Paris!

So, as part of the wife's work responsibilities, she took a trip to Paris for a week, and I made the cut as her "plus one." Ironically, the timing of this trip was such that our 24th anniversary fell during our trip - who woulda thunk it? Us spending our anniversary in Paris?!?

When she travels for work, she has to book her travel on her work card, while we booked my ticket on a personal card. Booking our tickets at different times introduces a complication, in that during the reservation process, you pick your seats... unless the system doesn't allow you to pick your seats, and just picks an available seat for you (which is what happened for both of our tickets). We checked with the train folks at the station before we left about sitting together, and they told us to talk to the people on the train. I asked one of the conductors on board about it, and he told me it wasn't a big deal, go ahead and sit with her. What he/we didn't take into account was that the seat I was occupying was probably reserved for someone else, and they wouldn't be happy to find me sitting in it. Cue us moving three times on the way there so that we could sit together, moving each time a new group boarded the train (at each of the three stops between Frankfurt & Paris).

Regardless, we got to Paris in the early afternoon hours on Sunday and checked into our hotel, resting and relaxing for a few minutes before finding our way around town.

Lets talk about the hotel for a moment (lots of "First World Problems" coming. Sorry!). Reading through this post, there are a few parts where I'm complaining a bit. I'm going to change the color of my whining, just move past the text that's colored red if you're not in the mood to listen to my bitching.

I know that Americans are a bit spoiled when it comes to some of the more modern amenities - we've been forced to get used to it while living in Europe, both in this tour and the last one. Most of y'all know (or can make an educated guess) how I feel about air conditioning. I've voluntarily placed myself firmly in the "pro" A/C camp for decades. Our hotel had A/C in our room, and the control allowed us to set the temp all the way down at 62 degrees, which, while a bit on the chilly side, would be quite refreshing after a long hot day touring in the sun. Well, it would have been refreshing if those numbers had anything to do with the actual temperature in the room. The only thing the thermostat seemed to actually do was show us the current temp in the room, at times climbing to a roasty-toasty 82 degrees, while completely ignoring any and all requests to turn our room into a refrigerator.

While I'm complaining about first world problems... we've stayed in 4 hotels while we've been in Europe, and I've noticed a trend: Europeans are convinced that shower curtains are unnecessary. In the post about our trip to The Hague, I wrote at length about the amazing shower there... in our hotels in Berlin, Stuttgart, and now Paris, there was no shower curtain. Berlin and Stuttgart both had stalls with half of the space enclosed, and the other half open. Our hotel in Paris had a nice deep soaker tub, with a two foot width of plexiglass attached at one end next to the handheld/rod mounted wand - nothing else. So, every night when I'd take a shower (in a vain attempt to rinse off the dried sweat from a day in 90+ degree heat), everything in the bathroom would end up wet, since there was nothing keeping the shower water in the "shower." As much as I loved the shower in The Hague, I hated this one just as much, if not more.

Evidently, water heaters work a little differently in Paris than they do in the states. In the states, a hotel has a water heater which heats up the water for the building. In Paris (or our hotel, at least), hot water is delivered by the imaginary hot water fairy, and (s)he was having a bad week while we were there. There was a sign on the bathroom counter telling us that there was a problem with the hot water, and the temperature would fluctuate between warm and hot, with no notice. Unfortunately, the temperature fluctuated like that even when I had the temp set quite cool (in a vain attempt to cool down and rinse off the dried sweat from a day in 90+ degree heat). Nice and cool, warmwarmhotHOTHOTHOT - ice cold!

I hated that shower.

Enough complaining about first world problems for now, but I reserve the right to circle back around whenever I feel like it.

So our hotel was right next to a mall - this seems to be an inadvertent theme with our travels.

The mall was weird. Rather than having individual stores, the vendors were basically open stalls. Clothing, jewelry, purses, perfume - most things that you'd find at a normal mall, just in stalls instead of individual stores. Only thing was, this was a high end mall. Think Rolex, Chanel, Prada, all those high end brands. Here's a pic to give y'all an idea:

We putzed around in there for a while, but shockingly enough weren't able to find anything we couldn't live without. We ventured up onto the roof and took what we believe to be our first selfie ever, with the Eiffel Tower off in the distance. (Spoiler alert - she made me take a bunch of selfies while we were there. If you want to see them, ask her really nicely, and maybe she'll post them on her Facebook account).

After we were done there, we took the metro over to the Eiffel Tower itself. We went through the security checkpoints at the bottom, then saw how long the lines were to buy tickets, and that we wouldn't even be able to go to the top, and just took a bunch of pics from the bottom. She made me take more selfies there too.

We really need to talk about their metro system at some point - warning, more "First World Problems" incoming. Remember the red text warning above?

