Hitting the countryside

It's a been a busy few days! Thursday involved walking around Frankfurt for about five hours, trying to organise train tickets and bike boxes and such things. It was enjoyable though – Frankfurt really is a beautiful city (though the industrial district would not earn that description). There was a constant drizzle, but it really wasn't that bad at all.

We ended up getting a really good deal on the tickets. I'd already paid around 60 euros for my tickets, but because Luke hadn't gotten around to buying his while we were in Australia, we ended up both having to buy new ones so that we could travel together. The price we were given at first was 230 euros for a sleeper train, which was a little (a lot!) higher than we wanted to pay, but I managed to arrange for us to take the train to Paris on Sunday and then leave for Madrid on Tuesday. For both of us, that was only 53 euros – less than what I had paid for one ticket!

More walking around took us to Globetrotter, a camping gear store, where I picked up some good winter gloves and a camel back style water carrier, while Luke bought a rack-pack to put on top of his back pannier rack. Those were the last things we needed, so we're fully kitted out now!

Very conveniently, there was a bike shop next door, where we were able to procure two cardboard boxes into which we'll stow our bikes on the train to Madrid.

With that sorted, it was just about dinner time, and we were both starving! For some reason, we decided that we had to have pizza – nothing else would do. We walked past every restaurant in the area, fruitlessly searching for somewhere that would give us what we craved. There were a few kebab places that do pizza, but they're invariably rubbish, so we passed them by. Finally, just as Luke was ready to give up and go back to the hostel, I found an Italian restaurant. Mouths watering, we went in and got a table. The service was pretty good, and the décor passable, but when our pizzas arrived, we both concluded that the food was pretty ordinary. The vegetarian pizza that I ordered had spinach and broccoli on it, which is a silly concept for a pizza, because of course they got burnt and went all mushy. It was filling, but to be honest, I would have preferred loading up at the supermarket and saved my 8 euros.

It's a typical problem in Germany I find. I can't really comment on the 'normal'/traditional dishes but vegetarian food is generally very hard to find and of poor quality. That's alright though, as I'm perfectly happy cooking for myself and fresh fruit and vegies are still quite easy to find, though not as easily procurable as in Australia.

We were both dead tired after that, especially me since I'd woken up at 4am again, but we still had to rebuild our bikes and take all the stuff out from our bulky clothes bags and put it into our panniers. It sounds a little crazy to try and do all that when we were tired (and ostensibly on holiday), but I'd contacted the people whose farm I'd stayed at last time I was in Germany and arranged to drop off our bike bags and unnecessary baggage the next day, so we really had a deadline.

Tired minds and tired bodies don't make reassembling a bike an easy process I discovered! It took me twice as long as I'd expected to put everything back on, and that was with the aid of the nice German guy, Artur, who although he didn't have any experience with bikes, was quite a mechanical genius. He even resolved an issue with Luke's chain that I thought we'd need to get sorted out at a bike shop:)

Eventually at 10:30, we were finished and slumped eagerly into our beds.
My traitorous jet lagged body clock woke me up at 4am again the next morning. It meant I was slightly sleep deprived, but at least it was a perfect time to go for a run next to the Main (the river that goes through Frankfurt). It's really nice running along the path there. Lots of beautiful buildings to look at and the river looks amazing in the early morning and evening.
After Luke woke up at a slightly more sensible time, we made the mad dash to the train station to catch our train at 7:38. It was still very dark then, and I missed one of the turns, but we got back on track and made it there with enough time to spare to eat a Pretzel (man I love those things) or two for breakfast.

The first two trains we caught were quite uneventful apart from Luke losing his jacket, but we had a bit of an interesting experience on the third train. As we were waiting to get on, I noticed this guy, probably in his early thirties, stumbling around the platform, obviously already drunk at 9am. For some reason, he decided to take most of his outer layers off, standing there in the chilly morning air in just his singlet. All up both his arms he had these massive welts, which at first I thought might've been needle marks, but then realised they were far too big for that. Apparently I wasn't the only one staring, because he noticed this young German guy looking and sidled up for a chat, eager to explain exactly how he had come by those wounds (perhaps he had taken off his clothes in order to justify such a discussion). For the next thirty minutes, he terrorised this guy, claiming to have been in the Turkish army before being shot 29 times, spouting conspiracy theories and generally throwing his weight around. Everyone in the train was trying to avoid eye contact, but he certainly had an audience. At one point he took a flick knife out of his pocket and made a 'cut throat' gesture at his victim, seemingly because he had refused to give his opinion on whether North Korea should invade South Korea. Later he went back to discussing his wounds, pressing on them firmly in order to draw out the 'dirty blood'. Several times during the trip he took a swig out of his vodka bottle and even lit up a cigarette, both obviously in contravention of the rules in place on German trains, but the driver was powerless to stop him.

Needless to say, I was very glad to get off. I can only imagine how frightening it would have been for the man who received the full brunt of the experience. I do feel sorry for the man – he had obviously sustained a lot of trauma; mentally as well as physically; but what he was doing was just unacceptable.

We found Sigrid (the mother of family Dietrich who I'd stayed with) waiting for us at the station and piled into the car with all of our stuff. It was really good to catch up again, especially with Opa Dietrich. After stowing our bags in their garage, Luke and I cooked lunch (Spaghetti with Lentil bolognese), which I enjoyed. It was great to have a nutritious meal – I've been eating junk for the last week!

Sigrid was in the middle of baking 'Plätzchen' – christmas cookies, which are given to visitors over the holiday season. We helped her cut out the shapes (they had about 50 different cookie cutters) and ice them. I even had a go at making a vegan batch. They were a bit too fragile, but they still tasted yum! For interest's sake (and so I can make them myself later:P), I'll write the recipe down here:

- 100g flour
- 100g sugar
- 2 tablespoons cocoa
- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon of ground cloves
- a little bit of some spice whose English name I don't know, and whose German name I don't remember:P
- Enough oil/nuttelex etc. to make a firm dough
- Perhaps some apple sauce to hold it together)

All of that gets mixed together and then rolled out in a dough, before being cut into a myriad of shapes.

The icing was simply a lot of icing sugar mixed with enough lemon juice to give it a fairly thin consistency.

It was really fun, and felt like an authentic German Christmas experience:)

We hung around until 7:30, having a good chat with Martin (the father) before he dropped us off at the train station again for the long ride home. He'd mentioned that the city of Calv puts on a big effort at Christmas time, with nearly every building draped with Christmas lights. Sure enough, when we went past on the train, we were greeted with a spectacular sight.

By the time we got to Frankfurt, Luke and I were both exhausted, and after seeing Luke fall into a deep sleep, I had to keep pinching myself to stay awake so that at least one of us would be conscious enough to remember to get off the train. It was a good thing too, because Luke did not wake up despite the loud announcement over the PA system, the several people who tripped over his foot as they went past, and even my shaking him:P