Christmastime In the Bankster Capital of Europe - Mainhattan!

So I had left Berlin to the Berliners and got on a train heading south to Frankfurt.

Just in time for the Celebrations of Love and sharing!
Christmas-time in Germanyoh so romantic
The Bankster and Fraudster Capital of Europe, well there are nice people there aswell in the shadows of the money stacks (sky scrapers) built of blood sweat and tears of the people...

Christmas with the family and back to my favorite food dumpsters in Europe so far.
'Christ-mess' in the dumpsters, what a sight!!!!
What Incredible Riches!

Alnatura Bio Super Natur Markt in Frankfurt/Sachsenhausen, on Heiligabend
that's on Christmasday, 24.12.2009
I was born in this part of town!

What a feast I was rewarded with for no good reason, but let me tell you that I stuffed all my bike bags front and back and a backpack and still had to leave most of the goods behind.
Apparently Alnatura, run by anthroposophic principles, although not nearly all food sold there was grown following biodynamic principles of food production (a system of Agriculture developed by Rudolf Steiner about 100 years ago, with some of the toughest organic standards anywhere)

At home with the loot, loads of oranges had to be made into orange juice,
Christmas day 2009

Knowing that stores close for a couple of days during Christmas, I was curious to see what I would find in the dumpster at Alnatura on the 26th
And even though they give a lot of their food that cannot be sold to organisations feeding the needy and homeless, and bless them for not locking their dumpsters, so whatever else they kick out can at least be gleaned. It still strikes as fairly sick when one opens the containers and 30-40 day old loaves of delicious speckless organic whole grain breads see the light of day once again and are happily emerging for their last trip across town.

Alnatura in Frankfurt/Bornheim 26th of December 2009

There was a mountain of bread, enough to feed a hundred hungry souls, loads of nice bananas and oranges and mandarins, in fact there was so much I didn't have room on the bike for all of it. That really irked me, it was already 4 PM, soon it would be dark, my parents had not enough freezer space to take care of 30+ loaves of excellent wholesome eco bread......I thought hard for a minute, and an inspiration came to me, hey! it struck me that I had to still ride across the center of the city to make it back "Home", and usually when one rides that way there are homeless people hanging out in the pedestrian shopping districts, under roofs, with their mattress camps, often in a forest of empty beer bottles, I decided to load as much of the food as i could and pay them a visit and share the loot with them on this midwinter day, second day of Christmas!

Inspired by Indian Mystic Sathya Sai Baba, and the account i had just read about him by social scientist Erlendur Haraldson from the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, following quote came to mind, see picture from the book, page 124....

"Whether you pray to Christ or someone else, it does not matter to me. I have no caste, no creed, nothing like that. Whoever has a real love of God, I am always with him."

All I am trying to say is that I didn't do this out of any particular religious mood, I am just human, and feel great appreciation for these creations, even as beautiful loaves, the lovely joyous smile of a ripe banana, well travelled from the warm hills of central america, and so i can feel the appreciation someone who has no home and nothing to eat would have to receive such blessings, so I am just striking a connection between these people in the streets and the fate of that grain, all products of the same Love Principle that creates all we can see and feel and be!
It's all around us this love, miracles, even within us, and often we cannot notice it anymore...

The Title of the Book is Modern Miracles, An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sathya Sai Baba and can be found online, complete at google books.

This was a small service I was led to perform, and I was thanked by then few men who I found to give the the bread and fruit to, and it warmed my heart, hopefully theirs and their bodies too.

Passing the old footbridge, named 'Eiserner Steg', across the river a while later, a russian Musician is the last recipient to be found, deserving of the bread. Smiling broadly when he learns I want to give him bread instead of money: "bread 's always good" he mutters while I also pass some bananas and apples into his briefcase. He continues to lighten up the gloomy darkening Christmas afternoon with his joyous play of russian folk tunes on his worn accordeon, such a great and underrated service to fellow human beings sitting there in the cold, spreading love.....

The rest of the bread and fruit I take home with me, the freezers are full but luckily some friends are coming tomorrow and take me along to the dge of the alps tomorrow and so we'll just take all that food down there and celebrate new years down there in the beautiful Allgäu region, in the city of Kempten......

read more about the dumpsters of Kempten and New Years Day in my next post