November has been a pretty good month so far. My roommate, Amanda, and I traveled to Frankfurt, Germany last weekend. We flew into Frankfurt-Hahn airport, which is actually about 2 hours away from the actual city of Frankfurt. I guess that’s what we get for booking really cheap flights. Still worth it, as we arrived at our final destination after taking the scenic route. Frankfurt’s countryside reminded me a lot of Iowa: green, lush fields, some crops, some cows, a few wind turbines, it was FREEZING. I felt right at home. When we got to Frankfurt we had to find our hostel, which ended up being in the Red Light district of the city. What an experience. We saw a few "questionable" deals going on outside our hostel and Amanda commented on seeing needles in the street. Surprisingly, I still felt relatively safe and we were in a group for the most part.
Our hostel was one of the better ones I’ve stayed in. The staff was really friendly and all spoke great English, thank God, because Amanda and I don’t have a clue about German. We met a German guy and a guy from Quebec who is now working in Paris while we were there and hung out with them for most of the weekend. It really helped to have someone that spoke German with us, asking for directions and such and it was nice to have the company. They were both traveling alone so we invited them to join us on some excursions. Below is the Döm district; it had a lot of shops and eateries. The epitome of what "German" was in my mind.
It’s interesting the people you meet in a hostel. We were just there for the weekend, but are staying in touch and discussed traveling together again sometime if it works out. I can’t say that I would necessarily do something like this in the United States, but in Europe, a lot of people travel this way, and it’s pretty fun. I'm also warming up to the idea of backpacking this summer, so if anyone is interested in joining me, it's a work in progress.
The first night we were there, we went out with a couple guys to a bar and ended up meeting some English people. One of them was from Liverpool (which, until that night, I thought was in Ireland-oops) and got really animated about the football (soccer) team and how much he hates Manchester United (a rival of Liverpool). One of the Liverpool players went to Man U and now everyone hates him and is trying to take his face/name off everything he ever won for Liverpool. I told him it was kind of like Favre switching from Greenbay to the Vikings and he said no, this was about a million times worse because American football is “a fairy sport” and “real men play rugby”. Okay, thanks for the clarification…
The next day, I told our German friend to give us some ideas of authentic German food we could eat. My only request while we were in Germany was that I get a giant beer and some saurkraut and a sausage. I had wienerschitzel (pork filet breaded and deep fried on a bun) for lunch while Amanda and I walked around the town and took photos. She had a bratwurst, which was amazing. I generally don’t like sausage or a lot of pork, but, I figured, 'when in Rome...' and this weekend was an exception. Everything we ate was really good. We went to dinner at a quaint Bavarian themed restaurant where I got my large beer (1 liter), a pretzel appetizer with herb cream cheese, some type of sausages and saurkraut (delicious) and apple strudel to top it off. Best meal ever.
We also walked up (took the elevator) to the top of the Main Tower (pronounced Mine) where you could see Frankfurt from the balcony. It was quite a view, the Main River passes through the city as well and is a scenic view from above. I’ve decided I have to go back to Germany and see some other cities, it was so pretty and we had such a great time.
School has been good; we’re getting into the holiday season so that’s fun. I explained what I do for the holidays, meals, family gatherings, etc and told the kids about candy canes. They don’t have them here I don’t think. Instead they have something called turrón, which is an almond type hard candy/cookie. I haven’t had one yet (something else the students didn’t believe), but I’m going to have to try one. They’re all over the stores.
It’s getting a little colder here, the afternoons are still pretty nice, but the mornings and evenings are freezing (almost literally). I’m trying to hold out on buying a winter coat, I stupidly left mine at home, but I might have to cave and buy one soon. Maybe I can at least wait til January for the month long sales. Those are so great, I’m looking forward to them already.
I hope everyone is doing well and getting ready for the Thanksgiving holidays! Thanks, mom, for sending me stuff for pumpkin pie, it’s impossible to find here.