The Paris Metro system is a thing of beauty... almost. They've got the whole metro thing figured out, from what I can tell. Subway stations on just about every corner, and you can get from one side of the city to another for less than two bucks. There were three main issues we encountered - I'll walk you through them.

1. The metro is quite popular. The weather outside was decidedly NOT delightful. I have smelled things now that I would really prefer not to smell again. That many people, jammed into that small a space, and since France evidently hasn't got the whole "Air Conditioning" thing figured out just yet... let's just say it was unpleasant at times. 
2. In other metro stations, there are only a couple of levels of tracks. In most metro systems (that I've ridden on), more than one subway line will service that track. For instance, if you're waiting for a "Blue" train, you might have to wait there while an "Orange" train stops first. Not in Paris. If there are 6 different lines that service a station, there are 6 individual platforms that you have to navigate to catch the right train. In some cases, the platforms seem to be stacked, and at times you'll have to walk through the platform area for one line to take 3 more sets of stairs to get to the line you're looking for.
3. Escalators. Most of the stations didn't have a lot of escalators. There might be one or two going into the top level, but by and large, you were hiking up and down endless sets of stairs to access the lower levels. We saw a couple of elevators, but they definitely weren't in every station, or even a good number of the stations we used. 

During the day, Rebecca went to work and I did random stuff around the room and neighborhood. Nothing noteworthy, so I'm not gonna bother sharing any of it. All the following stuff was in the afternoons and evenings, after Rebecca got back from work.

Tuesday evening we took the metro over and took pictures of Notre Dame from the outside. I'm not sure if the inside is open (or the progress on the restoration after the fire), the outside was mostly covered by scaffolding. I had a silly surprise for my wife... with us both being Texans (me by birth, and her as an honorary Texan - specifically because she did her part and added two more Texans to our family!), we're both barbecue junkies. I'd found a review of a barbecue place over here (that we haven't gone to yet), but I was poking around restaurants in Paris and found a place that had pretty good reviews. So, I picked that place - I told her before we went in that she could veto it if she wanted - and I've gotta tell ya, the barbecue was definitely edible. We both had the brisket, and while I'm not going to waste time comparing it to Texas 'cue, it was actually pretty good. Afterward, we metro'd back to the hotel.

Wednesday evening we went over to one of the boss's houses for dinner. This particular boss is one of the guys Rebecca worked with in Rome, we got to know him and his family pretty well, so we spent the evening catching up with him and his wife. The Paris office is over the Frankfurt office, so he's in her chain of command, but he and his wife are just cool people, and it was good to get to spend some time with them.

Thursday evening we got together with one of our friends from back in the day - he was actually my best man when we got married. We met up with them at a restaurant and had a great meal, then walked around for a couple of hours. He wanted to take us to see the original Moulin Rouge cabaret, so we walked from dinner down the hill in that direction. Evidently, the area the cabaret is in is the next block down from Paris' sex shop and strip club district, so that was entertaining. That night, we ended up taking a cab back to the hotel.

Friday I got tickets for the Louvre at 7:00 (it closes at 9:45 on Fridays). We metro'd down there and were able to enter the museum at 6:30. We got audio guides in English, but honestly... they were damn near worthless. It was difficult to figure out where we were, and almost impossible to figure out where we wanted to go, with no way to search and figure out where different types of art were. We ended up not being able to use them very well. We poked around a bit and found our way to the Mona Lisa; she's in a room with a huge line of tourists waiting for a chance to gawk at her. After struggling through the crowd to catch a glimpse of her, we decided to try and find another section of the museum that wasn't as crowded. The museum is massive, and spread across 3 buildings, five floors. We were looking for the section with Van Gogh and Picasso - you know, people we've heard of before... the fourth time we got lost and the third time we passed a specific exhibit, we threw in the towel. We kinda feel like we've checked the box; we got to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. Done. It just wasn't enjoyable after that.

Saturday the only thing on the list was the Arc de Triomphe. We took the metro there and walked around under it a bit. There was a line to go up, and I just wasn't feeling it, so we looked around for something else to do. We ended up taking the metro to the far side of town and walking around in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. We found a map and walked through to Jim Morrison's grave; there are lots of famous people buried there, but honestly, there were none that I absolutely had to see. We walked around for a while, admiring the grounds, then got lunch at a nearby restaurant. While we were eating, we were looking at other things to do, since our train didn't leave until 7ish. Becca found info about the Orsay museum online, so we metro'd over there. 

The Orsay deserves its own paragraph. What a wonderful experience! We got audio guides for this one too, and the difference between the guide at the Louvre and this one was like night and day. This one was so much more user friendly, and gave us the opportunity to get information that we wanted, rather than just randomly playing stuff when you were standing at a certain spot. The layout was very logical, and the locations of the art we wanted to see (Van Gogh, Picasso, etc.) were well identified and easy to find. I'd go to the Orsay again before I'd go back to the Louvre - it was just such a great experience!

