Munich

We arrived in Munich on the 2nd without any problem after saying our goodbyes to and leaving Robyn to check-out of our Viennese hotel. We hauled our backpacks about a mile or so down the road to the hostel we had booked with. It was not the prettiest day outside, but at least it wasn't outright raining. The hostel was busy - as hostels usually seem to be - so we patiently waited our turn until we could check-in. By the time we got into our room at 4:00 PM we found it still hadn't been cleaned yet! I suppose there are just too many rooms for the cleaning staff to get to in a timely manner because by the time we got back from dinner a few hours later it was all taken care of. As for dinner, we had first planned on simply going tot he grocery store, but being Sunday no grocery store in a 50 mile radius was open it seemed. Do people not need to eat on Sunday? I guess I'm just set in my American, capitalist, consumer ways is all. So we ended up walking all the way back to the station (luckily without the backpacks this time) in what was now a steady drizzle to find some warm food. I think perhaps that if your hungry with nowhere to go, try the train station. After packing down a few sausages and fries we contentedly head back to the hotel to warm up and relax for the rest of the night.

The 3rd was a day of sight-seeing despite the still-cloudy skies and morning rain. We headed north to see the Glyptothek in the museum district first. It's a big columned archway/building that just looks pretty. The museums next to it are also built with that Roman-column look, so they were kind of pretty too. Next stop was an area (or perhaps just the building) called Residenz. The area around there was more impressive thant he Glyptothek with a huge monument, a big yellow church, a lovely garden area, and the Residenz building itself. It was also much more crowded over here - back at the museum district we saw barely five people. In one of the arcades we were lucky enough to come across a string trio playing some lovely classical classics. The first violinist of the group was really very good and would look around at the crowd with these ice blue eyes and a subtle smile. When she looked right at you it gave you a little shiver and made you want to look away. But she was really good! Difficult and quick passages seemed to effortlessly roll out of her fingers. I thought they deserved a donation so we gave them a bit of money. Yay for us! We did a good deed. Next stop was a market called Viktualienmarkt, but to get there we had to go through the center of the city. It's crowded through there! It reminded me of what I imagine New York is like (I have to just imagine, because I sadly have not actually been to New York). We saw a tall spire down one ally so checked outt he church it belonged to. It wasn't as old-world impressive as any of the other churches we've seen, but the height of the ceilings was immense and the bleeding, wounded Christs positioned around the place was interesting. Somewhat macabre, no? Viktualienmarkt, once we got there, was very cool. It's a great combination of fresh food and cooked food; fish and meat, veggies and fruits, dried fruits, big iced cookies, small and large decorations for the house or garden, plants, olives, vinegars, etc. I have to say, the marketplaces in Europe are pretty awesome, but always a bit pricey of course. We discovered here the one liter beer. It is a massive monster of a beer and so much fun to drink! It just feels so quintessentially German to hold that giant mug to your lips and dip your nose in the frothy head as you take that first swig. That was what we had been looking for in Germany! We only split the beer, which was a good idea because I'm pretty sure I would have been asleep had I drunk a whole liter on my own. Along with beer we tried a local favorite called Leberkase which is this sort of... spam-like slice of pork eaten on a bread roll. It's pretty good, with a texture to the meat that's just a tad odd to me. We also got a freshly baked pretzel, still hot fromt he ovent hat was very good. Oh, in this market area is a whole bunch of tables that you're free tos it at with your own food or market-bought food. And the place is so crowded that you're pretty much guaranteed to end up sitting at a table with perfect stangers. If you're lucky they'll talk to you, or you just sit next to eat other minding your own conversations. Either way it's pretty neat! It's not too common to fidn that sort of arrangement in the States, but in Europe we've run across it at a number of places. It's a good way to meet people as we discovered on our last day in the city. But after we had spent too much money on market food we walk to the park where Oktoberfest is held each year to see the Statue of Bavaria. The park was already being prepared for Oktoberfest and had a bunch of construction going on. A bunch of big buildings were being made and it looked like it would be home to a lot of beer drinking! The Statue of Bavaria, despite being surrounded by the unattractive scenes of construction work, was impressive. The best comparison would be to the Statue of Liberty, but not quite as big. You could even go inside the statue and climb to the top - for a fee of course. Always for a fee. We, of course, chose not to do this, finding the statue a cool enough sight. But we were very tired by now with sore feet and aching backs. Time to head back to the hotel and be lazy for the rest of the night.



