A few days late, but here is a desperate attempt to document some of the beautiful things that I have seen in the last four days. I only hope that even several years later, these words will help me touch all those areas of my brain that have these images embossed and relive all the imagery each time.

Day 1:
Left India at 2 in the night. Don't really want to think of and write about anything that happened till I landed in Europe. So I landed at 6 in the morning. Checked out at 6.30, and with nothing to for 6 hours until my train to Paris, I decided to wander the streets. Alone, obviously. Its a very beautiful city. But not for its roads and shops and buildings and parks and the weather. To me it was a beautiful city because everyone was nice to me. People saw me wandering the streets at 7 in the morning and stopped to say hi. I hardly met anyone who knew English. They just came up to me, smiling, and started talking to me. When I said, 'No Deutsche...sorry...' almost all of them made really sweet attempts to talk to me in English. I was amused to find out, that some of them thought I looked Arabic. People told me I was in the wrong place if I wanted to see Europe. They said there was nothing in Frankfurt except the headquarters of all the major banks in the world. When I kept pestering them to tell me of some place I could visit as a tourist, one person reluctantly told me to go to the old part of city and look around it. Maybe I would find something interesting, he said. So I walked there, talking to strange people on the way, taking pictures of everything that came in my lens' way and utterly overwhelmed by how nice everyone was being to me. Whoever told me Frankfurt is like Mumbai where a first timer is dead meat is the dumbest person alive. The only similarity I could notice was that both cities thrived on the Financial business. Anyway...

So I went to the old part of town and I was floored. Easily the most amazing place I had seen ever. There were old churches, some sit out restaurants, cafes, bakeries and all kinds of quaint places. Most of them were opening up since it was still early in the morning, but that gave the whole landscape an even more old world charm. I sat on a bench for a while. Thought about everything. Felt sad, then alright. One man walked up to me and asked me if he could sit next to me. Even though there were several other empty benches around. I smiled and he sat down. He asked me where I was from and things like that. He too turned out to be a single traveler. But he was traveling on business. He had a flight to take sometime in the evening. Whenever he had to came to Frankfurt, he came down to that part of town at odd hours because everything there seems so nice then. I could only nod and smile. He then asked me if I would like my picture taken since I was alone and was only taking pictures of everything around me. So just like that, since he saw I had no one to take my picture, he offered. It was extremely touching. He took two pictures of me and I did of him too. He asked me if he could take a picture of me with his camera. I was kind of skeptic. But the next second I hated myself. That was exactly why I had come there for. To just be. So I let him take my picture, we said goodbye and he walked away.

I sat down on the old wooden bench for a while, just thinking of something. I noticed this beautiful young couple across the cobbled courtyard, reading a book together, holding each other. It was very sweet. Sometimes I feel eachother should be one word. I asked them for a picture and the girl happily climbed down from the bench to take my camera. When I told her that I wanted to take a picture of them, she suddenly cringed and became very reluctant. "Why us?" she asked. There was no way I was going to be able to explain that to her. "Well..." were the only words I managed. She asked her boyfriend and he too was somewhat reluctant. I decided to not pursue it and said sorry and began walking. Well...

I saw a very small old church and decided to look at it from inside. I opened the door and I was quite surprised to not find anyone there. It was completely empty. But fully 'working'. It was heated, there were candles burning, beautiful soft lights and chairs and everything. But no person. I waited there, sitting on a chair, and did nothing for 15 minutes. It was a very strange experience. Like there was a God there if you wanted to see it that way. But it was a very beautiful place either way.

At mid-day, I came out of there and walked back into the city, walking towards the train station. I saw a lot of very interesting things. It felt good to know that people liked me, or at the very least, weren't repulsed by me. And thats what I loved most about the place. I realized I loved people smiling at me. Some even made the effort to talk to me in a language they didn't know. It was very pleasant and it felt very good to be there. Add to it the fact that this was supposed to be a monster of a city with no heart, driven by commericalism.

If that was so, I couldn't wait to see what Paris would be like!