Frankfurt + Family = Fantastic

My fall break was mostly dominate by my stay in a little town near Frankfurt, Germany where my Aunt, Uncle, and my three cousins live. The town is called Liederbach, and is only a short train ride into the main city. They were nice enough to entertain me for the week, even throughout their busy lives, and I am extremely appreciative for that.

My flight from Edinburgh went off without a hitch as I flew the lovely airline Luftansa into Frankfurt. Tell ya what, they know how to serve a guy. First a drink, then a sandwich, then coffee or tea. Man that hit the spot.The flight was smooth sailing with a nice landing and a one hour time difference from the cold UK. Unfortunately, Frankfurt was just as cold. But my Aunt picked me up at the airport as planned and all went well from then on. I got to see my twin cousins when I got in to Liederbach since they were up sort of late, which was wonderful. I had missed seeing them this summer when they came to Corning since I was in DC, so the reunion was nice. They are seriously just as tall as me at this point, which is scary since my little brother is currently a good deal taller than me in the first place.

Luckily for me, my Aunt had already scheduled a bunch of stuff for us to do that week, so I didn't have to worry about planning issues. The first day we were there my Aunt and I went on a walking tour of Frankfurt. Although my Aunt has lived there for a long time, she still didn't know a lot of history about the city, so she was excited to do this too. The greatest part about the walking tour was that it was conducted by an ex-GI who had been stationed in Frankfurt following WWII. He spoke in clear American English, which made it extremely easy to understand, ya know, verbally and all.

The walking tour was only supposed to take about 3 hours, but I think the guy liked us so much that he went over time just an insy-winsy bit. The guy did know loads about Frankfurt, most of which I remember but would only bore you going into detail without having pictures of the landmarks, but the tour actually ended up lasting 4.5 hours. Like to walk and talk much? But seriously, I really enjoyed the walking tour as well as the top notch German cuisine my Aunt treated me to afterwords. We went to a traditional German bar/restaurant where I ate "meatloaf" and apple wine. The German meatloaf is much different than the American kind, since it is truly a big piece of ham. Delish though. The apple wine could have mos def used some work though. Not my favorite German alcoholic beverage by far. The highlight for the rest of the day was seeing my little cousin Helen and having my Uncle come home from his work travels. Helen likes to act a little shy and reserved when she first sees people she hasn't seen in a while, but it was fairly obvious after about an hour she was happy to see me. The next day resulted in a lot of Helen trying to be center of attention as well(really cute the first day at least haha).

The next day was a lot of fun as well. My Aunt took Helen and I to an old Roman fort that dated back to the more glorious days of that empire. As many will recall, Rome conquered like everything in Europe, especially some of the old German tribes. This fort was built on a mountain and connected with other forts and walls to keep invading German tribes out. Apparently back in the day no matter how many people got taken over, everyone still didn't like it. I understand I guess, but from the like 200 wells within a really small fort area, I wouldn't have minded having to speak Latin for a while. The fort was really cool in terms of seeing some of the old Roman architecture, armor, tools, and other things, but I hate to admit that my Aunt and I came to the general conclusion that the Germans could put a little more effort into museums. It definitely seemed that the bare minimum was done at the site, and when we walked past different people working there, they seemed to give us a look of "I know that we work here, so we have to be here. But why are you here?" In other words, they didn't think the place was that cool.

I then spent the rest of the day hanging out with Helen and the family. Helen in particular because we went on a bike ride around the town. The Germans love the whole experiencing the outdoors thing, so it was just one taste of their culture. It really was nice not having to run around to do 20 million things for site seeing and just be able to have a generally relaxed evening. The next day I got up relatively early(in other words no too early) in order to take a nice walk through the German hills. We passed by some wildlife, talked about stuff going on, went up to an old church, went up really high and saw the whole area, and just generally had a good walk/hike. I still am not sure whether to call it either of those things. The Germans like to act as if something they are doing is not as big of a deal as it is, so I'm going to use the minimalist "walk."

Later in the day it got really nice outside, so I decided to go outside and run around with Helen, which was actually pretty fun. She comes up with quite the games to play in small spaces. Then I just waited for Michelle to come that night! Yeah! Her flight got in about the same time on Thursday night that mine got in Monday, so it turned out to be about the same general schedule at the airport. Anyway, this blog post is HUGE, so I will postpone the next post about Michelle's time in Frankfurt to another time.

Donke