Next day we woke up bright and early at 7:00 AM - we've been bad with staying up late and waking up between 9:00 and 10:00, so 7:00 was early for us! We headed tot he train station to try and get on the tour to Dachau. Dachau is a nearby concentration camp and one of the important ones from what the guide told us. Apparently Auschwitz was built with the same exact layout as Dachau and pretty much all of the brutal camp leaders spent some time training in Dachau. Dachau wasn't used as a death camp, though. I mean, 32,000 people died there, and they did have gas chambers, but they weren't used en-mass like at some other camps. I think it was actually the first camp to be built and became their prototype. And of course, terrible things happened there. So much brutality and inhumanity... But it was good? Or interesting? I can't think of quite the right word to describe it. It was something worth seeing though. On our tour was a family with two young children, one maybe 3 or 4, the other perhaps 6 years old. The younger one, a little girl, was firstly fascinated by all the pebbles that are used as ground cover for the place and I saw her picking up and pocketing pebbles she had decided were particularly nice a few times. It was cute. And there was a silent film showing scenes from the camp, mainly extrememly starved dead bodies staring blankly into space. She was on her fathers shoulders and not long into the video began asking "Are those people-" But was cut of by a "shhh" from her father before she could finish. I think she was going to ask if they were dead which is an odd thing to hear from a 4 years old's mouth. I hope Dad later talked to her about it a bit because I can only imagine the confusion that would be going on in her mind, especially since my 27 year old mind was shocked by what I was seeing. Later I heard another conversation between her and her mother as we were heading to see the gas chambers. The girl had figured out that people had gone into the chambers and breathed a bad gas that made them die, but she told her Mom in a matter of fact tone that "Well, they shouldn't have breathed." Mom told her that they had to breathe, they couldn't help but to breathe. So the little girl decided "Well, they should have breathed through their noses." It was very sweet and a bit disturbing and sad to hear this little girl's thoughts on how these people might have saved themselves, if only they had breathed through their noses. I thought it was good they brough their kids to see the camp, I just hope they made sure to have some conversations about it later. Here in Germany it's actually a school requirement that school kids see a concentration camp at some point. And the guide told us about the political situation at the time that the camp came about and I couldn't help but draw some scary parallels between their situation and our current one in America. It was definitely an enlightening visit. After we got back from the tour we took a break in teh hotel fro a few hours then headed back out again. This time we headed to the West side of the city to the Hirschgarten. It's an authentic beer garden and was really cool! It's set up like how I described that market area from the previous day, so there are a bunch of long tables set up in a big open area, some trees covering overhead here and there. We went to order a liter beer (we like the liter) and wee motioned around the side of the shack to pick out our beer mug. They had about three, six foot tall sets of shelves packed with clean beer mugs, and next to that was a big outdoor sink where you could rinse out your mugs to prepare for the next round. You get to clean your own beer mugs! So we managed to get our beer, and for some reason we also got a big of an evil from the keg-master... I hate it when we get the evil eye - but evil eyes are a fact of life I suppose. It didn't stop us from enjoying our crisp, tasty, cold beer. And as we were finishing up we noticed there was a fenced in area with about 10 deer just grazing peacefully not 3 feet from people sitting nearest the fence. Some had full heads of antlers as well as a few small babies. We left the Hirschgarten and headed north to Schloss Nymphenburg. It's a big castle comples similar to the Shonbrunn Park in Vienna. In fact, the layout and look of the building was almost exact. They had a very, very long garden out back with a long pond. We didn't want to walk anymore though, so didn't make it to the end. Instead we sat by a smaller pond, under a big trees whose drooping boughs completely enclosed us and fed crumbs to some cute ducks. There were two kinds of ducks and one was constantly giving dirty looks to and chasing after the other. There was a little baby too who just swam back and forth peeping over and over. He was cute.



