Frankenmuth
Returning to summer vacation from saving the beer, I will segue into my trip to Michigan, where we started out in Frankenmuth. Frankenmuth is a German town between Flint and Saginaw (north of Detroit), and of course, Germany makes me think of beer. Funny how these things work out.
Going to Frankenmuth is like a return to the past and many childhood trips up to Michigan. Eating chicken dinners at Zehnder’s and the little plastic toys they give you on your ice cream, going to Bonner’s Christmas Wonderland which is now 5 football fields long, I learned some things about Frankenmuth that I don’t remember from childhood. The name actually comes from Franken, from Franconia, Bavaria, the region of Germany the settlers came from, and Muth, courage. While I remembered that the architecture was Bavarian, I had forgotten about all the signs around town in German.
It’s always interesting to go back to someplace you’ve been away from for a while and gather a new perspective at a different time in life. It’s quite insightful to see how your memory is affected by time and what impresses you at certain points in your life.