August 1 –
Another beautiful morning under blue skies – I think I like Germany! I went for a run along a river through the village in the Black Forest (how cool is that!) about 4 miles before rousing the rest of the family. We had another yummy breakfast (fresh fruit, fresh bread, home made jam…) before packing up and bidding farewell to the Hotel zur Kronen. I highly recommend staying here if you are in the area – a “review” will be up on the page shortly.
We jammed the growing amount of luggage for our final trip in the now beloved Mercedes – 2.5 hours up the autobahn to Frankfurt where I have to work tomorrow. Under normal circumstances, there would be no appeal in this at all but here was Frank’s final chance to go all out on one of Germany’s famous highways – and we hit traffic! Most of the way from Denzligen to Frankfurt there was serious traffic which actually slowed to a crawl several times. He was most upset that he only got up to 175kmph and at that only once (do the math – it’s fast!) We survived though and Helga, our trusty satnav system guided us past the worst roadworks to keep things moving.
We had a serious culture shock: going from a family run hotel in a 400 year old farmhouse in a small village to a 20 storey international hotel in a large city that is the banking center of Germany, if not for all of Europe. Wow – what a difference! Everyone is still very nice but there is a charge for *everything* – we can’t even get ice ourselves; you need to call room service and have them bring it to you and then of course you need to tip the nice man…. And I didn’t choose this place – the nice folks at the ECB booked the room for me. I don’t think they understood that I’m paying for it myself and not my work – or they think I have *tons* of money cuz it’s not cheap.
We said good-bye to Helga and dropped off the car at the rental desk in the main train station – where we bought our tickets for the train on Saturday. For the next 10 days, we are traveling by train – which means that we have some *serious* repacking to do! I see a few more boxes being shipped in my future.
We wandered around town some more to get a feel for the place and decided that Frankfurt is a nice city but it’s like many other nice cities. For some reason it reminds me of Chicago although there is a river and not a lake. We found the old city where the cathedral is (yup, another candle… that’s 8) and a pretty square with old buildings. We decided to try a local landmark for dinner: Adolph Wagner’s where we had the local beverage: apfelwein – an incredibly dry apple wine which the folks around us were drinking by the pitcher! The food was very good (more pork of course!) and a fine time was had by all.
Now it’s time to get ready to go back to work. We’ll be searching for a cafe in the morning since our fine hotel is charging €15 for coffee and croissants. Oh and you get butter and jam with that.
/san/
[Pedometer: 21,600 or about 10.5 miles (not including my run) over city sidewalks.]
The Cannon Family's travel blog 