Germany - Day 1
Well, I'm finally here in Germany, sitting in a decent hotel room in Karben, a northern suburb of Frankfurt.
We arrived this morning at 7:30 after a very lovely business-class flight from Detroit. The food was excellent; I had the crusted beef medallion. Unfortunately they didn't have the tasty shrimp cocktail this time. Also, after the champaign, sherry, several glasses of wine and amaretto, I can say that I've now felt the effects of alcohol for the first time, and they were entirely unpleasant--just some minor dizziness. They've expanded their selection of movies to include older classics such as Die Hard and Edward Scissorhands. I watched about half of The Commitments before I fell asleep. Interestingly, our flight bath took us directly over both London and Brussels. It's easy to tell you're not in the U.S. anymore, even just from the pattern of the lights in the middle of the night. It's a very refreshing feeling!
Upon arrival, we went through customs, which was amusingly easy. Scanned passport, said I was staying for 2 weeks, and went through. That was it! It took literally 20 seconds. They didn't even *look* at our bags, and after we went through baggage claim, we just walked straight out of the Nothing to Declare line into the terminal without so much as a second glance. I should have snook something more interesting in! Oh well. From there we went to budget to get our car. Unfortunately, "Audi A2 or Similar" really means "Opel Meriva". That's okay, though...it's a decent enough car, in spite of being made by GM, and if we did have the Audi, we wouldn't be allowed to take it into the Czech Republic. The only problem was that it took me about 10 minutes, finally having to resort to looking at the manual, to figure out how to shift the damn car into reverse! It simply requires you to pull up on the shifter to release it into R, but it proved rather difficult for me! Oh well. After driving around Frankfurt for a while, trying to get used to the roads and getting lost a couple times, we headed up to the hotel here in Karben. I think it's a bit of a hick town, as opposed to a quaint German country village, but that's okay--we're just staying here for one night. Part of the reason I got this one (aside from the low price and free parking) was the impression that they had free Wi-Fi. No go, I'm paying 9.50 for 2 hours! I'll not make this mistake again, I can probably just find a coffee shop for less than that.
After getting settled in the hotel, we went out looking for some medicine as I had a terrible headache and forgot to bring anything. I bought some 400-mg Ibuprofen for 4.95/20. Seems like an awful lot, and it didn't even make me feel better until I took a little nap. After our one-hour nap, I looked at my phone and realized we'd slept over 3 hours, and apparently shut the alarm on my phone off! I watched an episode of Voyager before venturing out for dinner. We wandered around a while, checking out some of the other small towns around here, and finally settled on a Chinese place in Bad Vibles that was really quite good. I had a crusted duck and curry chicken combination that was excellent, and Lisa had some decent chicken fried rice. By the time we were done, it was already after 9, so we just went back to the hotel as we were both feeling awfully exhausted. Now I am lying in bed typing this, along with watching Star Trek VI: Das Unentdeckte Land. You know, Klingons speaking (shouting) German really fits quite nicely! ("Zielen Sie diese Explosion und Feuer!") Anyway, I'm off to bed now. We're going to get up relatively early tomorrow and visit the Frankfurt Zoo, and see what else there is to see in Frankfurt. We may head down to Heidelberg and stay there for the night. I'll probably post again tomorrow, as I want to keep a better record of what I'm doing than the last time I came! Auf Wiedersehen...
We arrived this morning at 7:30 after a very lovely business-class flight from Detroit. The food was excellent; I had the crusted beef medallion. Unfortunately they didn't have the tasty shrimp cocktail this time. Also, after the champaign, sherry, several glasses of wine and amaretto, I can say that I've now felt the effects of alcohol for the first time, and they were entirely unpleasant--just some minor dizziness. They've expanded their selection of movies to include older classics such as Die Hard and Edward Scissorhands. I watched about half of The Commitments before I fell asleep. Interestingly, our flight bath took us directly over both London and Brussels. It's easy to tell you're not in the U.S. anymore, even just from the pattern of the lights in the middle of the night. It's a very refreshing feeling!
Upon arrival, we went through customs, which was amusingly easy. Scanned passport, said I was staying for 2 weeks, and went through. That was it! It took literally 20 seconds. They didn't even *look* at our bags, and after we went through baggage claim, we just walked straight out of the Nothing to Declare line into the terminal without so much as a second glance. I should have snook something more interesting in! Oh well. From there we went to budget to get our car. Unfortunately, "Audi A2 or Similar" really means "Opel Meriva". That's okay, though...it's a decent enough car, in spite of being made by GM, and if we did have the Audi, we wouldn't be allowed to take it into the Czech Republic. The only problem was that it took me about 10 minutes, finally having to resort to looking at the manual, to figure out how to shift the damn car into reverse! It simply requires you to pull up on the shifter to release it into R, but it proved rather difficult for me! Oh well. After driving around Frankfurt for a while, trying to get used to the roads and getting lost a couple times, we headed up to the hotel here in Karben. I think it's a bit of a hick town, as opposed to a quaint German country village, but that's okay--we're just staying here for one night. Part of the reason I got this one (aside from the low price and free parking) was the impression that they had free Wi-Fi. No go, I'm paying 9.50 for 2 hours! I'll not make this mistake again, I can probably just find a coffee shop for less than that.
After getting settled in the hotel, we went out looking for some medicine as I had a terrible headache and forgot to bring anything. I bought some 400-mg Ibuprofen for 4.95/20. Seems like an awful lot, and it didn't even make me feel better until I took a little nap. After our one-hour nap, I looked at my phone and realized we'd slept over 3 hours, and apparently shut the alarm on my phone off! I watched an episode of Voyager before venturing out for dinner. We wandered around a while, checking out some of the other small towns around here, and finally settled on a Chinese place in Bad Vibles that was really quite good. I had a crusted duck and curry chicken combination that was excellent, and Lisa had some decent chicken fried rice. By the time we were done, it was already after 9, so we just went back to the hotel as we were both feeling awfully exhausted. Now I am lying in bed typing this, along with watching Star Trek VI: Das Unentdeckte Land. You know, Klingons speaking (shouting) German really fits quite nicely! ("Zielen Sie diese Explosion und Feuer!") Anyway, I'm off to bed now. We're going to get up relatively early tomorrow and visit the Frankfurt Zoo, and see what else there is to see in Frankfurt. We may head down to Heidelberg and stay there for the night. I'll probably post again tomorrow, as I want to keep a better record of what I'm doing than the last time I came! Auf Wiedersehen...