Bird poo on the seats inside Barcelona airport—weird, and yet somehow poetic (you think you’re expert in the field of traveling through the air? Take that, and that!). Flight to Frankfurt took us through London Heathrow again, and another visit to the BA Business Lounge where a very vapid don’t-wanna-be-a-mommy was ignoring her VERY LOUD daughter’s vocalization of every single synaptic pulse she had. The businessmen were sending eyeball daggers towards the mommy, who would see them and kind of smile back, as though responding to perceived wordless advances. Got to Frankfurt and got into a cab—turns out the hotel was in another terminal of the same airport, and we could have gotten there via airport terminal train, but we were tired and loaded with gear, so instead we ruined a cabdriver’s night. Thems the breaks pal. Airport hotel was almost eerily silent—we heard not a single airplane. By the time we crashed it was clear we’re both coming down with little chest colds…all that travel and being in a world of smokers had caught up to us. Next morning it was up early and off to the IAA show in downtown-ish Frankfurt. Our client’s booth was WAY cool, and the concept car they were showing was sweeeet. Got to see a few other booths (Honda was showing motorcycles in their booth—and we saw one with a deployed airbag. Wouldn’t getting hit in the chest with an airbag while on a bike just pop you right over the back of the bike?) Then it was off to the Frankfurt hauptbanhof to get the rental minivan, collect our colleague Lee back at the hotel, and hit the autobahn for Krautscheid. Driving on the autobahn was fun; not so fun in a minivan, but I got her up to 170 km/h, and that was cool, but there were dudes overtaking me in their tricked out audi’s and bmw’s and benz’ like I was standing still. It was a beautiful afternoon as we zipped past Koblenz and got to our ausfarht. Our man in Krautscheid is Dr. Frank Toubartz, who runs our client’s facility there—the most advanced lead-acid battery recycling operation in the world--and his directions were great, although the last part (“just head down into the valley” made us a little wary (it was very “turn left where the old Müller place used to be”), but lo and behold, there they were, in the little valley a few km from beautiful downtown Bücholz. Being a sunny afternoon we got the idyllic exteriors first—cows and horses and rolling hills in the foreground, and the plant in the background—and then we got the presentation on the facility, which was pretty fascinating and full of history (there have been lead mining and smelting operations on the site since 50 B.C.,). Feeling well-prepped for the next day’s production we went to our nice little no-internet-access DorintResorts hotel in nearby Windhagen-Siebengbirge. Frank joined us there for a dinner of German-style French cuisine as we heard American pop music from the 50’s to the 80’s wafting in from the bar. Something about drinking a really tasty weisbrau and eating a very tasty bistec while hearing the details of how “Black Betty had a child, bama-lam, the damn thing went wild, bama-lam” was hurting my brain. Nothing a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix, and that’s what we got. Next day it was getting to know all the dirty yet very cool details about this amazing lead-acid battery recycling operation. Like, that they recycle something like 4 million car batteries a year, producing 50,000 metric tonnes of lead for reuse. The smelting was as you’d imagine it—very hot, lots of red, molten liquid metal everywhere—but also there was the unexpected, such as the popping sounds of big lead pylon-shaped forms cooling in the yard and the sight of the heat-shimmer they produced. We all looked a bit silly in our safety shoes and hart hards and coats, but hey, this is lead smelting and refining we’re talking about here, and we got right up-close and personal with it, so if they’d wanted us to wear clown noses and fright wigs for added safety we quite happily would have. By late afternoon we were done and on our way to Koln. Traffic into the city was yucky for a while, but we found our way to the hotel, right there across from the Koln hauptbanhof (behind the killer-huge Cathedral in the city—the Dome). Bobbi was feeling particularly pooky and wasn’t able to join the ultrafast but fun Koln tour conducted by our excellent JCI friend and colleague Thomas, who bopped in from nearby Burscheid. He took Lee and me around to see some of the nearby Roman sites—amazingly cool—then to Peters & Bambeck for some of the local kolsch beer, brats and dumplings for me, and goulash soup for Lee. We finished up just as some rain was passing, then off we went for a short stroll up the Reihn River for some fab nighttime city views. Thanks for the microtour and visit Thomas—can’t wait to see you in Milwaukee in a few weeks, where we can return the favor and tour such historical sites as the Blatz Brewery building, made famous in Laverne & Shirley!
And so now it’s Saturday, coming up on day 14 of the odyssy. From our train window we saw the heavy mist settled over westernmost Germany, but the sun is out now in Belgium, and it looks like it’ll be a beautiful weekend in Paris.
It don’t suck people, no indeed it don’t.
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