The 5th was the day we checked out of our hotel. But since we were taking a night train to Paris we had a whole day to kill with no hotel to hang out in. We rented a big locker at the train station for €5 and went back to Viktualienmarkt. We got our favorite one liter beer, a huge pretzel, and searched for an empty seat in the very crowded sea of tables. We were very lucky in our seat choice because we ended up next to two very friendly older men who could only really speak to us in German. Manuel was the more outspoken of the two and just started a conversation that we could hardly understand, embellishing with hand signals. Chuck's German is actually pretty good and he understood more than double what I could, so he was the one to do most of the talking, then would turn to me and give me a quick overview. After a bit we figured out where everyone was from and turns out Manuel is actually Spanish and Emilio is Italian! And Manuel told us that Emilio plays the piano very, very well and sings like Frank Sinatra while Emilio sat back shaking his head "No, no" with an embarassed smile. Emilio even had a CD of him performing he showed us! I wish I could remember the full name on the CD, although I don't think I'd be able to find it anywhere - it was just a step above home-made. And they offered us some of their cheese to taste and when we liked it they insisted we take the last little chunk with us. I tried to object but Emilio literally forced it into my hand. And once Manuel realized Chuck also speaks a bit of Spanish as well he would talk to him in German and Spanish all mixed together. Chuck says it completely threw his mind for a loop. After a couple of hours we said our goodbyes and headed our separate ways, except that our separate ways ended up running into each other at the edge of the market. I think I may have inadvertantly been rude to them because they said something with the words "coffee" and "expensive" while pointing off down a street and I took it to mean that they were suggesting a nearby coffee shop to us. I made a face at the "expensive" part and shook my head no and we went our separate ways again after another quick goodbye. Chuck syas he thinks they were atually inviting us along with them for coffee! And I went and made a face at their invitation!! I hope they realize that I really wasn't trying to be rude - I just misunderstood what they were saying. Stupid language barrier. As we headed off this time we did not run into them again, but I did run into a fruit stand selling lychees. I didn't literally run into it... But I did buy a few lychees. We eventually ended up back at that Residenz park where we took a seat on the grass and watched people for a few hours. A quintet set up in the arcade near us and started playing: flute, piano (yes, they dragged a large piano into the arcade), violin, cello, and bass. We stayed there listening until the sun had moved far enough behind the building that we were getting chilly, then headed back to the train station. On the way we saw two more string groups, one of which was the same one we had seen on our first day out. That violinist with the piercing eyes. At the station we putzed around with nothing to do but wait. We still had about 10 hours until our train left so we were rather bored... I noticed that a lot of people would go from garbage can to garbage can collecting any bottles that had been thrown away. They didn't look homeless either. They then take the bottles to the bottle-return machine where they get a few cents per bottle. I don't know how much exactly per bottle, but no more than €0.10 I woudl think. That's not such a bad return I suppose. We ended up at Starbucks (located in the station) after a while, then moved on to Burger King where the internet was free. I overheard the conversation of a group of three people our age sitting behind us that was interesting. They were discussing love and relationships and marriage. The one girl seemed to basically have the fairy tale idea of love: it should last forever; if you love her you should marry her; you should always be happy in your relationship if you're in love; you can't control falling in love; etc. Only one of the two guys was really involved in the conversation and his views were more like: marriage doesn't equal love; sometimes you can be unhappy with your relationship but if you stick through it you may end up happy once again; you can control whether or not you fall in love by choosing to associate with, or not to associate with someone you're beginning to have feelings for. Anyways, I found their conversation an interesting one! After we left Burger King to wait on the train platform I realized I didn't have my sweater. After some thought and discussion we figured out that we left it in Starbucks on the window sill. They were, of course, closed by this point, so there was no way I was going to be getting my sweater back. I was actually a bit upset! I remember buying that thing at H&M in San Francisco when my Mom and sister came to visit. Robyn didn't really like it at the time but she wore it a few years later and liked it! It was a bit of a memory sweater is all. Ah well, au revoir my sweet little sweater! To Paris we go.