We took a cab to our hotel to pick up our luggage, then rode the metro to the train station. This time on the train, we just sat in our assigned seats, even though we were in different cars - it just wasn't worth the hassle for me. We got home after midnight.

The past week has been... well, I can't say "uneventful," because there have been a couple of big developments, but honestly they're just big deals for us - I can't imagine that y'all care much, but I'll put them in here anyway. Our car is here. We'll be taking possession of it on Tuesday, and I think this will change our experience here quite a bit. I expect that we'll still take transit most of the time, since it's really convenient, but we'll have a lot more options.

Speaking of options, we hit a bit of a breaking point with my cell phone. My frustration bubbled over a few weeks back, and I just gave up. I haven't been able to get it working to call German numbers, and have been endlessly frustrated to be stuck without a reliable way to get in touch with Rebecca, and not being able to place local calls (to deal with getting insurance set up for the car, etc.). We finally broke down and just bought a phone locally for me to put my German SIM card in, and it's working! Now, the wife and I can call each other during the day, and I can actually use my phone while I'm out, which is a big change.

Anyway, that's all for now. Let one of us know if you've got any questions!

Big changes...

You all know the Shores family never does anything the normal way, right? Well, we're at it again.

The wife and I are at that stage in life where the kids are getting ready to move on, and most normal people in our situation would be working on being "Empty Nesters." Well, we're finally "Full Nesters."

Cori is (at this moment) over the coast of Newfoundland, on her way back home after a couple hour layover in Chicago. The parents have officially turned over control of the house to the kids, and flown the coop.

Cori is eager to get back to her life, her friends, her job, her schooling... and her cat. Palmer is planning on picking her up from the airport this evening... he'll have to leave a get together with all the folks from work, and the first test for the kids is whether he takes her straight home, or drags her back to the bowling alley (and the party). They both work at the same restaurant, so they know all the same people, but after flying 4500+ miles in 23 hours, I'm not sure she'll be up for socializing much.

Right now, the line is -4 on him dragging her back to the bowling alley, but circumstances might change those odds as the time approaches, so get your bets in now!

I'm in the process of planning trips to have "in the can," so at any point the wife can say "Let's take a long weekend," and I can present her with multiple options. I've got a couple of day trips planned, and 3 weekend trips planned thus far. I'll post about the trips as we take them, but feel free to send us your suggestions on where we should go.

A local trip, then a trip to The Hague!

Becca's boss was travelling, and his wife was going stir crazy, so we "planned" a trip with her to a neighboring town, as a little touristy jaunt (our version of "planning" just being repeatedly asking each other where we wanted to go until we just gave up and randomly picked). We ended up going to a little town a bit outside Frankfurt called Rüdesheim am Rhein, a cute little winemaking town. We wandered around for a couple of hours, had lunch, and took the train and bus back home. Becca's boss and his wife live in the same town as we do, so we ride the same buses, subways, and trams all the way home when we do touristy stuff together.

Speaking of Becca's boss's wife: I've noticed that she's made a few different appearances in the blog (and will undoubtedly make many future appearances), but she's a bit shy and would prefer to go by an alias rather than her real name. In the future, I shall refer to her as "K," short for "Karen". She's a delightful person, and should in no way be thought to have the stereotypical "Karen" personality, and her name isn't "Karen", but it amuses me to periodically harass her (by proxy) simply by referring to her with that letter. Honestly, she'll probably make me change it, but for now..... she's K.

And now, back to your normally scheduled blog post.

So Becca's job over here is actually to provide support for two offices, the office in Frankfurt and the one in The Hague, in The Netherlands. Both offices have a big inspection coming up, and she needed to visit the office in The Hague to go over all of the paperwork, so she timed it so that Cori and I could go as well.

We were looking at train tickets, and my frustration level was rising... there wasn't a direct train - all of them had connections, and some of the times were quite tight. The fewer connections, the higher the price. Taking all of that into account, I did some research, and found that there's a bus line that goes from here to there, with only one connection - a 45 minute layover. The return trip would be direct. The price was quite attractive (about a third of the cost), and only about 2 hours longer each way - that seemed like a fair tradeoff to me. I ran it by the boss, and she okayed it, so I booked it.

As our trip approached, I got an email from the bus company telling me that the bus from Frankfurt to Amsterdam was cancelled - they thankfully kept our ride from Amsterdam to The Hague though (the segment after our layover), for some odd reason.

I cancelled the whole trip there (keeping our return), and we went up to the train station one afternoon to just buy them from one of the kiosks up there - hoping that'd be simpler. It was... kinda. We ended up with tickets with short layovers. Ugh.

