Advertisement
Published: July 19th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Eva's father tending the Schwenker
Schwenker being a German BBQ... of course I knew that without Eva having to tell me at all. July 8th: Well that was an interesting night; on a top bunk with no safety-rail (and I'm a night roller) no mishaps though. But still an interesting night because I awoke to the sound of a guy rummaging around with some baggage (the rooms here don't lock) I saw that the cupboard where I'd stashed my little backpack containing all my meagre valuables was open! I leaned over the edge of the bed and saw the guy fossicking through what appeared to be the document wallet that Claire and Geoff had given me for my trip! So I yelled "Hey!" the guy looked up and politely said "oh excuse me" and took it around the corner to fossick some more. I got down and checked the cupboard... all my stuff was there... in the light of day and fully awake I'm guessing that what must have happened was that the guy's stuff was in the cupboard next door and he bumped my cupboard open getting at it... and he just happened to own a document wallet that was identical to mine... all the same I ended up sleeping with my backpack tucked under my pillow for the rest of that night.
Eva & Andreas
this photo was actually taken the next day but I've decided to move it forward since I did meet both of them on this day. Had a last wander around... if Glasgow has the market cornered on redheads, then Nuremberg is all about the blondes and the skinheads. Large groups of shaven headed guys around the place. There seem to be a lot of scenesters as well (emos, I guess we could call them) lots of crazy dyed hear and piercings all over the show.
My but these German trains are flash, the Nuremberg-Frankfurt one had a digital spedometer in each cabin. I watched as a car on the road kept pace with us at 160km/hr! Thus far the trains have been efficient, but the railway starion... every few metres along the inter-platform tunnel was a puddle of urine, meaning that the whole damned tunnel stunk with the fumes! Obviously I haven't seen much of Frankfurt from the station, but what I can see (plenty of woodland on the way to the station and large, modern, impressive skyscrapers) it seems quite nice, one to put on the "if I ever get back here " list.
Well of course after I praised the efficiency of the railway service they screwed up horribly by being late to Mannheim... well actually they were on time but then they stopped a few KM short and waited until they were late THEN rolled into the station! I missed my train to Kaiserslautern (connecting to Saarbrücken) but then it turns out that they are organised with contingencies and stuck me on a direct Mannheim-Saarbrücken train... not sure why I hadn't been put on one of those when I first booked the ticket though.
My friend Eva met me at the trian station... after trudging by myself (often while being watched by strange pickpockety looking men) from airports and train adn bus stations, with a big bag on my back (that just scraems TOURIST) to go and look for my crowded noisy hostel, I can not overemphasize hownice it is to have someone meet me on arrival, talk to me and say "we go this way" so that I can switch my brain off and just be led.
We drove out to Eva's parents' house where I met her parents, her brother & his girlfriend, Eva's boyfriend and one of his friends... there was the awkward part as I tried to work out how much English everyone spoke and at the same time I showed how embarassingly little German I can speak. I really wish I'd put a bit more work into learning German because I must have seemed a bit ignorant... still, with a combination of German, English adn the universal language of mime we got through the night well.
We had a german BBQ (schwenker) and everything was delicious; huge sausages, steaks, cherry tomatoes with spring oninos, potato wedges, lettuce and bread wth this great butter that seemed to have herbs and nuts and things (NB: I later learned that the crunchiness was from roasted onions, not nuts).
Eva, her boyfriend (Andreas), his friend and I headed out to an icecream parlour for spaghetti ice cream which (unfortunately or fortunately depending on your pasta/dairy preferences) does not actually contain any spaghetti. After this we enjoyed a pleasant evening with Eva's parents which involved a bit of holiday photo showing from both sides, some youtube clips of German singers and a heatlhy knoc of egg liqueur!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.121s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0893s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb