We arrived in Frankfurt after an 11-hour flight from Dhaka to London and another hop to our old home. It was cold – right around freezing – but we’d managed to scavenge enough layers from storage to keep ourselves warm (if not fashionable). We went to dinner in our old neighborhood and spent a little time walking around, overwhelmed by nostalgia.
The next day we stopped by the Frankfurt Christmas market and visited our friend Millicent in her hair salon. She had no idea we’d be in Frankfurt, so she was extremely surprised when we walked through her door. Fortunately her customers were patient enough to wait for another hour or so while we visited. We finally tore ourselves away to jump on a train and head for Munich.
In Munich we visited Jason, Lili, and their two-year-old son, Constantin Paul-Friedrich. CPF’s second birthday was the day after we arrived, so we celebrated with him and four of his small friends, plus their parents. Jason & Lili’s usual hospitality was in full swing, (huge breakfasts in the morning, great German dinners at night) and we got to see Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel, a mid-1970s film version of Cinderella that’s the German equivalent of It’s a Wonderful Life. 
We also took plenty of time to stroll through Munich’s Christkindlmärkte, including the new medieval Christmas market. (Just the place to find that crossbow you’ve always wanted.)
After three days in Munich, we went back in the direction of Frankfurt to Bad Homburg to stay with the Bealls – Ben, Mary, six-year-old Jack, three-year-old Sara, and Max (the black, fuzzy one).
We had plenty of work to do on a special Christmas surprise: Fort Beall, constructed especially for the kids’ playroom. Santa did a great job constructing the fort, but it still needed sanding, painting, carpeting, and decorating. (Actually, the hardest part was making sure the kids didn’t see it until Christmas morning!) Work paused for us to go to Christ-the-King (our former church home) for a Sunday morning service, a wonderful lamb dinner with the Beall’s good friends Margareta and Nora, and the children’s Christmas pageant in the afternoon. We gave up around 1:30am, but Ben finally finished the fort around 2:00am on Christmas morning.
Christmas morning with Jack & Sara was great fun. We had a lovely, lazy day indoors, looking out the windows for snow (Ben’s sure he saw one flake), playing with the kids and cooking a fantastic pork tenderloin dinner. Our friend Claudia came over with seven-year-old Benedict in the afternoon – we all had a lovely day, and young ones & old ones slept well on Christmas night.After another day in Bad Homburg, we decided we needed some private time for our third wedding anniversary. Jennifer had the inspiration that we should go someplace we’d never been before, so we took the train back into Bavaria to the more than 1000-year-old city of Bamberg. Bamberg was not bombed during the Second World War, so the old part of the city features literally hundreds of buildings that are up to 800 years old. We managed to find a fabulous place to stay at the Bamberger Hof Bellevue hotel, who set up a little anniversary package for us.
We spent many happy hours strolling around, visiting churches, eating great Wurst mit Sauerkraut, drinking the specialty Rauchbier (smoked beer) of Bamberg, and generally being romantic and stuff.
Bamberg calls itself the “Krippenstadt” (City of Nativity Scenes), so there were Nativities from all over the world to be seen in almost every shop window, as well as in churches and museums. While we were there, Bamberg had a special celebration to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of its bishophric. Kids dressed as the Three Wise Men came from all over Germany to sing and parade through the town.
We stopped by an art dealer to poke through some of their treasures when Jennifer found something extraordinary: an incredibly detailed, hand-colored, three-dimensional-map of Frankfurt from 1567. After talking with the dealer and taking a couple of hours to think about it, we decided it would be an ideal anniversary present. As we explained to the people in the shop, Frankfurt doesn’t really have the reputation of being a romantic city, but for us, it doesn’t get much better.
We also spent an evening at the Bamberg Marionette Theatre, where we saw a folk version of Doctor Faustus. This was no theater for little kids! The puppeteers use an original 19th-century marionette theater together with their own handmade puppets. After the show, we got to go backstage to see how it all worked. The puppeteers are immensely proud of their theater, which (among other tricks) features a five-story (scale) drop. As our hostess told us, “Only we and the Metropolitan Opera in New York can sink a whole ship on stage.” It was a weird and wonderful dose of culture to round out our trip.
The next day we headed back to Frankfurt for one last visit. We had dinner with Allan, the priest who married us, and his family. His nephew and a friend were visiting, so we had a lovely conversation to go along with the delicious meal Gretchen had prepared. We all agreed that it was a little strange to be there – even though we’d been gone for three years, it felt like we’d never left.
Alas, reality set in at 5:00am the next morning when we got up to go to the airport. We seem to have made flying on New Year’s Eve a tradition – this was the third time we’ve done it. Thanks to the efforts of a friendly German lady in Frankfurt and a friendly French lady in London, we were upgraded from “economy” to “economy plus,” and landed safely in Dhaka at 1:30am on New Year’s Day. Bhago was very happy to see us, and while we can’t say that we’re exactly happy to be back in Dhaka, we’re definitely rejuvenated and ready for more of our continuing adventure.
