Sausages so spicy you need to show ID

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Months and months and months ago, (3 months ago) I agreed with my sister Jaimee that Nicola and I would go to Beerfest in Germany. Then the time flew and it was about a week before Beerfest and we didn’t have plane tickets. So we went online and realised that flying into Munich would cost us an arm and not one, but two legs. Thankfully we had a plan B. Nicola contacted her friend Nina who lives in Frankfurt and she was more than happy to put us up, so we booked a flight into there instead.

A week later we were at London’s Stansted airport and I was getting deep sweats and having flashbacks of almost missing my flight to Italy last year. Thankfully there were no such dramas this time around. (I forgot to mention that we had moved from Barrow to London during the past week and were dossing at Jaimee and Joel’s flat in Hammersmith - cheers guys).

Once we arrived into Frankfurt airport we trained into the city passing a richly coloured autumnal countryside on the way and met up with Nina. Nina and Nicola used to flat together in Taupo, NZ and hadn’t seen each other in donkey’s years so had a lot of gossip to catch up on. The tubes on a Friday are quite busy as the city shrinks from around 1.5 million down to 500,000 over the weekend as a lot of people live in the countryside. (I learnt a whole heap of facts like this from Nina, she was like our own travel guide, it was brilliant).

Nina has a great place that is quite central to the city. Once we dropped our bags off we went for a bit of a stroll and picked up some food for tea. We decided on home made pizzas and had it with Federweisser or "new wine", which isn't fully fermented and is quite sweet. The bizarre thing about it is that due to the rapid fermentation, it can’t be stored for long and should be consumed within a few days of purchase. As carbonic acid is constantly produced, the bottles can’t be sealed (they would rupture otherwise) and must be stored in an upright position. It is quite funny when you put a lid on it, as gas builds up and the lid flies into the air (read more about it here: Federweisser).

The following morning, well afternoon really (we all slept in until around midday) we walked into the city centre. Our first stop was to try currywurst, which are curried sausages. There was quite a queue as apparently they were the best ones in town. And they didn't disappoint, they were delicious. We only went for a grade 3 or 4 out of 10 on the spice scale. I was amazed when Nina told us that in order to purchase the hottest ones between grade 7 and 10 you had to provide ID to show you were over 18!

Next we went up a high rise which was 200 metres high and looked out over Frankfurt. It is a large financial city with loads of large banks and a stock exchange and has a clean, sterile feel; you hardly see any graffiti or rubbish. Yet it also has a lot of history and we walked passed where old roman bath houses have been unearthed.

After wandering around the inner city high rises we had tea and cake (probably the best cake I have ever had) and then checked out the main river - the River Main (see what I did there). Later on we stumbled across a restaurant tucked down a secret alleyway. Walking down the alleyway it felt as if we were going back in time. The restaurant had great character with old photos and ornaments on the walls and a darkish lighting (see the photos). I went for the traditional sauerkraut and pork knuckle, and washed it down with apple wine, delicious. By the time we had left we had polished off two jugs of apple wine and were told by the waitress that they were supposed to serve 10. Good practice for the coming days!

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