Die Welt ist klein

A week and a half is not enough time to get to know a place at all--but it is plenty of time to become completely infatuated. Oberursel looks like your favorite quaint German town with its streets lined in small town bakeries and fine butchers complete with a centered marketplace, cobblestone roads, and traditional timber framing. The walls whisper quietly as you walk slowly, careful not to disturb its quaint charms. You crane your neck to take it all in at once.

Many people think of Germany as the land of sausage and beer, but it is so much more for the foodie's palate. The selection of truffles at my new favorite chocolate shop (Salon du Cacao) are German made and absolutely fantastic. The Riesling actually rivals the Weisen and the bakeries are overflowing with things anyone's grandmother would have made growing up. This place is incredible. And yet everyone (it seems) is beautiful and thin. I wonder if that was a national decision put into law?  In a matter of thirty years, Germany has unified, become globally and regionally unique, and are now the richest country in Europe.

I am taken with the way of life here--the balance of modern and traditional, global and unique, political yet neutral, religious yet private. Germans seem so dedicated to this balance.