Ausfahrt aus Straßburg, Einfahrt zum Frankfurt!

The last two days my father and I have been in Frankfurt, Germany.

But before that, (yesterday) we took a final drive from Strasbourg, France to Heilbronn, Germany to investigate the last part of my grandfather's war path.

So we had to say goodbye to our great hotel in Strasbourg, so I took a picture of the view from our window:

And I took some on the way out of Strasbourg to capture some of the sights from the car:

Alright so I didn't have much luck here getting the camera shot in between the cars, but I swear there was something interesting behind them.

Oh by the way, here's a picture of our Opel:

Getting across the border to Germany was surprisingly easy; there was no customs or stopping, just a congested traffic area around the Rhine Kraftwerk (Power station on the Rhine river.) But just like that, we were in Germany, and on the Autobahn (which is basically just a German car highway, typically with no posted speed limit. Bahn means pathway, or route in German, so a U Bahn is a subway, and the S Bahn is kind of like the Long Island Rail Road.)

Here's a couple pictures of Southern France and Germany that I took on the trip to Heilbronn:

Das Zimpsons:...

The whole countryside was beautiful. We went into Heilbronn, I grabbed a beer and an Eis shake (milk shake) and we bought two international phones with international SIM cards. We then headed back to Strasbourg to hop on a train that would take us to Frankfurt, Germany. When we dropped off the rental car, I snapped a few last shots of the city:

The train ride was a lot of fun, and I was able to start using some of my German to order drinks in the bar compartment, and say "Entschuldigen" to the many people I knocked into with my giant suitcase and stick bag for next week. During the last few stops to Frankfurt, we struck up a conversation with a hilarious and wonderfully nice young German couple who spoke fantastic English. We found that the Southwestern German people as a majority speak very good English (most of them learn the language starting at a very young age) and are usually rather happy to have a chance to practice it when an English-speaking tourist approaches them. However, I still wanted to sneak in some of my basic German vocab, knowing I could always fall back on English. 


This couple we met on the train got off at Frankfurt with us and continued to talk with us on the U-bahn to our stop near our hotel. When we got off at our stop, we were checking out the city map to try and find our hotel, when an older local Frankfurt woman approached us to see if we needed help finding anything. We showed her the address on our email from the hotel, and instead of just giving us directions, she walked us three streets to the hotel. I couldn't believe it. She assumedly was at the subway station to get on a train for her own travel needs, not help tourists find hotels. I've never met a local resident anywhere who was this hospitable. This was quite a proper introduction to Frankfurt; whether or not they would go as far as this woman did to be friendly to outsiders, they have all been kind and patient (and well-spoken in English) with our lack of knowledge of the city, country, and the language. 


So that night we checked into the hotel, and then got some traditional German food and beer (non-alcoholic of course for pops!) at the local restaurant, Paulaner:

The beer...amazing. Hands down best I've ever.... dreamed of having once I'm 21 in America.   :)

But here, "When in Frankfurt!"

Here's some pictures of the center of my favorite thus-far German city, Frankfurt (note that this trip will not include Berlin and Munich, which I hear are great.) :

And here's some of the very impressive graffiti in the area:

The second's my favorite.

Today, we woke up in our hotel, did some wash in the city, and while doing so met a nice German man who played guitar independently in restaurants around the city. We talked about music for a bit, and he name dropped some band favorites like Wilco, The Shins, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, etc... It really is cool to see how connected the world is that bands that people all over the US share the same interests, or at least exposure to the same (even less mainstream) music as people in Germany. It's a small world. (Cue music.)

So we headed back to the hotel afterwords to rest for a bit where I did some light reading:

Well done there, Gideons.

And then we went to a German movie theater and saw Salt in its original English version, which is viewed as a novelty at this particular theater; many Germans go see Hollywood movies in their original forms.

Salt was an alright movie, pretty standard spy stuff, but it was mostly nice to hear English for a long period of time.

After the movie, it was back to Deutsch, and especially so in this area of town, a (I think Bavarian styled) classic German architecture of town that was a big tourist attraction area:

It was very cool. We headed back to the hotel by walking along the River Main:

Frankfurt is yet another beautiful European area, but it's on to the next tomorrow as I have my first day at Nebojsa Zivkovic's summer Academy on the Rhine in Engers Germany! I'm very excited.

Well that concludes the first week of these zwei wochen in Europe. It's been wonderful so far, and I think my Dad and I have done alright here. I think we've traveled smart and neither one of us have screwed up to earn the title of this wonderful jewelry store in central Frankfurt:

I believe they've got a whole dinner for those guys these days...