We took a bus and metro to the main train station Monday morning and got onto our train (and into our reserved seats) with no issues. For a couple of the connections, we had to run between trains, but we made it okay. We wandered the streets of The Hague until we found our hotel, and found out that because of Becca's status with Hilton, we'd been upgraded to a King Suite room - a big bedroom with a king size bed, and a second room (with its own bathroom) that they rolled a twin size into for Cori. Score!

I must share about our shower - it was a double shower, with a connecting area between them. Picture two standard sized stalls, with an additional two feet between them - so extra wide. Each end had one of the big rain type showerheads, and one of the handheld wands mounted on a vertical bar, so you could adjust the height and angle. The first night, I found that if I turned the rain head on in one end, and the handheld wand in the other, and positioned the wand just right, I could effectively get flooded from both directions at the same time, with different temperature water if I wanted. I want one of these showers - but I think they're only for rich people. I don't know if I rate one of these in real life.

During the day... I'd get up with Becca and we'd go down to breakfast in the attached restaurant (Cori told us that she'd rather sleep), then we'd go back upstairs and Becca would get ready and go to work. Different days, Cori and I would do different things... the only thing that was a requirement for me was the Escher museum, so Cori and I went there on Tuesday afternoon. The other days, we putzed around, sometimes went out and found stuff to eat, sometimes explored. When Becca got home, we'd figure out what we wanted to do for dinner; one night, we found a Japanese restaurant, one night an Italian restaurant.

One afternoon, Becca got off early, so we took a tram over to the beach (our hotel was about a 20 minute tram ride to the North Sea). We wandered along the boardwalk area for a couple of hours. There's a double-decker pier (with all of the normal beachy stores on it) that has a huge ferris wheel out at the end (with air-conditioned, enclosed cars). We took a ride on that, took a bunch of pics. Got dinner at a restaurant on the beach then walked around some more. Took a tram back to the hotel.

Let's talk about public transportation for a second. Sounds boring, but stay with me here. Public transportation over here is a lot more prevalent than in the states; cheap, easy, and convenient. For our trips in Germany, they've got a special running right now where you buy a ticket for €9, and you can ride any kind of public transport except the high speed rail for free. There's no scanning your ticket or showing it to the driver (or conductor) - it's basically on the honor system. At any point, they can ask to see it, but on all of our trips on local transport, we've only had to show them once (ironically, it was on the train back from Rüdesheim with K). If you don't have one and you get carded, it's a €60 fine - I don't know how the fines work, because I've always got my ticket with me. Hopefully, I'll get through the entire tour here without having to find out how the fines work.

The transit system in The Netherlands works in a similar fashion, but you can buy a ticket for a specific amount of time, with the default being 2 hours for €4. That's for single trips. If you live there, you can buy a card to use with money stored on it, where you scan your card when you get on the tram and it debits the card for the right amount of money. We bought timed tickets on the way there, then bought an additional set on the way back. On the tram on the way back, some transit officers got on board the tram and checked everyone's tickets, ending up at the back of the tram. The tram stopped, and more people got on, but one guy who got on had trouble getting his card to scan - evidently, he didn't have enough loaded on it for his trip. He glanced around the tram and saw the transit officers, so he beelined up to the front of the tram, planning on getting off on the next stop. I don't know what the officers saw, but they immediately followed him up there, and blocked him from getting off the tram. When we got off a few stops later, they were all still deep in conversation. I suspect that interaction didn't go well for him.

Friday morning, we got up, had breakfast, then headed out to catch our bus home at 10:40. The train/bus station was about a half hour walk from the hotel, so we meandered over there with enough time to get some food and drinks for the trip.

The bus left on time, but with a traffic jam outside of Düsseldorf and an accident about 20 miles outside of Frankfurt, we ended up being on the bus for around 10 hours. I actually didn't have any issues with taking the bus, while Becca and Cori weren't the biggest fans. I had downloaded some stuff to watch, so I was fine. The girls just stared out the window and time seemed to drag for them. We ended up having to wait for about a half hour for the bus home - I stopped at the store once we got to town and picked up some pizzas to throw in the oven for dinner.

So... that was our trip to The Hague. Becca will have to go back there occasionally, and I'll undoubtedly accompany her on some of her other trips there too, but we thought it'd be nice to give Cori an opportunity to visit there while she's in town.

Till next time!

Happy Fourth!

We wanted to take a long weekend for the Fourth, so we broke out the old laptop. Between Google maps, the Deutsche Bahn (train) site, and Trip Advisor, we threw a bunch of electronic darts at the screen, waffling back and forth between a few different options before settling on Stuttgart.

