Holiday Inn City South Conference Centre Frankfurt

... like the shining hotel. sold. we showed up, aNd it indeed looks like jack nicholson would Axe you to deAth here. And their internet connection wAsnt working, so they never got our resevAtion for A double room with no baTh or window. so they gAVe us a suite with A baLcony for the same price. sweeeeet.

bAd meaNs bAth in germAN, ANd aNy town cAlled bad has A spa.so tonight we went to the town spa to take the wAters, As ...

... they send them to me where I was going. But we weren't in Kansas anymore Toto. So I was pretty much at their mercy, particularly as I didn't think pulling that Ugly American stuff would get me too far, I didn't speak the language and I had absolutely no idea where Offenberg was.

The railway guy told me to see a railway official in Basel and they would tell me what to do. That's when the real labyrinth of finding my bags ...

... Christus Kirche, an old red sandstone church. Further on I reached Schlooss Johannisburg, a magnificent red sandstone castle we had seen from the river. I walked back to the ship through a nice city park along the river.
Had duck for dinner tonight. Makes you wonder about all the ducks you see swimming by the ship.

Just because a seat isn't marked reserved doesn't mean it's not reserved. We got on the train to Brussels from the international train station at Frankfurt airport. Super nice train. But stopping at Koln, a load of British pensioners got on the train. "Excuse us, we believe you are sitting in our seats." Oh. Now the train is full and we sit on the floor, near the door and the toilet. Even nice ...

... depressed that it looks like can not live out the dream of driving across the alps and around Italy. \ But I'm not. It's part of travelling. I find the situation quite funny. Quite Harden like. A serious of comedic failures! I'm not going to go out of my way to find cars. If i pass a dealer I will look and I will keep asking rental places. Worst comes to worst I will come back again in the future with a credit card or a car pre-bought! Less driving means more drinking as well....

... especially where tourists hang out so the language barrier is certainly not a problem. I look forward to the next time I go to Germany, hopefully in the not too distant future. Sandy and I will be traveling to France in mid June for 2 weeks, for my next outing. We will be renting a car for the first time in all of my travels to the Continent, and spending most of our time in the Normandy region of France. We were there about 3 ...

We had to stop in Frankfurt for a day to connect to Egypt. It seemed funny to us that in order to get from southern Africa to northern Africa we had to fly to Europe, but we made the most of it!
It was strange to be back in the cold northern hemisphere, and even stranger to see them preparing for Christmas! We were in one of the cute squares as they delivered and put up a giant Christmas tree. We sat outside at a long ...

... and Ulaan Bator. Russian airspace followed for the next seven or so hours passing over Siberia with views of Irkutsk (just like in "Risk") on the shore of Lake Baikal, the Russian steppes and ultimately Moscow before leaving it. Rather than fly direct to Frankfurt, I chose the Munich flight because, first of all, it left later (1pm vs. 10am) and, probably more importantly, because Lufthansa utilizes its A340-600 on ...

After clearing customs we entered a very Germanic building of winding corridors and utilitarian design. No frivolous lily pad carpet a la Darwin Airport in sight. Picked up the hire car, a black Audi A4 TD (will become important later). After working out the weird key thing, the button handbrake and that the burning sensation on our bums was the seat warmers we headed into German traffic. Let me just point out this means not only ...

... snack foods, so I ate, at various points, some sort of fried thing with applesauce (that may have been potato pancakes), a sausage on a bun (Thuringer - didn't see any Frankfurters) and a streusel made with sour cherries. Awesome. I also took the opportunity to smear spicy mustard on my camera bag. Along these various pedestrian streets (most notably the Zeil, the longest pedestrian mall in Germany, I believe) were, along with a multi-story H&M every ...