My Blue Heaven

Eine reise nach Frankfurt

10:43 am Tue, 21st June 2005

I had an awesome weekend in Frankfurt, Germany. It’s really nice there – the city is quite pretty. Its clean, smells nice, and has a really nice laidback feel to it – kinda reminds me of parts of Sydney at times. It’s quite modern too – with cool things like escalators that only run when the sensor detects someone approaching it, or the coolest toilet seat plastic covers that with just the touch of a button, AUTOMATICALLY rotate to give you a fresh covering to sit on!! I wish I had my camera! Those germans are really quite ingenious!

The weather was simply gorgeous while I was there. Really warm around 25 – 28 degs.. with blue skies and sunshine. Perfect summer holiday weather! On saturday I visited the main shopping mall and street markets in central frankfurt. I tried my first german Bratwurst (pronounced “bratvurst”) sausage. Very tasty! They’re also big on crepes there – with every other food stall selling either sausages or crepes. I had a cinamon sugar crepe, then later tried an apple sauce crepe.. both yummy. Sooo much better than the crappy crepes we get back in Sydney.. or London. These are BIG too.. and cheap! Next time I’m gonna try a nutella crepe…. coz for some reason… the germans really like their nutella!!! Hehe go figure? Anyway, the food there is quite good. Definitely cheaper and better quality than here in london. I also tried some german buttermilk from a stall in the street market. Very nice.. very filling. Chocolate flavoured of course!

They’re also really big on beer. And you can get alcohol anywhere – not just bars or pubs. They have street stalls at the street market selling vodka cocktails and different kinds of beers. They had a stall selling honey beer. And they have fruit beers. I’m not into beer, but my friend tells me the beer there tastes really different.

And these germans are rather liberal… not just with the alcohol but, err, s.e.x. They have this shop.. which is just on the main shopping mall.. selling all sorts of err.. s.e.x related goods. Books, dvds, toys, tools, blowup dolls etc etc. You get the picture. BUT its not a R18+ s.e.x store. It’s not hidden away with a discrete entrance like in Sydney. It’s a main line chain store.. just like a chemist or supermarket.. eg woolies, boots, soul patterson. And people just go in and browse like they would a clothing store. I went in and had a look around. It was interesting. We came across these funny figurines called Bad Taste Bears. They look a bit like those cute “MeToYou” bears.. but they’re posed in all sorts of… err bad taste… ways. Some are of a sexual nature… some are just funny.. and some are in rather bad taste.. but still amusing.

I’m glad I was with my friend, coz I couldn’t speak any german at all… except Guten Tag.. Guten Morgen.. danke.. and scheize. 😛 Now my vocab has expanded slightly to include “1” (ein), “2” (zwei) and “exactly” (genau). Not much of an achievement I know. But I find the gutteral throaty german speech really hard to pick up. Actually it was quite amusing.. we went to an italian resturant for dinner on Sat night, and the menu was in italian with german descriptions… and I found I could understand more of the italian menu items than I could the german descriptions. Just coz I’ve been to so many italian places to eat before. Hehe. But luckily, most germans also speak english.. and are quite happy to do so. The waiter at the restaurant even gave us (coz I obviously was a foreigner) a choice of a japanese or english menu. Hah now that is truly international. 🙂 On sunday we went to a sunday brunch buffet (they’re big on their sunday brunches there) at a local german pub/cafe.. and we ate for like 2 hours straight. I sooo must have gained a few kilos over there.

The main form of transport around frankfurt seems to be the bicycle. Apparently the germans are really quite environmentally concious. So they do all sorts of things to save electricity and reduce pollution and reduce waste/recycle. The bicycles rule the roads and the footpaths over there. You hear a *ding* of a bicycle bell behind you, and you get out of the way. And they basically can ignore traffic lights and everything. It’s a great way to see frankfurt, which is quite a small city. I went for a bike ride on Sunday, and that was just really nice. Esp on such a warm summery day. We road down to the river side, which was full of people out enjoying the sunshine.

Oh and I went on an autobahn!! On the way back to the airport, I was running late for my flight.. so had to catch a taxi for the last half of the journey. Now most autobahns don’t have a speed limit.. but this one did – 100km/h. Not that my taxi driver cared (or most germans I think). Maybe he sensed I was in a hurry, coz he was hurtling down at 160km/h!!!

Well turns out I didn’t need to hurry, coz my flight back ended up being an hour and half late (trouble at Heathrow…. fuel spillage on one of the runways). Grrrrrr. I didn’t get back into London till around 12:30am.. which meant no tube or trains. Which meant the night bus into town, and then another night bus out to clapham. Grrrrr. I didn’t get home till 3am. And had to go to work in the morning. Am feeling a bit better today though after a bit more sleep last night.

So… that was my weekend adventure. 🙂 Was awesome… I wanna see more of europe now! Methinks I’d like to see Italy next. Can’t wait to try their gelato… and italian food… mmmmm…. :D~

Oh and stupid me forgot to bring my camera. But my friend had a camera (digital SLR in fact) and took pics. So pics are coming… er… soonish.. hopefully..

Oh yeh, one last observation. The sun sets sooooo late here at the moment! We’re talking after 10pm sometime! It really doesn’t get dark until like 10:30pm… and then gets light again at 4am. Its pretty cool having so much daylight… but a bit decieving about how late it really is. So its like, crap is that the time!! But I’m really enjoying the ultra loooong days we have here. Esp with the balmy weather. 🙂

Current listening :: “(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave” – Joan Osbourne & The Funk Brothers

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