Cori and I took a bus down to Becca's office on Friday and met her when she got off work. We caught another bus to a metro station, and rode down to the main train station downtown. We rode the train around an hour and a half south. Our hotel was fairly close to the main train station, so we just walked over there. Our hotel was next door to a mall, so we walked to the food court for a quick dinner.

Next morning, we had tickets for the Mercedes-Benz museum, so we took the metro up to the nearest station and walked over. Very extensive museum, covering not just the history of the company, but delving into a lot of what was happening around the world at the same time.

Afterwards... well, one of the things I'd found in Stuttgart was the Schweine-Museum. Just by looking at the name of the place, you might think that it's a museum about pigs... you'd be right. I thought it would be a cutesy, folksy, fun place.

[NARRATOR] You'd be wrong. Dead wrong.

Everybody's got a friend who collects something, right? You may have that one friend who collects stuff with frogs on it, right? They really like frogs, maybe have a couple of frog figurines in a curio cabinet, and a couple of posters of frogs doing silly stuff, right? Everyone that they know knows that person likes frogs, so when you're out shopping and see something cute with a frog on it, you pick it up for them, right? I think that's how this pig museum started. One couple really liked pigs, so everyone they knew decided to get them more random crap with pigs on it.

However many years later, there's a pretty good sized 3 story building completely filled with all kinds of pig stuff, including a room devoted to pig porn. This place was pretty over the top, and I feel a little bad dragging the girls to go see it. Honestly, I feel a little bad dragging myself to go see it. Let's move on.

We made our way back to the rooms and rested for a while, then I packed up and took off for the mineral baths... basically a pool complex. Evidently, Stuttgart is known for its mineral water, and there were a few different facilities with swimming pools filled with the stuff. The one I went to had multiple different indoor/outdoor pools, at different temperatures, all the way from cold to cool to normal pool temp, all the way up to hot tubs. Really cool place, and I enjoyed paddling around for a couple of hours. Yes, everyone wore suits. There was a section where suits weren't allowed, but I didn't go in there. Evidently the saunas were in there, but I didn't go in to look around.

I went back and met up with the girls, they'd evidently walked around the downtown area. For dinner, Becca and I took the metro back over to the downtown area and found a restaurant; pretty good food, I took half a salad back for Cori.

Sunday morning we took the train up to the Porsche museum. This museum wasn't laid out as neatly as the Mercedes museum, and it seemed to focus specifically on the 911 and their racing program (whereas the Mercedes museum tried to put the history of the company more into context with what was happening around the world at the same time). It was still fun looking at the cars though.

Sunday afternoon we found a little museum right next to the hotel called the Museum of Illusions, and I dragged the girls in there as well. This one went a lot better than the pig museum though. It was rather small, but there were a lot of fun things packed in there, including an Ames Room; that's the room that's got weird dimensions, where people stand in two different corners and because of the distance from the viewer, they look to be of drastically different sizes.

Here, for your amusement, are a limited selection of photos from the museum:

Cori got big, huh?!?!?

I got better.

Me and my midget wife.

We wasted some time there and then found a restaurant nearby that was open.

Monday morning we took our time getting out of the rooms and checked out around 11:00, then wasted a couple of hours in the mall food court until our train was scheduled. Turned out the train was late by 40 minutes, but it didn't really matter much in the whole scheme of things.

Becca went to work today, then Becca's boss's wife and I met her downtown, and we went to the Green Sauce Festival. What's that? Glad you asked!

One of the things that Frankfurt is (evidently) well known for is something called "Green Sauce." Well known enough that it's recognized and protected by the EU. I'm not sure that there's a similar concept in the states, since you can get just about anything anywhere. I guess if barbecue were somehow certified by the government, and you could only get it in Texas (the true home of barbecue, as we all know). Anywhere else you went, you could call it whatever you wanted, but you couldn't call it "barbecue," because that name would be restricted to only brisket from Texas.

Anyway, Green Sauce is made of: parsley, chives, sorrel, chervil, borage, garden cress, and salad burnet, together with sour cream, oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, and hard boiled eggs. Think "Green Goddess," and you won't be far off. We've had Green Sauce at a couple of restaurants, served with schnitzel and/or boiled potatoes, served by itself with hard boiled eggs (literally just 4 halves of hard boiled eggs, sitting in a plate of Green Sauce)... we've got some in the fridge that we bought at the store, and we've had it with a few meals around the house - veggies, sausages, etc. Pretty good, but it's not barbecue sauce.

Anyway, that's what we've been up to lately... as always, feel free to let one of us know if I've brought up any burning questions for ya!

My first travels here... and my first death metal concert

So Cori's with us right now, and will be for a little while longer, before she goes home to get settled back in for her sophomore year of college. When we were planning the move, she was looking around for things to do and found that some of her favorite bands were scheduled to play in Berlin the second week that we'd be here. Once we landed, figuring out how to get tickets and get over there was really high on her list of priorities.

