Adventures in Germany

When I was 8 years old, my grandparents took me out of the country for the first time on a trip they took with my aunt, uncle and cousin to visit good family friends of ours in Germany. There's a lot I don't remember about that trip, but we have maintained a close relationship with everybody in Germany, so I knew I wanted to go back this semester.

I left Thursday afternoon right after my Italian class finished to get to Termini, where I then took a train to the airport. I flew to Frankfurt, and oddly enough it was really hard to find a direct flight from Rome to Frankfurt, so I had to fly with a layover in Amsterdam. I arrived in Frankfurt a little after 10 pm and Leonie and her sister Melanie and Melanie's fiance Udo were there to pick me up! It was so exciting to be back in Germany. Of course Leonie was in the US this past summer, but I hadn't been to Germany since 2000!

We stayed the first night at Melanie and Udo's apartment in Frankfurt, which was a very welcome change from all of the hostels I've stayed in lately. Leonie is in a program for school where she takes classes in Mannheim and then works in Frankfurt, so she often stays with Melanie and Udo. They had to work the next morning, but Leonie and I slept a little later and had breakfast at the apartment (where I had my first taste of her mother's jam and German brown bread--yum!) and then took public transportation into the center of Frankfurt.

We started exploring in the neighborhood of the Romer, which is the city hall of Frankfurt. This was Friday--we mostly walked all over Frankfurt seeing a few churches, Paulskirche (the seat of the first German assembly), and Main Tower. Leonie also took me to a shop that sells gingerbread from Nuremberg, so I bought some of that to brin back to Rome with me! We also went to a chocolate cafe to get some hot chocolate, and then we did some shopping on the main shopping street in Frankfurt.

She introduced me to Primark, which I had seen in the UK but didn't visit. It's basically the store that I've been looking for in vain in Rome... it has everything from clothes to accessories to small home goods. It's basically Target without the food. We don't have anything like that in Rome... you have to shop in 10 different stores for 10 different things. I was basically obsessed with it.

We also walked by the European Central Bank. I'm still trying to understand how the Euro works and Leonie and I had an interesting conversation about Greece and how all of that has been playing out. She said that it's hard because Germany has tried to help, but Greece isn't very appreciative of the help and hasn't wanted to make any changes. She said that the euro is very convenient but I can see how it would be very frustrating for a company like Germany to have to keep supporting people who don't appreciate it.

That night, we went to a traditional Apfelwein restaurant. Frankfurt is famous for apfelwein, and you can drink it plain, with water or with Fanta. She helped me order some traditional German food (bratwurst, potatoes with green sauce, "handkas mit musik") and we both had the apfelwein with Fanta... it was so good! When I've traveled this semester, I've really tried to branch out and order things that are traditional and different than what I would eat in Rome or in the US, and that was definitely the case at this restaurant. The bratwurst was obviously amazing, but I can't really describe the green sauce or handkas. But I loved everything, including the apfelwein!

We just went back to the apartment that night and hung out with Melanie and Udo. They showed me pictures of their trip to the US this past fall and Udo showed me pictures of a school trip he took to Rome. We watched some German TV and Leonie and I made our plans for the next day. We planned to get up and go to the botanic gardens in Frankfurt and then do the Ebbelwein Express, a train sponsored by one of the apfelwein companies that goes all around Frankfurt. We got up the next morning and had breakfast with Udo (more brown bread--yum!), and we took the train into the city... and we were almost there when I realized that I had left my iPad at the apartment. Yup. And we were leaving for the train station straight from the Ebbelwein Express to go to Leonie's hometown, so I needed to have it with me because I would be going to the airport the next day. Oops. So we turned around and got it (I felt so stupid... at least I left it at their apartment and not in some hostel), but by that point we were worried that we would have to rush through the gardens, so we decided to go to the Goethe House instead. That was actually really cool. The original house was destroyed during WWII, but all of the furniture and artifacts had been placed in storage for protection, so when the house was reconstructed, they moved all of that back into it. They reconstructed it to look exactly like it had before. They even had Goethe's writing desk, where he sat to write Faust. Geek moment there.

