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Published: September 15th 2013
We arrived home last Thursday evening 12th September. We decided not to stay in Frankfurt but in a town about a 40 minute train trip from Frankfurt. Wiesbaden, the capital of Hesse is a hot springs town with no less than 26 hot springs. We spent the last 4 nights of our holiday here and did some limited sight seeing. We stayed in 2 hotels and they both had a pool sourced by hot springs water - very warm and supposedly containing beneficial minerals. We witnessed a demonstration and a march against the expansion of Frankfurt Airport. Mostly people living in areas over which the planes fly with associated noise pollution. I spoke to some marchers and they said that they are already subjected to noise from overhead planes and they do not want more air traffic over their homes which an expansion of the Airport would cause. I thought to myself that they were "pissing in the wind"! There is a casino here which is one of the oldest in Europe. It seems that hot springs and casinos often are located in the same town, for example Baden Baden. Blow your money on Black Jack and then soak in a
hot spring - who knows! Fjodor Dostoyevsky and Richard Wagner are among those who have put their luck to the test at the Casino. Dostoyevsky wrote his novel "The Gambler" based on his experience here apparently. This casino has some really lovely neo-classical design features and there is a beautiful park with ponds and ducks and old trees behind it. We also visited a beautiful Lutheran Church built in art nouveau style from 1908 to 1910. It was a welcome change from gothic, romanesque and baroque styles of most of the churches we visited. We visited this church on a Sunday and were lucky enough to arrive during an afternoon concert with a singer and accompanying flautists, cello and organ.
We took the train to Frankfurt Airport on the 11th September. I was ready to spend some euros at the duty free but surprisingly I found very few shops. There were the usual perfume and grog shops but the souvenirs in the other shops were crap. Plane from Frankfurt to Hong Kong took about 10 hours during which I caught up on some serious movie watching - no sleep! 4 hours in Hong Kong airport then another 9 hours
or so to Melbourne and some more movie watching. Think I slept about half an hour in all. Arrived in Melbourne at about 9.45pm. Cleared immigration and customs, grabbed our bags and managed to catch the last Gull bus service from the airport to Geelong at 10.20pm. Very impressed by our luck. One hour trip on the bus and we are back in our home town. Walked from the bus station to our house. This last blog entry, as you can tell, is uninspired. Feeling tired but happy with our 3 month adventure through Central and Northern Europe.
This blog: "Frankfurt to Marburg and beyond" has come to an end. We have a record of our travels and for those who read any of the blogs, I hope I did not ramble too much 😊
Regards - Litsa and Greg
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