Day 29- To Germany!

We almost missed our first train ... And to think we thought we were finally getting a hang of the systems here. Between traffic on the bus ride to the main big train station, and poor planning on looking up the bus schedule, we almost missed the train that we booked well in advance, remember the ones we pissed off the man at the train station for?  If we missed this train we would have had no way to get back to our apartment due to leaving our keys there.

Thankfully, almost doing isn't doing, so we luckily made our train. Thank God.

We had a 9-hour trip and 2 transfers ahead of us.

Jill and I played more card games and read our books that have been sitting in our bags untouched the whole trip. Small catnaps were necessary. Although uncomfortable our first train was pretty relaxing. We were able to catch an earlier second leg of our journey, so lunch got cut out of our day, no big deal we brought some chocolate bars, yum!

On our last train Jill and I started to get very excited for our arrival to Germany. Everything had gone as planned, we made it to our last transfer on time and in one piece. We placed our bags on an empty single seat on the very empty train and took our place (unreserved) right next to them. A few stops later a couple got into the train mumbled something in German to us and then started to move our bags. Jill and I were so confused what the heck is going on? There's about 300 open seats stop touching our stuff. Jill stood up and moved our bags stacked up next to us and covering the aisle now we look like the jerks. The couple argued about who should take the seat. The man took it and the woman stood next to him, instead of taking one of the few hundred free seats, remember there are no reservations on the train. I got really mad. I pulled a Mr. Kevin Beebe put my suitcase directly behind their chair as stood there arms folded staring at them. I think they got the idea because they ended up sitting together in the seat I front of them, and we placed our bags back in a normal spot. In not sure what came over me, but I don't think they will touch an Americans bags again.

Staring down the locals.

We are going to Frankfurt Germany to visit Kevin and my new sister-in-law, Kelly's, good friends Thea and Dieter. They offered to have us over and give us a spot to crash. Dieter picked us up at the train station as Thea still had work. He informed us that the plan for the day was to go to Thea's parents and have a barbecue, then head to their apartment before we went out for the night. We took the Audubon to the house, which would have been much more thrilling I'm sure If we weren't sitting in traffic. As we drove through the little city of Giesen it became obvious that we had crossed the border into Germany. The city buildings all had cottage esk facades with flowers at the bottom of every window and cobble stone roads it was precious.

Street in Gisen

Jill and I were starving by the time we arrived, but it was more then worth it as we were served fresh picked sweet wild strawberries with steak that Dieter brought back from the US and delicious side dishes. We had died and gone to heaven, it was the most well needed, deserved and anticipated meal yet, and every bite was mouthwatering.

We finished dinner and went to a local bar that Thea's friend works at to have a drink with Thea before she had to go in for the night. We tried a local specialty called apple wine, which was absolutely delicious and then had real German beer and real sized German mugs. A whole liter! Tankfully it tasted good really good. An executive decision was made that we would not be returning to the apartment until the night was over, and that we had to go visit some of dieters’ favorite bars. At the next bar we played thunder strike, which is a dangerous game to play, trust me, and then went to meet up with a friend of dieters at a roof top bar in the middle of the city. The bar was closing when we arrived but the friend, Ali, let us go up and have a few drinks overlooking the city. It was chilly but so worth it. It was a movie scene of us at a closed bar getting the VIP treatment. The view was perfect; you could see the dim clusters of lights from other towns separated by the extreme darkness of the rolling fields that separate them. Ali asked if we would like to go to a different bar that he owned with him, as he had to go check in at the location. We went and he opened up the closed bar for us to hang out in for a bit, just us. He was one of the greatest blessings on the trip, and he treated us all like royalty, his extremely kind gestures will be engraved in our memory.