martinimade

And so, a quick tour of Mannheim, which a brief diversion into stories about an eyeball.

Schiller. You can tell which buildings were destroyed during the war. The ones that look new are.

The ones that look old are. This is the big Baroque Catholic church. 

They like their gold and silver.

Actually, a fair amount of this church was destroyed. Mannheim was a manufacturing center - still, is, really - and took a pounding.

This was the winter palace. It goes on for, oh, a half mile or so. It's good to be the King. Although this wasn't the King's. But you know what I mean.

I could do nothing but take pictures of doorknobs.

This is St. Hedwig's women's hospital. I took this picture for two reasons: 1) I like the name Hedwig and 2) they have a BabyKorb.

If you are a new mom and you've decided you can't handle the baby thing, you can leave your baby in the Korb and the good sisters of St. Hedwig's will take care of it for you. Which just seems humane. 

Speaking of hospitals, etc., the Boy woke up in the morning with a swollen, sticky eye. Our German friend called her doctor and she was kind enough to squeeze him in. It was all very exciting. He's fine now.

What was great about the whole situation was that we got to talk to other folks in the waiting room. There's just something about kids that make strangers want to talk to you about what it was like with their kids or what it was like when they were kids or how good the kids are being. We talked in a mix of English and German and, because I mentioned that I took a semester of it in college, Latin. We all agreed that it just goes so fast.

While I was in with the Boy and the doctor, who I want as my doctor, language barrier be dammed, Scott and an older man got to talking about the War. Scott and I kept wanting to apologize to everyone we saw in this part of the country, particularly when they would start to talk about what it looked like before we bombed the heck out of it. I mean, I'm glad the war was fought and that Hitler was stopped but I'm really sorry we had to destroy your stuff to do it.

Call it white liberal American guilt.

Anyway, the older man said to Scott, "We're glad you won the war." Which was one of those interesting and wonderful moments that you have when you're traveling.