Well it has taken me a little longer to write the second installment of our trip to Frankfurt. It turns out I brought back a cold as well as the memories and pictures! I have been running a little slow the last couple of days.
One other thing before I get back to Frankfurt. If you follow my Facebook, or Twitter accounts, you may have seen this one. I had a very close brush with an accident today. It wasn’t mine, though. My German classes are held just outside downtown Zurich; so I take a train every day. Just as I step off the train, I hear a scream and turn my head. I just catch a blue blur fall in the space between the platform and the train. I realized very quickly what it was, so I immediately run towards the person. I was able to reach down and pull her up pretty quickly. The next few moments were spent trying to keep her from jumping back down to get her stuff off the train tracks. Finally someone that could speak German came up and she was able to convince the lady to not worry about the things. A few seconds later the train pulled away, and someone from the station came out to get the woman’s items off the track. So I have a PSA for today: Parents, do not let your kids ride their scooters on the train platforms. That is what happened. The ladies young son accidentally ran into her and knocked her down.
So back to Germany. We decided to take in the Art Museum, and go to the Zoo. The Stadel is having a VIncent Van Gogh Exhibit. Julie had seen a Van Gogh Exhibit when it was in Chicago, but she was willing to go again! She did make the comment the exhibit in Chicago was better. There were actually only a couple of his paintings that I recognized. Many of his really famous paintings must be in another exhibit somewhere. Unfortunately I was not able to get any pictures of Van Gogh’s works. There were security guards everywhere and they were very insistent about having people delete any picture taken. So instead I took some pictures of other artists whose work I enjoyed.
We spent a few hours touring the museum, and then walked to the zoo. Unfortunately, the Zoo was pretty disappointing. Many of the exhibits were closed, and even those that were open left a lot to be desired.
We then learned that the Frankfurt Train System is not as easy to decipher as many other cities we have visited. We wanted to take the train back to our hotel after the zoo, but wound up taking an Uber instead because even with Google Maps we couldn’t figure out the train system enough to get back!
For Dinner that evening Julie found a Hibachi restaurant. It wasn’t quite the show like many of the restaurants back in the states, but the food was fabulous, and the chef was very impressive. I also learned the Japanese make a very good Gin! We wound up ordering a 6 course dinner, so we were at the restaurant for a VERY long time.
After dinner was over we went for a walk around the area and came across this really neat European Union sign. Julie and I had a pretty good discussion if they would take one of the stars off when the UK left. 🙂
Monday we moved Julie to the hotel she would be staying in the rest of the week, and I came back home. I learned the German trains do not appear to work as well as the Swiss trains. On our way to Frankfurt, our train was canceled and we had to take a more round about way. The same thing happened on the way back, as well.
I am discovering I am able to decipher more and more German each day. When we went to Frankfurt we made one stop in Basel. As we were pulling through into Basel, the conductor made an announcement. I was able to decipher the message about the train ending at the the second Basel stop. However, I wasn’t 100 % sure so as the train was pulling into Basel I started to get off. I thought about it, and asked someone close by if there was another stop in Basel. It turns out there was. If I had gotten off the train there I still would have been in Germany, and then would have missed my train to Zurich. That would have made my 5 hour trip into a 9 or 10 hour trip! 🙂
So that was our weekend in Frankfurt. Saturday was by far the most exciting day, but we got to see and learn about another city, and that is one of the reasons we came on this adventure in the first place!
