Travels with my Mother III: .... YVR-FRA - MomTown

I get up at 6:00 to get my laundry out of the drier.  I was just tooooo tired last night.  And I don't want to think about today.  It's going to be a LOOONG day.

8:00 

The daily ritual of taking care of Mother's medical needs.  She cooperates less every day but we get it done.  I'm not looking forward to injecting that anti-thrombosis thing with the loooong needle again. 


My agenda for today is overwhelmingly full.   So when my relatives just sit there at the breakfast table and wait for me to serve on them, I'm close to blowing my fuse.  SOMEHOW I manage not to.  It's probably the prospect of being in Athens in 4 days.  Without that mental relief, I don't know how I would  manage.

8:45
I'm getting stuck in traffic on the way back to the hotel and on my way to the gas station and the rental car return. 

A cyclist was run over by a car driver down-town and the back-log stretches all the way to North Vancouver.  I am SO GLAD I'm leaving this hell hole today.

9:15
The Albanian car rental people ask me whether I watched the soccer game between Germany & South Korea.  Nope.  But I admit I enjoy the news that South Korea won TWO to NOTHING and that Germany is OUT.   Mexico goes to the next round!   Go Mexico Go !





10:30
I had planned to check out at 11:00 but at 10:20 the TV dies.  And all the lights.  Power failure.   EVERY SINGLE time I stay here, the power fails.  It's not the hotel's fault.  The gas stations, the other hotels, even the traffic lights are all out.  This happens at least once a month.  NO, there is NO wind.  I don't mind living in a Third World country if the cost of living and the lack of reliability in services are kind of related.  But Vancouver is EXPENSIVE and things don't work.  Bad Combo!

I try sticking the 1 cm long needle of the Anti-Thrombosis syringe into my mother but both my mother's behaviour and my own squeamishness cause me to say "FUCK THIS, I'm waiting for a Nurse Next Door".  With Nurse Next Door, mother all of a sudden smiles, and cooperates like a lamb.   I definitely owe Jessica a bottle of Rose !!!!

NOT the SeaBus escalator.
I'm too busy carrying suitcases to take a picture ..

Didn't I only very recently state that things DON'T work in Vancouver?  We've crossed Burrard Inlet on the SeaBus.  On the downtown side. BOTH escalators are OUT of ORDER.  And these are TALL & LONG escalators.  When I have finished lugging Mother's suitcase up the stationary escalator, I can't help but shout loudly "SHIT CITY! NOTHING WORKS!".

During a smoking break at YVR, I notice something strange.   

They have built solidly anchored Anti-Terror-Truck steel pylons into the sidewalk.  

Then they camouflaged them to look like natural rocks?

But WHY would they have EXCLUDED a 20 meter wide section of sidewalk, right next to where the cop cars are parked, right in front of a door to the terminal building?  Think those cops will stop eating donuts for a second to heroically stop a truck?  The usual these days:  Think little, spend lots !

We get to the check-in counter and find that the plane is delayed by one hour..... ....

At Milestones at YVR, eating bland, greasy & tasteless Fish & Chips for $14.99.  What is the minimum wage again in this province?  Actually, Minimum Wage was JUST increased to CAD$ 12.65 three weeks ago, but even at this higher level the minimum wage is a Starving Wage if trying to survive Vancouver's high cost of living !  

Aside from the money: it's the flavour and digestibility that will make me regret this food for hours to come.

Frankfurt, 14:00 CET

Mother is already complaining about EVERYTHING and I'm exhausted. And it's WARM in Frankfurt. 28 degrees! So we take a taxi instead of taking the bus.  It already starts during the taxi ride and culminates in the hotel. NOTHING is as Mother wants it.  Where are we?  WHY am I here?   My room is too hot!    



Time to visit REWE.  

I NEED wine or my tongue will give sound to the thoughts that my brain is thinking.   

Rioja Rose.  What could be a more comfortable way to approach the state of being comfortably NUMB?

And it gives me the serenity to stay calm when Mother insists that she is BORED and will go for a WALK, when all I can only think of hitting my mattress to SLEEP.  I tell her that since she can't even figure out how to open her room door with the magnetic key, she should refrain from going for 'walks', because she would have no chance of finding the hotel again, never mind getting into her room.  
"But WHAT am I going to do?"  she asks.  READ (you brought TWO books), watch TV (it's right there), sleep (after all it's 7 am Vancouver time and we were up most of the night)........

I sleep like a log

19:00
What is that noise?   It's the telephone in my room !   It's the reception calling me!  Mother is standing at the reception desk.  I quickly check her room next to me, she left the key in the energy-saving switch and used the waste-bin to block the door from closing.

I'm not in the least hungry, but I take mother to dinner to keep her from cruising the hotel hallways.

It's very odd, but somehow I KNOW that Germany will NOT be on the list of stop-overs in the future.  I'll miss my pseudo relatives in Frankfurt and some VERY DEAR friends (Hello Hofheim am Taunus, Norderney & Bad Schwartau), but after the experience of the last 10 days, I don't see myself coming back to Germany soon)

I'm coming back from my first cigarette at 6:15. Still sleepy and groggy.
It's almost natural that I find mother wandering the hotel hallways on the way back to my room.   She insists that she has NO room key, NO watch, NO bracelet, NOTHING.  EVERYTHING magically vanished overnight.  I have to tell her in a voice REPEATEDLY to stay in her room and that I will visit in 20 minutes to deal with her injections and take her for breakfast.

Breakfast is torture. I'm still dead-tired.  I'm still reeling from the "Everything is GONE" drama at 6:30. Mother heaps various things from the breakfast buffet onto her plate and at the table tries them and then pushes them away again.  Accompanied by that "I deserve better" facial expression.  I keep quiet. What's the point?  6 hours and it will all be over.

Deutsche Bahn did it again. NO, I don't mean that the train is late. THAT is expected.  This time they did something else.  The reservations are for a car with individual compartments of 6 seats.  The car we enter is a car with continuous seats without divisions.  So seats that were together in the compartment car are now in different rows.  GRAND CONFUSION.  The fact that the NEXT car is is an entire car with compartments and NONE of the seats is reserved doesn't help.  
I realize with HORROR that the reservation system in the Reunification Express in Vietnam WORKS and that the reservations system of Deutsche Bahn in Germany does NOT WORK.   A big grin appears on my face.....



Oh, and the dining car neither has power nor real food, so that instead of a croissant I have to eat M&Ms and the white wine is warm.   It would be funny if it wasn't so sad !

No WiFi either (of course).

But then every train journey comes to an end.  And the end of this train journey has a VERY special meaning!

Mother is happy to be home. She waves at people and people wave at her.  I bring her suitcase to her room, hand over the left-over medication to the staff, and then give them Mother's passport.  

That settles it.

13:45

Deliverance !