Volume 2, Days 68-70
The Flixbus stop in Bonn is a fair distance from the center, down by the museum mile. Because my bus wasn’t scheduled to depart until roughly 12:30 and the hostel checkout was 11am, I had an awkward hour to kill. I took a S-bahn over to the bus stop, and just hung out on the street corner near the isolated office parks. Though gray clouds built up overhead, I did not get pummeled by rain while stuck outside and exposed.
It was a nice ride to Frankfurt with the road following the Rhine river valley for some distance and then as if by magic turning east along the Main river. We pulled up along the south side of the train station and alighted amidst a lot of cops armed to the teeth with military weapons. Something must have happened to bring in the special forces, but everything seemed normal.
My hostel was in the train station area, which also happened to be the red light district. Compared to Hamburg, Amsterdam, or Antwerp, it was really just some casinos, pornography shops, and the odd club advertising American-style table dances. It wasn’t really much and didn’t bother me quite so much as the sheer concentration of junkies on the streets living in their own bubbles.
The hostel was an oasis, or fortress, amidst the outside world and I was able to check straight in as it was nearly 5 pm at this point. I was a bit shocked by how expensive the tourist tax was, but it was offset by a chip for one free breakfast. It’s weird how several cities in Germany have a 1-2 euro per night visitors tax, which is waved if you are on a legitimate business trip. Wouldn’t it make more sense to tax the business people whose companies are paying the tab anyways? I helped myself to some free coffee (and tea available all day), then changed into running clothes to take a jog along the riverside park and see a bit of town.
On the way back, I swung by the Rewe around the corner to pick up some stuff to cook (finally! it’s been a while since I had kitchen access), but I was surprised to find the smallish location didn’t stock their store brand mineral water. I guess it is too cheap for the location. While I was shopping, all hell had broken loose and cats and dogs were falling from the skies in buckets. Mixed metaphors aside, I and a dozen people huddled in the entrance way pondering how long the downpour would last and if it was worth making a break for it.
After a while, I decided to just run the 100 meters to the hostel and got completely drenched in the process. I went straight in to shower and prepared some pasta and salad afterwards for my dinner. I used up the last of the pasta I had purchased in Ghent and had been carrying around with me for nearly two weeks. The small kitchen/laundry room is in the basement of the hostel, where there is also a pool table and foosball table, so I went up to the main room to eat my meal.
I’m not sure if there was an organized event happening, but several people were playing chess in a row of three boards while another table had a poker game going. After finishing my meal and cleaning up after myself, I grabbed a chessboard and waited for an opponent. It was nice to stretch some different mental muscles.
| Water | 0.19 |
| Bakery | 3.6 |
| Sbahn | 3 |
| Flixbus | 10.17 |
| Hostel | 63 |
| Pasta sauce & Salad | 4.78 |
| Total: | 84.74 EUR (661 RMB) (USD 94.05) |
Running Total: 25470.8 RMB (USD 3624.19)
Daily Average: 374.6 RMB (USD 53.30)
I decided to save my free breakfast for my last morning, but it did look like a pretty decent spread. I enjoyed a couple cups of coffee and tried to get a bit of work done in the morning.
Late morning, I finally decided to go out and see a bit of the town. I wasn’t aiming for any particular museum as none of them sounded too enticing from the descriptions, but there were plenty of landmarks and old buildings to pass by, including the Nikolaikirche, the Dom, and the Rathaus, which is called the Römer for some reason. The old town basically just consists of two squares and the alleyway connecting them, but is delightfully German looking.
I continued heading east until reaching the remains of the old Jewish cemetery, the wall of which is covered in names. I took a pass on the adjacent Jewish museum and turned back into town.
For lunch, I stopped in the kleinmarkthalle, which had a nice assortment of delicatessens and eateries. I stood in the queue of the only counter with a line, where they were selling wurst by weight with mustard and brotchen on the side. I still don’t like mustard, but the flavor is not as offensive as it used to be. Finishing that “light” meal, I promptly drooled over the brightly light glass of a bakery counter, choosing a giant piece of a coffee cake like construction with poppy seed paste in it. While I ate the fleischwurst at a half counter sticking out of the wall of the market hall, I took the hefty chunk of cake out on to the streets and all the way back to the Römerplatz to find a bench.
