JOURNEYS WITHOUT BORDERS

LAST YEAR, many naysayers finally woke up to the very real, and imminent, threats of climate change, thanks in no small part to Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Time’s Person of the Year also lent her support to the movement of Flygskam, or ‘flight shaming’. What started as a buzzword escalated so quickly that within the same year, Sweden’s air traffic declined by four per cent—according to state-owned airport operator Swedavia. With many catastrophic calamities ringing alarm bells across the world, the most recent of them being the bushfires in Australia, we at Travel+Leisure India & South Asia began doing our part by focussing on conscious travel itineraries. So, when the invitation to tour four European cities—across three countries—on a Eurail Pass came knocking in the autumn of 2019, I did not need convincing. The return flights from India aside, I wouldn’t leave a carbon footprint behind on European soil—with the Eurail Pass ensuring seamless inter-city rail travel. With a conscience as light as an oak leaf adrift in autumn air, I set foot in Frankfurt, my first German city ever.

FRANKFURT

Seven decades after World War II, you tend to think of the war in black and white terms: the Axis forces invaded, the Allies fought back, millions died. Any mention of the war evokes a highlight reel of monsters and tragedies: Hitler and the Holocaust, Pearl Harbour and the atomic bomb, and so on. The rest of the details become a statistical blur. What you never stop to consider is how much damage Germany and its people suffered from the war that its then leader waged.

This fact comes into sharp focus when you travel to German cities that were bombed by the Allies. Frankfurt, for instance, has an ‘old town’ () that isn’t really old. or a , along with a coffee, and indulge in sumptuous views of the Dom and the people who visit it. In the labyrinthine lanes of the new old town, musicians play for no one in particular, street artistes dress up and charge tourists for selfies, and artisans sell wooden tractricoid tops hand-painted in quirky colours. When I visit, though, all the buzz seems to be concentrated in Römerberg, the historic square, where rebuilt half-timbered houses overlook a modern-era protest against a Turkish offensive into war-torn Syria (in October 2019). Flags and slogans are raised in the legendary square, as tourists watch with awe (and confusion), and some locals continue to guzzle beer in bars that spill onto the streets. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” says Dickens in an immortal book that stays firmly tucked in my backpack, as history unravels in front of me.