2 August 2008
I made only a small journal entry this day:
Tips for Frankfurt. Hotel Nurnberg was darker, quieter and cheaper than Hotel Continental. Tchibo Coffee – in the main station door, down and left, by the platform – Has cheap, large, delicious coffee. Wish we had known this earlier. Foamy, delicious coffee.
Our last night in Frankfurt I heard some strange noise outside. I didn’t know what it was, a baby crying, a hurt dog? It turned out to be a very, very drunken man on the street across from the hotel. We were on the fourth floor (I believe) and I watched him for a little while through the window. He didn’t have a shirt on and was walking around shouting and muttering. At one point, he was laying on the ground and looked like he was doing the back-stroke. Eventually, he gathered up some things and moved on.
Drunk guy in Germany
When we were finally getting ready to go to sleep, people started shouting outside. I guess they were leaving a bar. The odd thing is, we went most of the day hearing very little English. The people shouting outside? English.
Early on in our trip, someone asked where we were from. We told them Virginia and he said, ‘Oh, one of the oldest colonies.’ From then on, when we were in Brussels, Germany or Paris and heard someone speaking English, we would say ‘Queen’s’ or ‘Colony’ – depending on the accent.
At the hostel in Salisbury, the clerk told us he had checked in a couple with Canadian flags all over their luggage. When he asked to see their passports – as they did in almost every place we stayed – they were Americans. Shame on them. Idiots.
We never hesitated to tell anyone who asked that we were American. We never, never received a bad reaction.
13 August 2008 at 10:00 pm
jes- only you would take a picture of the drunk man… how can we be sure it isnt jake in the red light district and your going to use it to black mail him when he runs for a political office? yeah john edwards didn’t think his wife would find out either…
13 August 2008 at 10:45 pm
Definitely not Jake.
I forgot to mention, in Cologne we had to catch another train to Frankfurt because a man threw himself in front of the train we were going to take.
We came up to the platform just as everyone started running down the track. We looked where they were going, and they were pulling the man off the tracks.
Later, on the other train, we heard two women talking. One told the other the man had been pacing around. When the train came towards the station, the man threw himself in front of it. We don’t know if he survived. We were in Frankfurt in a little while, and all the newspapers were in German.
14 August 2008 at 4:38 am
wow that sounds like the most interesting part of your trip… other then being there without money… its not every day you see someone throw themselves in front of a train… i doubt he’s alive if it actually hit him… but what do i know…