The Simpsons is on right now...aaaah, the voices! So bad... Plus for some reason it seems that American TV shows (Friends, Scrubs...) actually aren't as funny in German. Even if you take away the voice issue. Just like things that are funny in German are often pretty lame in English. Strange. But that was a rabbit trail...
Well, today was self-proclaimed Frankfurt-Day! We decided to take the train there and go check out a few museums. We left the house at 8:45 (yes, I do consider that early when I'm on vacation) to catch the bus to the train station and took the S5 Frankfurt-Süd (my first train-ride in almost a decade) to the main train station in Frankfurt. Let me tell you, that is one scary place. SO MANY PEOPLE, so many trains. Wowzers. Maike had drawn herself a little map after looking on the Internet (just like you, dad!!!) and it didn’t look like a far walk to either of the museums we wanted to see....Well, it was a little further than we thought, but heck, walking is good for you! Thankfully we opted for comfy over pretty in the shoe department. :) We were fairly impressed that we found the place. Well, I just went where Maike told me to go, but still! Frankfurt is not an easy city to get around in. I don’t understand why city planners can’t just make roads go in a grid, like, vertical and horizontal, parallel, you know, those fantastic logical words pertaining to geometry. Aren't Germans supposed to be some of the most logical and efficient people on the planet? Anyways, every street is all twisty-turny and changes its name 10 times in 20 blocks. CRAZY. So we made it to the first museum called the
"Senkenberg Museum". Mainly full of dinosaurs skeletons, fossils, and tons of stuffed animals. All kinds! From bears and bison to zebras and penguins. It was definitely one of the coolest museums I’ve ever seen…and the student price was only 3 Euros! That’s, like, $4.50 – waaaaaay cheaper than any Canadian museum I’ve ever been to. And much more … interesting than some. Plus I was even allowed to take pictures in there! That is so rarely allowed - at first I was waiting for some aging security guard to jump out from behind a ginormous dinosaur femur bone to arrest me, but everyone else was hauling out their cameras, so I figured I was safe.So after the museum we had to find the Städel art gallery. It’s located on the "Museenufer" (meaning 'museum shore'), which is back the way we came, past the train station in the opposite direction. Again, looked like it was "just around the corner" on the map, but let’s just say ... it was a ways. And my goodness, you would think the men of Frankfurt hadn’t seen a female before! Like, heads turning and sticking out of car windows. We even walked past this one café with a couple tables of guys sitting there and as we walked closer they all (as in, like, 15 of them) stopped talking, turned in our direction and started whistling as we walked past. (I'm sure you really don't want to hear ANY of this, dad, but it's kind of funny.) Maike was completely oblivious to the whistling (not sure how) but it was just a bit of an awkward moment. Like, what is up? We were both dressed in long jeans and totally appropriately modest tanktops. Nothing sketchy or tight or anything. It was so strange. And don’t get me wrong…I’m not trying to flatter myself here. I was genuinely confused…and a little worried. I kept asking Maike if my jeans zipper was down…or maybe I had forgotten an article of clothing when I got dressed in the morning…due to jet lag of course…maybe we look American or something. Needless to say it was the strangest 40 minute walk ever.
So we found the art gallery no problemo. Again, you were allowed to take pics in there! In an art gallery!!! I’ve never seen that before. Had some great paintings. There were 2 or 3 I wanted to steal…and…put where? in my suitcase? Hence I rethought my temptation to thieve and kept on walking. After the gallery we decided to walk back to catch our train, but instead of traipsing back to the actual "Hauptbahnhof" (main train station) we just decided to catch one a bit closer that comes underground. So we took this bridge across the 'Main' (pronounced 'Mine') river and below us we watched a clothing photo shoot. It was pretty funny. It’s gotta be awkward modeling in a public place, I would think. At least they weren’t doing swimwear…Basically we walked through the area called the bank district cuz it’s pretty much a giant clump of banks. Everyone walking around there is wearing a suit. Lots of shops and cafes. Good European stuff. After which we took the train back to Friedrichsdorf where we caught a cab back to Maike’s house cuz we were too lazy to wait for the next bus. I just realized how funny that is...how lame is that? How can you be too lazy to…sit and wait for something? Anyways, I figured "why not?" cuz I’ve actually never been in a taxi before! Shocking, I know. Cabs are generally super expensive out here, like everywhere else, I guess, but we were just going a little ways, so it was, like, 2 euros each to get home.
Well, I think what I’m going to do is just post public links for you to see all the pics I upload to Facebook (so people without Facebook can see them, too) cuz The one SUPER annoying thing about blogging is that it takes FOREVER AND A DAY to upload pictures. And you can only do 5 at a time. So I’ll just put the links on here so I don’t have to upload all my stuff to Facebook AND my blog. And for those of you who use Facebook, you won’t have to see all these pics twice this way! I’ll still post a few topic-specific pictures that directly pertain to my blogs, but trying to get lots on here is so unbelievably frustrating. And for some reason I can’t post any videos on my blog anymore and it only works every once in a while on Facebook. It worked just fine until a few days ago but now the videos just stop halfway through the loading process and I just keep getting errors. I've spent hours trying to get them going, but it's just not working. Oh well, at least there are pics, right?!
So for today’s pictures click here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=64919&l=e0364&id=573967603
Hope it all works. Have a lovely weekend, y'all. I'm going to bed and most of you are still at work! Crazy.
OH I NEARLY FORGOT. GUESS WHAT I SAW TODAY? A BAR THAT OFFERS KARAOKE DISCO ON FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS. HOW AWESOME DOES THAT SOUND!!! ICK.
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