures of being in Germany, ranking behind German bread but, for me anyhow, considerably before the autobahn.

But I digress even before I begin, a relic of medieval journaling style given its head.
My father, 80 years old, was supposed to meet us in Detroit and then the three of us, father, husband, and myself, were to fly together to Frankfurt. The plan was to spend a couple of days visiting my dad’s two sisters and some cousins in Germany before continuing on to Uganda.

Dad never made it to Detroit to meet us. His plane was delayed for some reason and the airline re-routed him to Amsterdam and from there to Frankfurt. Instead of arriving together around 7 AM in Frankfurt, Bob and I had to wait for him at the Frankfurt airport until 3 PM. I tried to imagine being 80 years old and spending that much time being alone in noisy airports. “You have got to do something for him,” I insisted to the airline staff. “We have his ticket marked for meeting and assisting,” they assured me.

To fill in the time waiting for Dad, Bob and I decided to find a hotel close by to rest before driving on later to Nidderau and Gernsbach to visit my aunts, Heidi and Gisa. A helpful rental agent offered to program our GPS “for the best hotel deals” in the area. The reason they were good deals soon became obvious after driving in Frankfurt for about 20 minutes and the crisp GPS voice informing us that we had reached our destination. The signage was unmistakable. “Bob, we’re in the redlight district,” I said. “No, we’re in Germany,” he said. We decided the best deal was not one we would choose and, instead, would try to find something closer to the airport. Getting back proved unexpectedly challenging.

One of us lost his temper and in a tone commensurate with his mood said he was not going to stop at another Shell gas station to get directions back to the airport. Neither of us could figure out how to program the GPS in our rental. We had stopped at four Shell gas stations and had always been told the same thing: “Oh, getting to the airport is easy. Just turn here, go to the roundabout and take the second right.” But the round in the roundabout had never been a pi are squared sort of round. Four times we had come upon a polygon of intersecting roads, sometimes with traffic lights, various yields and rights of way, and always managed to take the wrong road.

“How about this apothecary shop?” I asked. The young woman at the counter began: “Oh, getting to the airport is easy. You just turn here and take the second right at the roundabout.” “I’m not sure if we understand ‘roundabout’” the way you understand it,” I said. “I understand ‘roundabout’ as something in a circle but the roundabouts we’ve been directed to haven’t been shaped like a circle.” “You will turn right by a gas station painted blue,” she said. That bit of detailed landmark was sufficient to find the correct road and soon we were back in the airport waiting area to wait for Dad.

He came striding through the door hours later, pushing his luggage cart. “Dad, did they help you,” I asked anxiously. “Help me? What for? I don’t need help,” he said dismissively.

Sometimes Maslow’s hierarchy of needs needs to be stood on its head. Sometimes undue concerns about capacity misrepresent both those of the aged and those of the Ancient of Days.

“My grandfather is 80 years old and would have said exactly the same thing,” the young car rental agent said later as we followed Bob and my father to the car. We both laughed and in that laugh we met momentarily on a roundabout of a universal through which multiple roads of difference crossed.

The rest of the time in Germany was marked with perfectly round roundabouts and postcard perfect visits to the towns of Nidderau and Gernsbach. Bob got to enjoy going 100 miles per hour with impunity for a few moments on the autobahn and the three of us got to enjoy a true Black Forest lunch with Gisa in the courtyard of Gernsbach’s “schloss” overlooking the little town. And then it was back to the airport and on to Entebbe.