Germany, snow, soccer & more snow

Germany was a blast! I found no "Henke's" but still it was a great trip. Courtney, Brittany & I planned the entire trip ourselves and their were no kinks and glitches. We were so proud of our traveling abilities!

Thursday evening we left the manor by taxi to go to the Grantham Train Station. We took a late train into London Stansted Airport. We stayed the night in the Airport and we each got about 2 hours of sleep. We flew out of London at 7:20 a.m. Friday. We arrived in Germany around 9 a.m. We wanted to go to Frankfurt, but the airport we flew into was Frankfurt Hahn - - - a jankity airport 2 hours away from downtown Frankfurt. We loaded a coach and paid 12 Euros to ride the 2 hours to the city's center. By noon we arrived in Frankfurt. Our hotel was awesome... Hotel Europa! Our room was tiny to share between 3 girls, but it was still very nice. The continental breakfast was awesome, too. I ate at least 2 Kaiser Rolls each morning.

There's nothing really terrific about the city of Frankfurt. The girls and I spent most of our 2 days there just walking around, taking pictures of random buildings, and visiting museums. At the Stadel Museum I was able to see original paintings by Renoir, Picasso and Monet. It was amazing!

On Saturday we walked through a Flea Market located along Main River. It was scary! Imagine the worst yard sale you've ever been to and multiply it by 45. Take all the junk at that yard sale and throw it out on random mis-shapen plastic tarps. Now imagine the seller is speaking a different language. Oh, and it's snowing. . . That was our Frankfurt Flea Market experience 2005. We still had a great time, and managed to purchase a hairdryer for one Euro because we forgot ours. haha.

We had a couple of disappointments in Frankfurt. We were really hoping to see a Ballet performance while we were there, but the ballet company doesn't come until May. Also, we wanted to take a boat tour on the Main River, but it was too cold and the tours don't start until March. On the way home there was a snowstorm and our plane to London was delayed by 3 hours.

Frankfurt was really cold, and people there weren't all that pleasant. I just expected because I am of German descent that everyone there would be like me. haha. naive. On a possible scale of 5 stars, Frankfurt hospitality gets a one. (This does not include the nice old man working reception at our hotel.)

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Snow snow snow and more snow. I thought the cold weather was long over. It's been snowing all day. Yesterday we even had some hail.

Tonight I attended my first real soccer game ("football" here). It was awesome! I had to pay $32 to go, but I think it was worth it. About 35 Harlaxton students took a bus to Nottingham. We were there to see a semi-pro game between Nottingham Forest and Preston. Now you know from the movies how serious the British are about their footy football, right? It's for real! They are hard-core. Our bus driver Ralph even got up and gave us a speech before we got off of the bus... telling us to root for the home team if we decided to cheer; don't wear colors representing the opponent; etc. Ralph was right. The fans were intense. The entire stadium seemed to be singing and chanting cult-like songs. The songs engulfed the whole stadium. These fans are so loyal to their team. I think they'd defend them to the death. Crazy Brits.

Sooo, we weren't all that excited when we learned that "our team" Nottingham was ranked 23rd out of a possible 25 teams, while our opponent Preston was ranked 3rd. We expected the game to be a slaughtering. Quite the contrary! Nottingham Forest ended up winning 2-0, and I have to admit that I actually enjoyed the game! ( I've always said that I hated soccer. ) It was really cold at the game. It snowed a lot. I felt sorry for the players out there in shorts, freezing their bums off.

Overall, this has been a good week. We safely planned and executed our trip to Frankfurt. I've managed to not slip on the ice and snow yet. (*knock on wood) And I watched and enjoyed my first full soccer game.

Cheers!