Some things I noticed in Munich are that people stare at you. Chuck has noticed this since we got to Europe, but I only really started to notice it in Munich. On a few occasions people would ride by on their bike and as they passed their head would turn full around to continue looking at us behind them. What the heck?? Why are they staring?? Do I have food on my face? Did I sit in wet paint? I don't get it. But they like to stare... And the grocery stores are closed on Sundays which makes things difficult if you didn't plan ahead. And you have to be careful about the type of bottled water you get! While our Dachau tur group was waiting to get on the train after the tour a woman pulled out a big bottle of water and opened it up to have it fizz out all over her and even a few people close to her. "Sorry, sorry," she yelled. "I thought it was still!" We've made that mistake a few times already - not the fizzing all over us part, but the getting the wrong water part. So we have to make sure we remember to look for the word "still" on the bottle. If the company wasn't kind enough to translate then shake the bottle up and if bubbles collect at the top for more than two seconds it's soda water. Soda water just isn't nearly as refreshing as still. And it's difficult to find cold drinks. You may get excited at finding a refrigerated section of drinks only to find that someone has neglected to plug the thing in. But over all, Munich was a pretty decent place.

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Berlin

First, I wanted to make sure people know basically how to use the image webpage I have all the pictures on. I know it's a bit busy, but I like it because of the mapping feature mainly. I like being able to store where I took a picture exactly! But for some reason they like to make their system complicated. So you're looking at my blog and you click on the big collection of pictures from the day you want to view *Click* This takes you to my other webpage where the pictures are stored. If you just want to look through all the pictures from that day then click on the very first picture *Click* To flip through the pictures use the BACK button - the one that points to the left. And not the big round ones on the right side of the page above the map, but the smaller square ones above the photo. For some reason the BACK button takes you forward through the photos. The round buttons above the map are used for looking at other peoples photos from the same area. And if you want a larger version of my picture, click on the image again and you can see the full size. Hope that helps people if they were getting confused or annoyed!

We spent three days in Berlin. The main train station is a pretty big place so it was a bit confusing just trying to find our way out of there, and then the walk to our hotel was really long. But we passed by the huge Berlin Victory Column and the green fields and trees of Tiergarten Park. And bathing in the gentle caress of the afternoon sun, on the green grass not far from the sidewalk was a naked man. A naked man, in the park, on the side of a busy road, in the middle of Berlin, buck naked. Crazy! We looked it up once we arrived at the hotel and discovered that parts of the park are designated as places you're allowed to lay around nude. Kinda cool actually. We were also harrassed on the way to the hotel by people who would just cme up to you and ask "Speak English?" We managed to avoid whatever schtick they were running by staring blankly at them as we passed by, but they were all over the city. One even had a baby breastfeeding and her shirt pulled allt he way up as she walked around asking "Speak English?" Once we finally made it to the hotel and got our roo I headed straight to the bathroom. I must have eaten something bad or gotten some sort of bug because I was in there frequently for the rest of the night! It was bound to happen some time! So we just went to the store to get some food for the evening and stayed in. Our room was on the 5th or 6th floor and looked out across the roofs and sides of other buildings. One of the places nearby was a tall Mercedes building. On the top was a gigantic Mercedes symbol that slowly spins round and round all day and all night. It also lights up at night and it's quite bright. The light shone perfectly into our room and as it spun the light would dim and then get bright again, dim, bright, dim, bright. I found the whole thing to be too amusing to actually be annoying. It didn't really bother us all that much.