She and I left Tuesday morning, taking our normal bus down to a metro station, then metro-ing over to the main train station. We rode the train to downtown Berlin, then metro'd to the stop nearest our hotel. We checked into the hotel and relaxed for a couple of hours, then took the metro to the Wuldheide station and followed the throng to the outdoor amphitheater. The walk felt like close to a mile on the way there, but it was a nice walk on a cool summer evening through the woods. Really neat location for the venue. The theater is generally shaped like a horseshoe, with benches leading down to a large standing room only general admission section. I didn't feel like dealing with the crowds, and Cori was happy just being there, so we stood up on the pathway that encircled the venue. Over time, she pushed and wriggled her way up to the railing, so she was immediately behind the top bench; I moved back to the far side of the pathway (about 20-30 feet behind her), and just tried to stay out of everyone's way.

The opening band was one I'd never heard of, Mercyful Fate. They're a Danish death metal band that's evidently been around since the 80's. They didn't do anything for me... many, many moons ago, I listened to metal, so I didn't find the music offensive or intolerable, it was just a band that didn't do much for me. 

The second band was also one I'd never heard of, Volbeat. After the first band, I was truly expecting another metal band of some sort, especially taking into account the dress of the fans around. I was surprised that they were more of a rock band - they had a few harder songs, but I was quite impressed with them overall. Reminded me of a cross between a huge arena type rock band like Bon Jovi with someone a little harder, like Queensrÿche. 10/10 would see again.

After the show, we walked back to the metro with the rest of the throng - it didn't feel like a mile coming back, but it was still a ways. We rode it to our stop and went back to the hotel, eventually going to sleep.

Woke up the next morning with nothing on our plate until the concert. We had breakfast at the buffet downstairs - really impressive spread for a hotel breakfast. Hotels in Italy usually didn't offer breakfasts at all; if they did, it was croissants and juice. This one had normal breakfast foods - scrambled eggs, (real) bacon, pancakes, a waffle iron, all kinds of breads to toast, bunches of kinds of cereals... very good breakfast fare, all things considered.

I was looking around for things to do until the concert. I happened to think of the Berlin Wall, and was looking to see where it was, finding a map on a web site that was devoted to the wall. The map didn't have streets on it, more just the layout of the city, and where the wall ran through it. I knew where the hotel was, and was tracing the line of the wall on my phone - evidently, the wall was quite near our hotel, and I'd probably be able to go see it. I was standing outside while looking at the map, and while orienting myself, decided that the wall was probably in a specific direction... turns out, our hotel was on one side of a street (Muhlenstrasse), and the wall was immediately on the other side of that street. Standing out front of our hotel, I could literally see the wall from where I was standing. D'oh!

Later that day, I dragged Cori over there and took a couple of pics, then stopped in a tourist shop and bought one of those little shards of the wall... there's a Certificate of Authenticity on the back that says it's actually from the wall, but in truth it's probably just construction debris - as many of those little shards have been sold over the years, the wall would have had to be tens of thousands of miles long, I figure.

Growing up in the Cold War, the wall just occupies a weird place in my head - I can't really explain it. If you're in that same head space, you'll get it... if not, just chalk it up to me being a little odd, and we'll move on.

That night's concert was originally supposed to be at the same venue as the previous night, but it had been moved to the local arena... which just happened to be around the corner from our hotel. Yeah... total accident on my part, what with me picking the hotel and all, and knowing about the venue change before we booked everything. 

Since the concert was supposed to be at the other venue, all of the seats were GA. When we headed in (on the floor level), the lady checking tickets asked if we wanted to stand or sit. We chose to sit, so she sent us up the escalator to the concourse, where we could pick seats in the bowl (rather than standing the whole time). We ended up sitting in one of the corners, on an aisle, about 20 rows up from GA. Cori was glad that she had a straight sightline, and didn't have to stand the whole time.

There were three bands that night... the opening band was a rap metal band from Austin called Fire from the Gods. Rap metal wasn't a thing back when I was into metal. Honestly, didn't do much for me. Cori had only heard one of their songs, they did play that song, so she was happy.

Megadeth was the second band - one of two bands (at these concerts) that I'd heard of, and the only one with songs I was familiar with. They were my favorite this night - I've heard a lot of their music, but only really know two songs, and they played both of them. Never seen them live before, really enjoyed it. Cori had seen them with a friend in Nashville a few weeks before we headed over here, so she's got bragging rights over her friends.

