No more Nathan!

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This morning I woke up to a girl slamming her locker in my room, but I was kind of glad because it got me up early so I could tackle the day ahead of me (my time traveling is sadly now coming to a close). I went down to have a relaxing breakfast which also happened to be free; I ate slowly and was looking over my map of Frankfurt to get a plan of attack for the day when lo and behold Aussie Nathan sits down and joins me for breakfast. He had to eat quick in order to meet a tour he was planning on catching up with (thank goodness, I am glad he didn’t ask me if he could join me since he aids in me getting so lost!) After he left I finished up breakfast and then I was off!

I first stopped to get some water at the local Rewe grocery store and to my wonderment I found every Haribo candy ever made! (Ok, so not every kind but they had a good selection!) I bought 2 bags and made a mental note to make room so I could take as many as I could fit in my bag back home, and at .89 euro that’s a bargain!

I then went for a walk down the Mine River and noticed the spot that we were the night before (it took less than 10 minutes to get there, where on earth did we go the night before to get so lost?!) It was still bumping along the River with any German food and drink you could ever want, along with all sorts of activities! There was a mini bouncy park for kids and a mini soccer death match between 14 year old girls. It was a small arena maybe 15 meters long and less than 10 meters wide; there were 4 girls to a team and once the whistle blew it was on! Those young girls were hard core!

I then started to walk back across one of the bridges over the Mine River and as luck would have it I ran right into Aussie Nathan! (ahhhh! I thought I had gotten rid of you!). He was like a little lost puppy and said that the tour had left without him and could he join me on my walk around the city. How could I say no?! Although this time I had my secret weapon to ward off bad spirits (aka – getting lost) my map! So it couldn’t be too bad with Nathan around since I had my map . . . right? Wrong!

We start walking and made it to the zoo unexpectedly, I didn’t want to go in but it was cool to see a zoo almost right smack dab in the middle of the city! We then went to get some lunch which happened to be a sausage stand with all sorts of sausages being grilled on this giant bbq in the middle of the hut. We ordered our bratwursts and then I saw the container for mustard! I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I saw the biggest tub of mustard ever with a dispenser that looked like a cows teat. It was the strangest thing I have ever seen and it dispensed some serious amounts of mustard in one squeeze! After our epic lunch we tried to make it home and I felt like Nathan was literally trying to get us lost! I would stop and try to find us on a map and he would say “it just up over here” and then once we got “up there” it wouldn’t be that way. (Grrrrr) I finally was done with being nice and just stopped and looked at the map and didn’t listen to his “its just over here” line. I nicely told him that he was more than welcome to break off and do his own thing, but I was finding out exactly where we were. (No matter what I said I couldn’t shake this guy!) Which I did and then I kept my map out the entire way home (pegs me as such a tourist, but it was a very necessary thing to do in this situation). At one point Nathan tried to take us in the exact opposite direction of the hostel with one of his “it’s just over here” (I now cringe at this statement) and I blatantly showed him on the map that it was the opposite way to go! He was a little bit quieter after that.

After finally making it back to the hostel without accomplishing anything I had set out to do I was thoroughly exhausted from dealing with Nathan I went to take a nap, and slept for 3 hours! I was waking up when a Canadian girl had just checked into the room and asked where the nearest grocery store was and I offered to take her to the Rewe since I needed to get dinner stuff as well. We both got dinner items and then went back to the hostel to make dinner. Now, I can’t cook and was desperately looking for a microwave in the hostel kitchen to heat up my bag of veggies, but sadly there wasn’t one. I was going to have to actually use a pan and a stove! (If maps are my saving grace then stoves are my worst enemy).

I managed to crack out a pretty awesome dinner when it was all done! The Canadian girl was watching 007: Casino Royale in the common room, but it was hard to hear since there were other people playing pool and such. Once the other people left she went to turn it up and it was in German! She tried to get it in English, but no luck. I asked for a try and with the little German I knew I managed to get from the home screen to the languages screen and switch it to our Mother Tongue! (Yay for Rosetta Stone!) After dinner and the movie I went to be; one more day of solo travel before I meet Derrick, let’s live it up!
B

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