After the Goethe House, Leonie took me to a German bakery where we tried some traditional German pastries as our lunch. We ate those while we waited for the apfelwein train. The train is an older version of the new trams that Frankfurt uses, and it was so cute! We got on and were given our choice of apfelwein beverages... we both tried the apfelwein with water this time. It took about an hour for the train to go all around the city and it was really relaxing.

After that, we went to the main train station in Frankfurt to take the train to Neustadt, where Leonie's dad picked us up and took us to Leonie's house in Momberg. We settled in for a bit and chatted with her parents over coffee and cake, and we Facetimed with Erik, then my dad and Ethan, and then my mom, Erin, and my grandma (who were shopping for prom dresses at the time!). That was so exciting because usually I can't get good enough wifi in Italy to facetime! And it was nice for Leonie to "see" everybody. While we were facetiming with my mom, grandma and Erin, Gerd and Helga walked in the door for dinner. When I was in Germany 13 years ago, I stayed with Gerd and Helga with my grandparents, so it was so cool for my grandma to get to see them through Facetime! Gerd and Helga came for dinner that night, and Leonie's mom made us an amazing dinner. She cooked schnitzel (SO GOOD) with potatoes, salad, more handkas mit musik and brown bread. Compared to my last few trips, it was nice to relax and catch up with good friends over some wonderful food (and of course we sampled some wonderful German beer to go along with it).

We slept in the next morning a bit, and Leonie's mother prepared an amazing breakfast for us, which included Bavarian white sausage. I can't really explain it, but it was so delicious. We also had some more of her strawberry jam with brown bread, and she gave me a jar of it to bring back to Rome with me! We spent a couple of hours walking around Neustadt and seeing all there is to see in Neustadt, and then we went to Gerd and Helga's house for some tea before Leonie and I got on the train back to Frankfurt so I could get to the airport.

I promised that I wouldn't wait 13 more years before I visited Germany again, and Leonie and I got on the train. We made it to the airport with plenty of time, but we had to share the train there with some very excited Frankfurt soccer fans who were on their way to the stadium. That was interesting. Once we got to the airport, we sat in the waiting area for a bit before I went through security. Minor mishap: Gerd and Helga had given me a large jar of Nutella (they remembered how much I had liked it when I visited before, which was before anybody in America had ever heard of it) and Leonie's mom had given me a jar of jam, and I was really hoping they would let me take those through security, but they wouldn't, so I ended up having to get out of line and check my suitcase for the flight back. Well worth it, I assure you... the jam is amazing! I still made it to my flight with plenty of time, but I had a layover in Paris, and my flight from Paris to Rome was delayed for about two hours for mechanical problems with the plane. The last time I was on a plane with mechanical problems, I ended up missing a trip to Madrid and spending two days in Washington D.C. (my family will laugh about that one), so I was worried that I was going to get stuck in Paris overnight. Luckily, I didn't, but by the time I made it to Rome it was almost midnight and the metro was closed, so I had to take a cab back to the residence.

One thing I thought about the entire weekend is how lucky I am that I know English as a first language. Leonie and I talked a little bit about this. Everywhere I've traveled, people use English as a universal language. If two people don't speak the same language, they revert to English because most likely that is a language that they have in common. It's the same at tourist attractions, airports, and public transportation... like in Frankfurt, everything was in German, but it was also repeated in English. It makes me ashamed because I don't speak any language as well as most of the people I've met speak English. Sure, I studied Spanish for four years and I'm learning a lot of Italian here, but if I had to make my way around a city using only directions spoken in Spanish or Italian, I would struggle a bit. I know enough of both to get around, but if I was forced to use only Spanish in a country that didn't speak English at all, I don't know what I would do. It amazed me when I see tourists in Rome speaking English to shop keepers or museum workers when clearly English isn't their first language. And it definitely motivates me to keep studying languages. Just a few thoughts on that...