The next day - the 22nd - we started the morning with food from one of the food stands that are set up outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church each day. We tried a curry worst, which seems to be a popular Berlin food. As far as I could tell it was a sausage sprinkled with curry powder. Sounds simple, but it's surprisingly tasty. We looked at the church as well, which is beautiful in its halfway fallen apart state. The inside is covered in gorgeous frescos (I think they're called frescos - maybe I should call them mosaics, I dunno) depicting religious scenes and seemingly important people. And what historicl site would be complete without a gift shop? So yes, there was a gift shop as well. Oh, and outside we saw a kid that looked just like Ron Weasly! Poor guy. Although I always thoght Ron was cute. But after the church we walked back to see the Victory Column we had passed by the day before. It's a huge thing - 66 meters tall - with a big gold angel at the top. Apparently it was made to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War back around the 1870's. Then Hitler had it moved from it's original location to where it is today which is probably a good thing because it's old home was destroyed during WWII. And then the French wanted to demolish the thing after the war was over because of Hitler moving it to some Nazi-significant spot, but the British and Americans talked them out of it. Wow, see all the info you can find on wikipedia? What a great site! Back to Berlin though - we also walked around the big park known as Tiergarten. We saw some more naked people, and wouldn't you know it they were all men. I'm not surprised as I saw a girl laying out in a bikini have her picture sureptitiously taken by some giggling city gardener. Ick. We rested in the hotel for a bit then headed out for dinner. We found a sort of "fast food" pasta place that was alright. Oh, we did some people watching that night out our hotel window. We saw everything from people having sex to people going to the bathroom for 20 minutes, all behind frosted glass and thin curtains. It certainly made me think twice about how much people can see when you think they can't...



We went to another food stand by the church for breakfast. I got what's called a boulette (basically a more flavorful hamburger patty) and Chuck got some rostbratwurst. I still haven't figured out what all these sausage names mean. We wandered down the street a bit and saw an interesting "wiggly" sculpture. Otherwise the morning was pretty boring. But at about 4:00 PM we headed out again this time to east Berlin. First stop was Checkpoint Charlie. Checkpoint Charlie is the most well known checkpoint that existed between East and West Germany. The little checkpoint building that's standing there today isn't the original one - I think that's in a museum now - but the replica is still pretty neat. I have to say though, that the plain Berlin wall is more profound than Checkpoint Charlie. Parts of the wall are still standing here and there, just plain, flat walls of concrete. We went to a section known as Berliner Mauer which, along with a simple monument still has a section of wall where both walls are standing. I guess some sectios of the Berlin Wall had a sort of "dead zone" as I like to call it - the area between two walls that you would have to survive running through to make it to the other side. Even today you can only see this "dead zone" through a crack in the wall. So the Berlin Wall was interesting. After that we went to Museum Island where a number of government museums are housed. It was Thursday night which is when government museums are free to the public - coincidence or Sarah's meticulous planning? Hmmm. So we saw a bit of the Altes Museum, but mainly spent our time in the Altes National Gallerie. We even saw a few Monets! Nothing I recognized though. As you might guess, it was an art museum, full of paintings by people I'd never heard of (besides Monet). I was never schooled in the art of art so I didn't have a great capacity for appreciation, but I did like looking at each piece as I went by. As we walked back to the tram station we got to take a look at the various museums. They're all beautiful buildings, one of the most beautiful and impressive being the Berliner Dom. It isn't actually a museum, but a church and a big one. Just a big beautiful church!



Our last day we had planned on going to the zoo, but it rained all morning unfortunately. By the time the rain had finished there wasn't much time left to the day. We decided to go out to one of the nearby restaurants for dinner instead. When we left the hotel it was looking a bit dark outside and after a bit of walking we realized the sky was a smoky red color. We joked about how Armegeddon was coming as it started to rain. It seemed people in the streets were walking with a bit more panick in their step. It would have been a great backdrop to some religious horror movie. After some frustrated searching and price-checking we ended up at a busy Italian place. The service wasn't as bad as usual, and the beers were big and cold. We commented to each other on the fact that it seems to only cold drink you can get in Europe is a beer. So it ended up being a nice evening despite all the rain!



We've noticed that people in Europe and even the UK tend to roll their own cigarettes a lot more than in the States. Actually, it's almost unheard of to see people rolling cigarettes in teh States I think. But I've seen quite a few people rolling up their tabbacco over here. On one of our train rides through Berlin we saw three teenaged kids splitting up some tabacco and rolling it up, then sitting around with unlit cigarttes hanging out of their mouths. I personally thought they looked pretty stupid, but they seemed to think it was cool. I think smoking in general is more prevalent over here, and in Germany and the Czech Republic smoking laws seem to be more lax than in the UK or the USA. Just an interesting difference we've noticed. And in Berlin there are all these two meter tall bears painted in bright colors with different pictures and designs. Apparently they're called Buddy Bears and were all painted by local artists back in 2002 or so. After being on display together they were auctioned off to businesses or whoever wanted them and the money went to help children in need and now these bears are set all about the city in front of whatever business bought it. They're kinda cool. I took a picture with them each time I found a new one.

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Frankfurt

The train ride from Amsterdam to Frankfurt was about 4.5 hours long on a fairly nice train. We ended up next to a few Americans at one point, and an older Dutch gentleman with his adorably beautiful, 15 month old, half Dominican little girl talked with us as well. When Chuck smiled at her she would get a big smile and hide shyly behind her hand. Cute little girl. Once we arrived in Frankfurt we walked 1.5 miles to our hotel and rested for a bit. It's definitely a lot hotter in Frankfurt than in was in Amsterdam! After cooling off we headed out to Römer Square - it's an old square that was mostly destroyed in WWII but has since been rebuilt. It's very traditional looking and has a bunch of little cafes and ice cream shops in it. We ended up getting a pizza from an Italian cafe. It was okay, but the service was once again not so great. Oh well.

On the 16th we got out of the hotel room by about noon and headed down to the south side of the river to find the "food district." It was a hot day and all the walking wasn't very exciting, especially when we didn't really find any street that could respectably be called a "food district." We did get a nice view of Frankfurt's skyline though. And we found a cherry tree, full of plump, red cherries! So after finding nothing on the south side we crossed back over the river on a bridge called the Eiserner Steg. It's a nice pedestrian bridge that is mentioned in Frankfurt's wikitravel page. I don't know if it's really anything special, but hey, it's a bridge. The bridge takes you right to the south side of that Römer Square place, so that's where we ended up. We were starving by now and zeroed in on this simple sausage stand as our lunch choice. It turned out to be great! They have various types of sausages that they serve with mustard, a bread roll, and a potato salad. Not American potato salad either - I don't know what the ingredients are but I think perhaps some vinegar and mustard. It was good stuff! We went back to the hotel and picked up a quarter of a watermelon from the supermarket next to where we were staying. We had fun eating that while standing over the bathtub. We weren't able to slice it up so we just took turns biting out big chunks. It was a messy process, with a whole lot of seeds, but well worth it! After a rest we headed out again, this time to Zeil Street on the northish side of town. It's lined with big brand named stores and tons of people. At the end it turns into a bunch of cafes and restaurants which is where we headed. After a lto of debate we ended up getting schweine schnitzel, pork on the bone, and some potato salad at a delicious smelling little place. We fed crumbs to the cute, tiny birds that seem to live alongside the pigeons in Frankfurt. And on the way back to the hotel after our wanderings we saw a ton of bunnies just munching grass in a park we cut through. They're so cute.



The next day I dragged Chuck to yet another botanic garden. This place was called Palmengarten. We had to walk two miles to get there which was rough. We ran into a rampaging T-rex along the way and narrowly avoided getting eaten! Or maybe it was just that we passed by the Natural History Museum and they had a big T-rex on their front lawn... And we got these big sandwiches along the way that were bursting with prosciutto, tomatoes, lettuce, and cheese. The Palmentgarten was a pretty good set of gardens. I was very happy that they had water lilies in bloom! I've been looking for them at each botanic place we've gone and finally found them at this place! In fact, there are water lilies in ponds around the city. They must be kind of common in Frankfurt. We also saw a greenhouse filled with cactus-y plants and another with tropical plants. They had a few large terrariums, one of which was filled with carnivorous plants and another with the kinds of plants that grow on other trees - maybe they're called air plants? Not sure of their name. They had a nice square with a fountain in the middle full of water lilies and at each corner of the square was a patch of different colored flowers. One corner was yellow and included Sunflowers of course, one corner was blue, one red, and the last white. It was nicely landscaped and designed! We also found a kiwi tree covered in unripe kiwis, a few pretty orchids, an outside cactus garden, and a bunch of other stuff that I don't know the names of. There was even a small lake with a waterfall, turtles, ducks, and big catfish. For a small fee you could take a rowboat out on the lake! By the time we were done and walked the two miles back to the hotel we were pretty exhausted and had hurting feet.