I headed north from the old town into downtown, which certainly has its share of office buildings, but mostly appears to be just a giant strip mall. Still, being Europe, the atmosphere was lively with buskers plying their trade and endless fountains and statues to look at. I went out of my way to find the Börse, i.e. Frankfurt’s stock exchange, which is in a classical, but otherwise nondescript building.
On one of the squares, there appeared to a somewhat temporary set up of food carts. Given the high concentration of apfelwein vendors, it could be assumed that it was part of a festival celebrating Frankfurt’s local specialty drink.
I had barely spent 2 hours and already covered the entire city on foot. I was tired and thirsty, and after swinging by the hostel I went out to track down a decent sized grocery store so I could buy cheap bottled water. There was one in a shopping mall north of the train station. The mall also had a Chipotle, but why anyone would pay 9 euros for a burrito is beyond me.
I chilled back in the hostel the rest of the afternoon, working on the computer at times and also watching another chapter of Babylon Berlin up in the room. Around the time it started picking up with the wave of check ins, I figured it would be good to clear out of the room on another jog. This time I followed the green band which marks where the old city walls used to be. An entire loop around the city was a mere 6 kilometers.
For dinner, I had more salad and a small portion (only two servings) of tortellini. After not having enough sauce on the spaghetti the night before, I finished off the jar on the tortellini and found myself with too much.
After I had eaten my own food and was hanging around the common space looking for some interaction, I discovered that the hostel was putting on a bit of a barbecue in the back patio, selling grilled sausages, burgers, and steaks at a reasonable price. There were tons of people hanging out drinking beer and I was just enjoying water, but I worked my way into conversations with a few people.
After watching the conclusion of a backgammon game, I played two rounds and was eventually coerced into a game of poker (for no stakes). It was an extremely frustrating affair as the main guy didn’t understand the fundamental math of betting chips (i.e. first match, then raise). Fortunately, I went all in on the third hand and got wiped out.
| Fleischwurst | 3.5 |
| Strudel | 2.5 |
| Groceries (tortellini, salad) | 5.9 |
| Total: | 11.9 EUR (92.8 RMB) (USD 13.21) |
Running Total: 25563.6 RMB (USD 3637.4)
Daily Average: 370.5 RMB (USD 52.72)
I did very little on my final (full) day in Frankfurt. Having given up entirely on visiting any museums, I settled on taking another walk through the downtown areas so that I could have lunch in the kleinmarkthall again. There was a local specialty I had become aware of that I wanted to try called “Handkase mit Musik” (literally “hand cheese with music”). I couldn’t make sense of the name and it didn’t exactly look like cheese. I ordered one to try it out and also got a frikadella on a brotchen. Even after eating it, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but Wikipedia came through with an explanation. I haven’t done much to really explore local, regional specialties, but it was nice to organically discover one.
Most of the rest of the day, I was busy sorting out travel plans. I had a brief moment of panic when I found out that neither of two adjacent bookings had availability on Saturday, and after exploring transport/lodging options in other cities in the region (even considering a visit up to Kloster Kreuzberg), I found a cheap Airbnb in a town along the railway between Wu:rtzberg and Bamberg.
Otherwise, I have been working on the language project through fits and starts with German and its study taking a priority. I have such a long list of things to do it is hard to even get started on one. I was just getting started on some vocabulary entry in the late afternoon when I started talking to an Australian backpacker who had just arrived and would be doing a semester exchange starting in September. The social snowball rolled down the hill and the rest of the evening was spent in talking and joking with a Canadian and German too.
Speaking of regional specialties, I had been looking forward to trying some of Frankfurt’s Apfelwein, saving it for the last day in town to maximize my dry streak. Since the hostel bar served it, there was no need to go out and I had already purchased some snack cheese and potato pancakes to accompany the drink. The apfelwein was pretty nice, a dry cider taste. I ended up ordering fairly large quantities of the apfelwein because it was also subject to happy hour pricing and there was free pasta (for Pasta Night) to help soak it up. Nevertheless, I wasn’t used to drinking, so after one nice craft-style ale after happy hour ended (but still a daily special), I crashed early.
| Croissant | 0.49 |
| Frikadella, Handkase | 5.5 |
| Aldi food | 4.6 |
| Apfelwein | 3.5 |
| Beer | 2.5 |
| Total: | 16.59 EUR (129.4 RMB) (USD 18.41) |
Running Total: 25693 RMB (USD 3655.81)
Daily Average: 367 RMB (USD 52.23)