Hey people, I am back! I am sure you’ve all stopped looking for me by now but I just got back to the states Wednesday and home yesterday. It was a very long time to be away and suffice to say, I am pretty sure I won’t be taking any long trips for a while! I am very behind on many things, though ahead on others; I have a TON of grading to do for online stuff (though I was able to keep up well during the trip) but I caught up on house stuff yesterday, since we woke early and got home around 9 am. In fact, we were able to talk to my parents for a bit before they headed home and then we took the kids out for a meal. Two weeks away was a long time! After the store and laundry, I worked on an area of the lawn and skimmed the pool while Ash and Isaac continued working on taking down our deck. (It’s a very low deck but falling apart so it’s time) My oldest came outside to help and he was like, “Wow, y’all have only been home 5 hours and you’re doing work?” Yeah, I’ve been on vacation for two weeks!

OK, so I’ll start recapping in this post then continue throughout the days as I have time. I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible, for the sake of keeping interest. So now, let us go all the way back to September 17th.

Ash and I took Isaac to school then went on to the airport to get the rental car. We booked a small sedan but they were out of everything but trucks so that’s what we drove to Atlanta. In Columbus we stopped for lunch and the first “bad” thing happened; many Euro airbnbs have you do this third party check in thing (we later found out this is an actual thing) but one wrong click accidentally compromised his credit card. Sigh. He was NOT happy. Luckily, I had mine and we had cash. We moved on to the airport and waited for our flight, which I believe left around 8 pm so we could get to Frankfurt the next morning, time-wise. The flight was nearly 9 hours and we had two middle seats; so, a sleeping guy on either of us. There was hardly any space and I felt cramped and panicky but managed to doze a couple times. By the time we landed, I was pretty done. We had to take the train from the airport so that was interesting, figuring all that out. The thing about their train stations though is how massive they are – and how much stuff they have!

We found our airbnb, which was luckily contact-less, and managed to get inside. It was hot there and the room didn’t have AC of course, so that kind of sucked. The first day and we were already irritated. We ended up walking back to the train station and sitting in a Paulaner bar, just drinking beer and eating train station bakery sandwiches, which, suffice to say, were AMAZING. They also have pretzels slathered with butter and they are like, 1.50. After, we walked to a craft brewery called Camben, which was more in the suburbs. Glad we did because we were staying in a very busy downtown area and thought it was all like that. Frankfurt is known for being very modern, since everything was ruined in the war and had to be rebuilt. Yeah, it shows. That was a pretty long day and once done at the one brewery, we headed back to sleep, though it was hot and noisy!

Day two had us seeking the church there, which is near a rebuilt area made to look old. We checked out the church and the surrounding areas, just walking and looking at things. We wanted some German food, though quickly found out the stuff we were looking for was mainly only found in the Bavaria region. We did find a place doing Oktoberfest specials. Our waiter was a younger guy who has family in New York so he was really chatty and nice. I got the leberkase, which is kind of like a Spam patty and they pair it with eggs and these rather tasteless potato balls. Our waiter convinced us to try a Frankfurt original, which consists of a very hard stinky cheese slathered in onions and onion infused oil. I eat a lot of foods but even I hated it. Ash of course did but that goes without saying. At least the waiter was nice and have us some insight; people apparently really dislike the Germans from Munich. They think they are too proud. Interesting! It’s kind of like how a lot of people from the South look at Yankees, I guess.

Anywho, after lunch, we found a bottle shop and grabbed a couple beers and waited for the adjoining bar to open. You can walk and drink beer in public in Germany so while we checked out that area of town, we just sampled some lagers. Once the bar was open, we tried what they had on draft and chatted with the bartender guys. It would appear that most young Germans speak very good English but confirmed that the older generations do not. We learned a lot from our young waiters that day and enjoyed some good beer. Frankfurt was definitely my least favorite city on the trip but we enjoyed it nevertheless. I am including some photos below and in the next post, we move onto Cologne (or Koln, in German.)