The 18th was my Birthday! Yay! So we decided to do a double-movie and dinner to celebrate. There's a theatre in Frankfurt that shows movies in the original language which was lucky for us. It's a crappy little place that costs way too much - €8, or $11 a person. But we forked out the cash and saw Bruno. I didn't think it was as witty or revealing of peoples true colors as Borat was, but I laughed a few times. Oh! I forgot about our walk to the theatre! On the way we came across a large crowd lining the road and wondered what was going on. It turned out to be a parade. In fact, it was a gay pride parade! There were a lot of men dressed up in heels and big Mardi-Gras-like dresses, and trucks full of people dancing and cheering for whatever organization they're with, and a group of people in these crazy balloon outfits, and loud music from each group. It was very cool! In fact I almost made us late for the movie hanging around taking pictures of the parade. But we made it to Bruno just in time and after the movie headed out to a place called Adolf Wagners. It was recommended to us by the guy at the front desk of our hotel as a good, traditional German place to go. We sat outside under the awning as it rained, and little bitty raindrops would slowly drip down in a bit of a mist on you. It was actually nice. We got the local drink: Apfelwein, or Applewine and I got Tafelspitz while Chuck got the Pork Knuckle. My Tafelspitz was good, but not as filling as Chuck's Pork Knuckle. In fact, a German family sat next to us (there are long wooden tables and people who aren't together will end up sitting next to each other at the table) all got the same thing Chuck did and they were laughing with us, commenting on how much food it was! Man it was good though! A big chuck of pork, still on the bone, cooked until the skin (which still had some visible hairs in it) was crunchy and crackly. And the fried potatoes that came with our meals were so good! And we didn't forget dessert: Apfelstreudel. Can you guess what that is? Yeah, apple streduel. It was a very good Birthday dinner. And after dinner we headed back to the movie theatre to see Harry Potter. The theatre room they were showing it in was that smallest I have ever seen... It was about the size of a large living room perhaps. I would say less than 100 people could fit in there. And there was even a faded silver curtain that opened up to reveal a 10 foot screen when the movie started. But, hey we got to see Harry Potter, that's all that matters! And on the walk back to the hotel we passed the continuing celebrations of whatever event had sponsored the earlier parade. There were lots of people having lots of fun. I have to wonder if Frankfurt is so happening every weekend.


The next day was very lazy. We managed to get out to eat some more of those sausages in Römer Square and then tried to find a shop to get food. Since it was Sunday just about everything was closed. However, the sex district was still going. That's where we ended up finding a convenience store and food. That was about it for the day...

The 20th was just as lazy. We even got those sausages in Römer Square again. They're good!


Frankfurt didn't have as much to do and see as we thought. When we first arrived it was very hot. By the second day a storm system had moved in and was dumping rain here and there, cooling it down a lot which was nice. Sometimes it can be very windy when walking through the tall city buildings. People tend to only cross the road when the green "walk" signal lights up. Chuck and I frequently found ourselves crossing alone while others just waited for the signal to change. Maybe they have hefty fines for crossing when the signal says "don't walk." Beer is cheap! It's about €1.60 a bottle, as opposed to €3.00 in most other places we've been so far. Traffic tends to stop for you when you're at a crosswalk with no signal. Chuck swears people look at you more. As in they have no problem meeting your gaze and continuing to look at you as you pass by them on the street. Just a curious gaze, not menacing. I haven't noticed this myself, but then again I tend to keep my head down and avoid eye contact. So there ya go! Those are some of my impressions of Frankfurt.

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