Week 4 - It's always Happy Hour in Germany

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This week started very differently to the rest. I was up at 4:30. Hadn't seen that hour in awhile and after becoming accustomed to getting up at whatever hour i felt sufficient it was tough. But i knew it was all for a good cause. Germany here i come!

Breif outline:

Monday 3/5 - Flew from Milan to Vienna then onto Frankfurt where i caught a couple of trains (It should have obnly been one but i will explain why later) to Mainz to meet Mark.
Tuesday 4/5 - Wasn't too much done this day as we had spent half the day out before going to bed however we did end up riding to Rudesheim along the Rhine which was pretty amazing
Wednesday 5/5 - Hired a van to drive to Stuttgart and do boys stuff like look at cars and go fast (POWER! jeremy clarkson quote). First drive on the Autobahn and i loved it!
Thursday 6/5 - First day without relatives on my trip and it just so happened that it was miserable so not all that much done. I saw the sights of Wiesbarden
Friday 7/5 - Picked up our Mercedes C Class that Mark Benton, Mark (Tubby) Taylor and I were going to do our road trip in. The weather was still miserable so tubby and i stayed in for most of the day but managed to complete a schnitzel for both Lunch and Dinner

The weekends activities will be completed in a separate blog just for our Swiss adventure.

Monday morning was evil i was supposed to be able to sleep into 5 but due to bad weather i was forced to leave early so that Vittorio could get back to work on time. First flight Milan to Vienna. Amazing scenery once we got below the clouds and could see the Austrian Alps. 1 hour wait in Vienna airport then off to Frankfurt. Had my first attractive flight attendant on this flight (Good on you Luftansa! It wasn't going to be the last time that we came in contact with Luftansa crew that day) After landing at Frankfurt International Mark had given me some rough details on how to get to Mainz but being in a foreign country and assuming no one spoke english i attempted to find the correct train to get there (Later I found out that most Germans actually speak English). But my navigational skills failed me slightly this day and i ended up heading in the right direction on the wrong train. Luckily i got off at the wrong station and realised my mistake and was able to get a train to Mainz HBF (Thats short for a very long German word that means 'Main Train Station'). Mark Then took me on a tour of Mainz and detailed some of its history before i crashed in my own room at the Hilton (Many thanks go out to the flight attendant that offered me her room. I have forgotten her name but i think that is OK i never actually met her). After this we had our first stein (unfortunately it didnt finish after just one). I tried my first bit of German delicacy schweinaxen (probably not spelt correctly but it is just a Pigs knuckle but im sure this puib was the size of a full grown bull). However i really cant complain about it because it was so good!

Mark thought that i should experience the nightlife of Mainz whilst he was there and so after dinner we moved onto Doctor Flotte's with V8 (mark's Captain) for another couple of steins then come midnight V8 decided he had had enough and left us to our own devices. Possibly a bad move! I still blame the constricted environment of Italy for all actions that night. But it was good fun. From the Irish bar doing karaoke to Mainz's own Scubar called Nightshift. It was here where we meet the luftansa crew that we befriended and Mark dropped the bomb 'I'm here on work i fly with Qantas'. How was i supposed to compete with that as lowly student. Luckily for me they only worked at Luftansa part-time and were students too so knew my plight. Come 5 the next morning we thought we were sufficiently inebriated and left walking home to the sunrise.

Tuesday was half gone by the time we had woken up and we decided to do a 30km ride along to the Rhein to Rudesheim. i was significantly amazed with some of the old buildings and lack of planning used in all the streets of the medieval towns. Roads were not straight for any longer than 20 metres. We stopped in a small village to taste some local cheeses and purchased our favourite with some amazing bread and went to on our way to eat it on the banks of the Rhein. Once getting to Rudesheim we caught a cable car lift to the top of a mountain to a monument that explained it as 'Flipping the bird to France'. It was the furtherest point that the French had invaded Germany under Napolean. We had got to the able car too late and they were closed so we had to walk down the mountain. It was a surreal experience walking through somebody's vineyard in between each row.

Today we hired a VW Transporter (it was either that or a Smart car) for our trip to Stuttgart. Jumping into the van was a little frightening as i found that it was a manual and with my limited manual experience i thought it may have been a little tough getting around the city. After about 10 stalls we left the hire car shop. We got the van to 178km/hr (i'm giving her all she's got) was used many a time driving down the autobahn. Once in Stuttgart we went to the Porsche and Mercedes Museums and had a very much 'Boys day'. (Dad its almost worth the trip to Germany just to see them). That night Mark flew to singapore and i was left to my own devices. I had found a cheap room in Wiesbarden Nordenstadt which i thought was going to be a suburb of Wiesbarden and it was. However it was about 15 km out of town.

Thursday I spent doing the touristy thing and roaming the streets of wiesbarden the state capital of the Mainz and Frankfurt area. It was a pretty interesting city but when the weather became miserable all I wanted to do was go inside and get warm (and find some wifi to "borrow").

Friday it was time to pick up our Merc (once again it was a manual but my crash course had put me in good stead). The plan was to pick Tubby up from the Mainz HBF (the only problem was that I had to find it). I had sort of forgotten at one point in the middle of the city that they drive on the opposite side of the road in Europe. Once I had turned down the road I had realised my mistake. The arrows on the road were pointing towards me and I couldn't get out of the lane as I was blocked in by kerbs. After being yelled at by some random German guy I found tubby then got lost driving around Mainz trying to get back to the hotel. Finally we got to the hotel and the double schnitzel challenge began.

Hope you enjoyed the first part of my trip with Mark,

Next is our Swiss adventure

Nick

PS Mark's addition to this blog is still to come. The aim was for it to be written in a pub on the back of a coaster but Shane kept coming out and that occupied too much of his time!

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