Day 56: Frankfurt

(This is for Wednesday 22 October)

After waking up, we found out the pound and the Euro dropped immensely, of course one day after I withdrew what I hoped to be all the money I'd need for Frankfurt and Barcelona. Kind of funny timing though, since the European Central Bank is located in Frankfurt.

Anyway, we decided to head to Römerberg, the old central square of Frankfurt. On the way we passed by the aforementioned ECB, where the Euro was proudly displayed.

From Fall Break - Frankfurt

Römerberg was so pretty and had the feel of your classic old German city.



I forgot to mention earlier, but I had some fun over break attempting to pronounce words in different languages... this was especially great in Norway, where I had no idea how to even begin saying most of the words. In Germany I tried to hone my harsh German accent to no avail. I am pretty hopeless when it comes to any kind of accent, and when you add the factor of doing it in another language, I sound like a distorted guitar in human form.

After a bit of time exploring around the square, I met up with my friend Linda, who I'd worked with back home in Minneapolis a while ago. She's been living in Germany for I believe almost a year now, so it was great to see someone who could translate for me and who knew more about the area. We walked around for a while and ended up at the history museum, which was much more interesting with a translator because there was very little English anywhere.



I'll admit, I wasn't especially looking forward to Frankfurt but ended up having a great time with my expectations greatly exceeded. The Main River was actually pretty to walk along, and the skyline of Frankfurt seemed more familiar and American than other European cities. There's something about having a body of water or main natural feature in a city that I like... I guess that would explain the places I've lived so far: Minneapolis - Mississippi, Notre Dame - the lakes, Denver - mountains, London - Thames. Oh, and though I haven't lived there, Chicago has Lake Michigan, which I love. I think it might be partially a navigational thing (I always orient myself in relation to these features), but also partially a water/nature thing. Bodies of water just have this clearing effect on the mind, where your thoughts can just catch the breeze and head out with the current or among the clouds. I think most people who've experienced living in a city like that would agree, and I personally can only imagine the somewhat cluttered feeling a city without a river or anything might be like. Heck, even South Bend has a river.

Anyway, after the history museum we headed toward some of the apple wine area. Linda explained how apple wine is pretty big in certain regions, so we found a cute restaurant for an authentic German meal. I had bratwurst and sauerkraut and tried some of the apple wine as well. I'm pretty sure German food is my least favorite of the places we've been so far, but the apple fritter type dessert was still amazing.



Linda left soon after dinner, and I met up with the group again and later headed back to the hostel again. Our flight to Barcelona was actually in the middle of the night, so we hung out in the common space/bar of the hostel. It was pretty fun, too; they had a guitar hanging on the wall and a piano off to the side, so one of the guys in the group and I ended up jamming, him on guitar and myself on piano. I've definitely become a lot more comfortable with piano than I used to be, perhaps even more than guitar. After the jam session, we exchanged travel stories with other people in the hostel long enough for us to kill time before heading out to our bus for the airport.