Five Finger Death Punch was the third band, the headliner. I'd heard of them, but wasn't familiar with any of their music. The music was fine, the combination of the lighting and the volume had a weird effect on me, and I had to go out to the concourse, as I started feeling a little ill. I guess I'm getting a little old for this stuff. This was Cori's favorite act (I think... might be close between them and Volbeat, but I'll have to ask her for clarification if anyone really wants to know).

After the concert, we walked back over to the hotel (right across the street, remember?) and were in for the night.

The next day, we took our time getting up and out, and left the hotel around 10, for a 2:30 train. I've got the train app installed on my phone, and according to the app, the train was going to be very full, and they recommended that we get reserved seats. We didn't get reserved seats, and had to figure out how to find seats on the fly. We ended up finding available seats in the "quiet" section; there were entire train cars which were open, with 2 seats on each side - those are the normal seats. Then, there were train cars that were about half open seating, and about half with little glass enclosed rooms, with 6 seats inside, 2 rows of 3 (facing each other), with the aisle running along the side, rather than in the middle. I saw in the app that most of the seats that were available to be reserved were in the 3 wide sections, so we found two adjacent seats that weren't marked as being reserved in one of the little aquarium rooms. We rode the 4 hours in (mostly) silence back to Frankfurt, playing on our phones and reading most of the time.

Getting home from the train station was quite an adventure, when it was supposed to simply be the opposite of our trip in. 

We pulled into the main train station and went down to the subway to catch a train to the station where we'd get the bus. Got onto the subway... and it skipped our stop. We got off at the next stop, and rather than just getting onto a train headed in the opposite direction, we decided to walk - I wasn't sure why the train hadn't stopped, but I had no guarantee that a train in the other direction would stop there either. I was (and continue to be) positive that we were on the right train line, so there was some reason the train didn't stop.

Took a little while to walk to the station we needed to be at, where we would be able to catch the bus home. We got there, and saw that the next bus should be there in a few minutes. 

SPOILER ALERT: It didn't come in a few minutes.

We waited for 30 minutes for the bus - it never showed. We saw several trams go by, including the tram number that goes right in front of Becca's office. If we could just get to Becca's office, I know the bus goes right in front of there. So, we got onto a tram (which should travel the same main street as the bus).

As an aside, the tram area in front of Becca's office is under construction, so while buses can still drive in the normal lanes of traffic, the trams can't go up there. We had hoped to get closer to Becca's office, then jump off the tram and onto the bus that takes us to our town - from the station we got on at, that tram and our normal bus take the same main road all the way up to Becca's office.

ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT: It didn't take the same road that night.

The tram turned right and started going in a different direction. I immediately noticed, but thought it had been rerouted due to the construction. I looked at the map posted above the door and saw which direction it was going, and that it didn't look like it was going to end up in the right spot, so we got off. Not being close to a metro stop, we decided to walk back to the main road, where I knew the right bus should be. Took a while to walk back over there, but we eventually got back to the bus stop we'd turned right at. We checked the bus stop, and saw that our bus was supposed to come every 10 minutes. We waited there for 20 minutes, with me teaching Cori new curse words every few moments.

Finally gave up on waiting and flagged down a cab. He took us right to our front door... had to pay €25 rather than being able to use the bus passes we've been using the whole time we've been here, but we finally got home. Rather than the simple (and boring) train -> metro -> bus route, we'd used the much more adventurous train -> metro -> walk -> wait -> tram -> walk -> wait -> taxi route home instead.

When we got home, we were talking with Becca, and she was telling us about her day. She'd gone into the office, even though it was a German holiday. What German holiday? I have no idea, but as near as I can tell it's a special holiday where the bus drivers are off and random metro stations are closed, but the tram drivers have to work.

So... there's the big update I was promising. It was a big adventure for Cori and me, and now we've learned valuable stuff about the public transportation system: to wit, sometimes, it's better just to give up and take a cab, rather than dealing with all the BS.

The trials and tribulations of an American in a small town in Germany...

I don't know what I did in a previous life to piss off whomever's in charge of technology, but whatever it was, I'm sorry, and I promise to be a better person next time around. A warning: this post will be full of bitching and moaning - sorry 'bout it, I just need to vent. Just skip to the jump toward the bottom if you don't feel like listening to me whine.

More daily life...

Well, nothing groundbreaking has been happening here. Last couple of days... 

Thursday evening, Becca and I took a walk down through the town - I can't think of a way to describe it that doesn't sound trite. It's just a little old town of about 35,000 people. Normal, everyday stuff. Pharmacies, grocery stores, boutiques, dance studios... quite picturesque though. You'll just have to come and see it, because I can't take decent pictures; I accept my limitations.

Friday we had appointments at Becca's office to get our passes to the compound. Cori and I went to the store to get stuff for dinner before getting on the bus, then rode the bus home.

