Frankfurt

The title of this post is a bit misleading. It's true that I did spend a couple of days in Frankfurt, but since I've been there a number of times already, I didn't really do any sightseeing... so they only pictures of Frankfurt you'll find here are from inside the grocery store and inside Diana and Marco's apartment. 

Anyway, I took the train in on Thursday night, arrived in Frankfurt at about 9:15pm, and Diana was waiting for me in the station. We walked to the car, and the very first thing Diana did was talk a policeman out of giving her a ticket, which is really the most typical Diana-like thing she could possibly have done - it was so funny! She has always been very confident, a little wild, and lots of fun. She had parked illegally, and the policeman was in the middle of writing out the ticket, and she ran over and was like no, no, no, stop writing! She said it was only five minutes, but he replied no, it wasn’t, it was longer (I understood ‘Nein, stimmt nicht’ – not true – and thought that wasn’t a good sign), but Diana just said, ‘yeah, but that’s because the train was late!’ Eventually, he was convinced, though he said if he saw her car there again he would give her a ticket that time. So that was close.

Then we went back to her apartment and just hung out and chatted. We got caught up on life over the last couple years and what’s going on with our families and mutual friends. Diana and I do a pretty good job of keeping in touch via email and facebook, but there's nothing like sitting on the couch chatting late at night to get all the details you've missed.

The next morning Diana and Marco were already at work when I woke up. Diana had showed me how to use the coffee machine and the TV, so between that and my computer I really had all I needed to entertain myself for the morning. (I managed to find 'How I Met Your Mother' in German, so that was fun.)

When Diana came home, we decided that we should cook some lunch and have a relaxing day around the house. So we made a quick trip to the grocery store - a very big one near Diana and Marco's apartment. Diana showed me the U.S. part of the international aisle, which I thought was really funny. Interesting which things were included. I'm not sure that having multiple kinds of fake cheese is really improving our image.

Also, I discovered that macoroni and cheese, when imported, is a really expensive food!

Back at her house, Diana and I cooked lunch - we made potatoes au gratin from scratch, heated up some left over beef Diana had in a red wine sauce, and sauteed some vegetables. Everything was really great - it took a little while to prepare, so we had a snack in the meantime - bread with teddy-bear shaped lunch meat, which Diana bought because I thought it was so funny.

After waiting so long for lunch, we were starving, so we both ate way too much, and decided to put on a movie so that we didn't need to move. We watched 'The Good Shepard.' I had actually heard it was a pretty good movie, but I found it confusing (I may have closed my eyes once or twice...) and it didn't seem to have much of a story-arch. It's generally about the creation of the CIA, but I didn't feel like I really cared about any of the characters or totally knew what they were doing and why.

Marco came home from work, and Diana and I decided to do something a bit more energetic. We played Wii - specifically Wii boxing, tennis, and a little bit of bowling. Diana beat me in Wii boxing - it's so crazy, I usually just flail my arms around as fast as I can, and I don't think I've ever lost before! (This also turns out to be very frustrating to people who try to box more authentically.) Luckily, my zero-skill, quick-movement tactics worked on Marco, and I did beat him in boxing.

When we wore ourselves out we decided to watch a German comedian whose show was on TV. Diana and Marco had actually just recently seen him live. I was really surprised how much I could actually understand - and it was pretty funny.

Then, Diana and I, in denial about the fact that sleep is necessary when visiting friends, decided to start watching American Grafitti at one in the morning. I'm not sure Diana saw any of the movie at all. I watched it, but I wasn't very impressed. I didn't think it was funny (though I'm not sure it was supposed to be), and like 'The Good Shepard,' I felt like there was almost no story arch - I didn't really care what the characters were doing or understand what was supposed to happen next. Ah well.

The next morning we slept in, and then got up and had a big brunch with bread, meat, and cheese that we had picked up at the grocery store the day before. And Diana made eggs - the German's usually don't boil them all the way - so they're a bit runny inside. It tasted good, though it goes against all my American up-bringing to eat raw eggs. (But they can't possibly be dangerous dressed up in those adorable bunny covers, can they?)

From there, Diana brought me to the train station (parked legally), and dropped me off at the train. It was a great visit!