Until I post again!

Much Love,

Tchüss


James

London and Strasbourg

So, like the genius traveler I am, I left my camera charger at my house in the States, and missed some photo ops for the last couple of days. So I decided to hold off on blogging and wait to find a charger so I could add some of these photos.

We arrived in London Tuesday night, and took a cab to our hotel. London was gorgeous. Obviously I was a little thrown off by the reverse driving directions, but I got used to it eventually. The cab driver was a pleasant English chap that was very informative of some good places to eat, buy goods, etc.

We stayed at the Haymarket Hotel in London, which is an unbelievable fancy hotel/restaurant right off of Piccadilly Circus. I managed to squeeze in a photo before I went to bed. Here's the bathroom (lavatory.)

It was incredible. Most powerful shower I've ever experienced. Remember that Seinfeld where Jerry's and Kramer's shower pressure was way too low? This was the opposite.

London is a beautiful and diverse city. You see all kinds of people around the Piccadilly circus area; it's very similar to New York City. I managed a couple pictures that night before my camera died:

The next day, Wednesday, we took the train from London to Gare du Nord in Paris, France. When we got to Paris, we took a cab to the other train station across town, Gare de l'Est. We ended up not being able to get on our preferred train and had to wait 5 hours in Paris. This was a bit tough. We found that our limited knowledge of French did not go too far. Parisians near our train station didn't like it if you didn't speak French. It seemed pointless to ask, "Parlez-vous d'anglais?" because most people answered, "No." The area of town was pleasant, however, and we were able to grab some food and drop off our bags alright. We even pulled off buying an international phone that took a little while to figure out how to charge the SIM card. The directions were all in French, as were the call-in messages, but with the help of some semi-English speaking clerks, we got it up and running.

We took our train to Strasbourg France, rented a nice Opel car, and checked into our hotel, Regent Petite France, in Le Petite France area of the city. Here's the place:

And here's some pictures of the area:

This morning, we headed to La Gare Centrale (Central Train Station) in Central Strasbourg to buy some tickets for our train tomorrow. We were pulling around a street to the main parking area, stopped a little quickly as the car ahead of us also hastily stepped on his brake, when BOOM. We were rear ended. We pulled off to the side of the street, as did the car who hit us. The man who got out was a French man in about his 30s in fully matching Adidas garb who started to get really emotional about the collision. I was trying to pick up some of the things he was shouting, with no luck. But either way, when you rear end someone in any country, Peugeot into Opel or Ford into Buick, you tend to get kind of upset with yourself. Especially when it turns out the car your driving is your fiancé's. And when the man whose car you just rear ended is not from your country and speaks almost none of your language, the situation lends itself into becoming a difficult one. Unfortunately, my father, this French man, and I found ourselves in this situation this morning. But surprisingly, it didn't take too long to fix. We went over to Avis, which was conveniently across the street, and they took care of anything. I really hope everything turns out for that French man; it was a pretty shitty situation to be in, and he had a really nice car. Thankfully, he can possibly tell his fiancé it was some stupid Americans who didn't even have the decency to pick up any French for just such a situation as this.

Our car was fine, and we continued driving on our way to the area my grandfather traveled in WW2.
Here is the very map from the Military company book that describes the whole journey:

We traveled through the countryside of the Alsace Lorraine area of France. This is a beautiful rural countryside that reminded us a lot of Western Upstate New York. There are kilometers upon kilometers of farmland that ends only at the foot of the beautiful Vosges Mountains. We traveled from Strasbourg to Schirmeck to Sarrebourg and back to Strasbourg. Here's basically our route:

It was an essential, but beautiful circle. We stopped only in Senones for a Stella Artois and Sarresbourg for a Heineken. (Diet Coke for Dad in both of course!)

I'm sad my camera wasn't working this whole time; the countryside was beautiful, and it would've been nice to show you guys. But wither way I shall have it tomorrow!

When we got back to Strausbourg, we had a wonderful dinner at a local French restaurant, where I used mein deutsch a bit to order and ask, "Wo ist das bat?" Look it up. :)

Strasbourg is gorgeous. As an American we encountered in the center of the city said, "This place is really a hidden gem." It really lacks a French or German identity because of border changes throughout the 20th century, so it has the flavor of both countries. We ventured down into the center of town and accidentally came upon a light show being cast upon a beautiful cathedral in town, set to classical music by the likes of Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Incredible. Some pictures:

We leave tomorrow to continue exploring the warpath of my grandfather, and get our first taste of Germany. Gotta start practicing my "Ein bier, bitte!"

Till then,

Tschüss.
James