Becca got a ride home from her boss, and texted me while on the way, that he and his wife would like to take us out to dinner. The stuff that I'd gotten was for salads, so it'd keep. Cori didn't fell like "peopling" (her word), so she stayed at home while Becca and I went out. Went to a local Greek restaurant with them - I ended up have a really good salad anyway. Becca had a gyro plate (gyro meat, french fries, tzatziki sauce), I had a Greek farmer salad. One of the best salads I've had, but I honestly may have just been in the mood for salad.

Saturday, we decided to venture into Frankfurt proper, and do some good old-fashioned sightseeing. Frankfurt has a very well developed public transit station, linking several different kinds of transportation. There's the S-Bahn, which is for longer distance area transport - think taking the train in from the suburbs. There's the U-Bahn, which is the actual subway system itself. There are trams, for moving around (generally) within sections of the city, then there are standard city busses, which seem to run just about everywhere. There's a city bus that runs on the street in front of Becca's office which comes straight to our town, and drops us off at the end of our street, about three or four blocks from our apartment - that's the bus we've been riding when we've been coming back from Becca's office.

There's a station for the S-Bahn right behind our closest grocery store. Unfortunately, that line will be closing for a month (for construction) starting next week, but for yesterday, it worked fine. We took the it downtown... but the train broke down midway there. We had to exit the train and follow the throng of people to get onto another train. We ended up eventually getting off at the same stop that we were planning on getting off at, which was a big shopping center downtown.

The main reason we wanted to get off at that stop was to go the physical office of the transit system, so I could get some paper maps to study and familiarize myself with the system; alas, they're only open during the week. C'est la vie, huh? We walked through the streets to a little area called Römer, that needs a bit of explanation:

In WWII, Frankfurt was a big target for Allied bombing. When reconstructing the city after the war, the Germans made a conscious decision to modernize the city; as a result, the Frankfurt skyline is rather unique when compared to other European cities. There are more skyscrapers here, more taller buildings in general (as befits Europe's financial hub). As a nod to the city's rich history, they developed one section of town to look more like an older hamlet, with traditional style buildings.

While the area looks charming, when we walked through, to me it felt like "Euro Disney" - wall to wall tourists visiting wall to wall souvenir shops. Your mileage may vary though - we'll take you through there when you come visit, and you can give me your impression of it.

One of two interactions that I was quite proud of... I used to speak German quite well... way back in high school (over 30 years ago). I've used it minimally since then, honestly only when we vacationed in Bavaria while living in Rome, and even then, only a couple of times. Yesterday, I went to a tourist information booth, and was able to ask for a map of the transit system in German... the only screwup I made was that I technically used the wrong word for "map" - I used the word "mappen" rather than the word "karte." While both are grammatically correct, I believe "karte" would be the right word to use there. Regardless, the guy knew what I meant (he probably was fluent in English, and was just humoring me - but you can't take this away from me, dammit!). Frau Sanders (my German teacher my senior year) would be proud of me.... I hope.

We wandered around a bit more, and (purposefully) found a specific market, the Kleinemarkthalle. It's the biggest market in Frankfurt, with bakeries, and vegetable and meat vendors - that kind of stuff. Becca had seen it on a Rick Steves show. We decided to get a bite to eat there in one of the quieter restaurants. We sat down, and got menus. Becca and I decided what we wanted - Cori didn't want anything to eat (that's important in a minute). The lady came over to take our order, and I was able to order exactly what we wanted - two waters, a radler (beer/lemonade mix - don't knock it until you've tried it!), an appetizer for me, and an entrée for Becca. I had to explain to her in pidgin German that Cori didn't want anything to eat, since the number of people didn't add up with the number of things we were ordering. All went well, and I'm counting that as a win... now stop trying to take these away from me!

We were thinking of taking a tram to Becca's office and bussing home from there (like we'll do for a month, while our S-Bahn station is closed down), but we ended up wimping out and taking the S-Bahn home.

Didn't do much last night - used the salad ingredients from the previous day and everyone had salads for dinner. We had picked up what looked to be Italian dressing from the store, but it didn't have the normal Italian palate of herbs & seasonings. I can't identify it, it's edible, but not my favorite. Cori liked it, Becca used something called Grüne Soße ("green sauce" - the squiggly looking capital B is the German way to write two consecutive s's.). That's a Frankfurt specialty; it has to be made with certain ingredients, and every place has their own special green sauce. We picked up a container of it a few days ago, and we've had it on a few different types of veggies and meats that we've had.

Becca went for a walk with her boss and his wife this morning - I wimped out. She was gone for about two and a half hours, and came home all sweaty and sunburned. Glad I missed it!

So - that's about it... strange things are afoot next week, I might have an update before, but by the end of next week, I'll have a fun post for ya!