Weekends Spent Wandering Around Germany

Cobblestone is so cute and European…until you start having to walk on it 40 minutes to and from school and you realize it’s just causing your knees and hips to age prematurely. - Julia

It’s been nearly three months now that I’ve been living in Germany and although I’d love to report home that I “love it here” and “I’m never coming home!” - my feelings have been quite the opposite. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not discounting the whole country, but the very, very, small village I’m in has been rather bland - much like the food. I mean, when was the last time you heard about a new “German Restaurant” opening in town that had a line up out the door - I’m guessing the answer is never.

The romanticism I once had with cobblestone has faded, along with my ability to speak German, but the grey skies are being traded in for blue ones and things are looking up.

Frankfurt

Frankfurt is a city that means business. As the financial capital of Germany, it doesn’t lend itself to be THE prettiest city in Germany, but it’s a city nonetheless. In all honesty, I wouldn’t put Frankfurt on any sort of travel bucket list, but if you do go, make sure you go in nice weather when the sun is shining.

Katrina (the BFF) and I happened to have a lucky day in terms of the weather and in terms of getting free stuff (score!). Dairymilk was handing out free chocolate bars at the Frankfurt train station and so, naturally, we filled our pockets. The day was already off to a good start!

From there, we went to Lululemon (the Canadian home away from home) and happened to score free passes to yoga that afternoon - the frugal Gods are on our side!

I know what you’re thinking: “Yoga? In Germany? Doesn’t that seem like an oxymoron?”

While I too thought yoga in Germany would be an oxymoron, it happened to be the funniest yoga class I’ve ever participated in. Having not exercised in 3 months, because, well, I’m treating this time in Germany like a vacation and calories don’t count when you’re on vacation - or ever really. We ended up being the least flexible people in the class, which made for good comedy. Keep in mind that this whole class was being taught in German and my German is equivalent to that of a fetus. All in good fun, the teacher ended up making jokes about us the whole class - Germans have an interesting sense of humour - and we were struggling to not burst out laughing.

After our nice little yoga sesh, we did some light shopping, walked around the Altstadt area, and then grabbed some McDonalds.

“What McDonalds!”

“Really Julia, McDonalds?”

If you’ve read my Italy blog post, you’ll know that I love a good cheap McDonalds meal. While I don’t particularly like McDonalds food, German food has let me down 10 too many times to the point that I don’t even mess with it anymore. If you’re reading this and disagreeing with me you’re either a) German or b) never had German cuisine.

We took our bag of McDonalds and ate by the river in the sun and it ended up being a really nice day in Frankfurt.

Rüdesheim am Rhein

Whenever I tell other German people where I’m living they always talk about how beautiful the area is. Honestly, I had no idea what they were talking about. Yea, the town is cute, but it’s one of those “cute towns” that you stop for lunch at on the weekend and then you continue driving to your actual destination. But, then I went to Rüdesheim, and that completely changed my view on the area.

Rüdesheim is a lot more touristy than my town, but I actually appreciated since my village is a ghost town on most days. It was nice to see people walking around enjoying the sunny weather.

We had a pretty chill day in Rüdesheim and browsed around the shops and bakeries.

Note: German bakeries are the best. That is the one food area I will give to them. They are masters of bread.

After grabbing some sort of German baked good that I can’t pronounce, we hiked up to see the monument at the top of Rüdesheim. In full disclosure, I have no idea what the monument was about, I was too winded to try to read German, but it was super pretty and I definitely recommend. We had a picnic on the top of the hill and then walked down and bought ourselves a tub of ice cream and ate it while overlooking the river.

It was a successful weekend, to say the least - Germany is starting to grow on me.