Surprise!! I'm alive!!
Last week, a few of us went to Frankfurt, Germany for a couple of days. I've finally decided to update this (poor miserable) blog, knowing that I would completely forget about this trip because of my lousy three second goldfish memory. (Fact of the day: Goldfish have a memory span of 3 seconds, just like me!)
The awesome six people who embarked on this incredible journey, in reversed alphabetical order:
Yen Li, our very own supermodel (and her paparazzi)
Saarvin, our token ____ guy
(Word left out on purpose for various reasons, try and fill in the blanks!)
Paul Goh, map reader and tourist guide with his spastic antics :D
Justin, my personal bell-boy and kettle carrier
Chang Jin, Photographer #1
And me! Photographer #2
So, Frankfurt is the financial centre of Germany and one of the two largest financial centers in continental Europe, the other being Paris. It's where they have the European Central Bank (which sets the monetary policies for EU's Economy), the German Federal Bank, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the Frankfurt Trade Fair.
We stayed over at Saarvin's place, left early in the morning to catch our flight and reached the Frankfurt Hanh Airport all drained and exhausted, everyone sleep deprived. (I was the only excited hyper one bouncing about).
The train station (Hauptbahnhof) right outside our hostel. Us being seasoned professional tube users, taking their underground "U-Bahn" was pretty straightforward, err except for the occasional wrong side of the platform and trouble with the ticketing machine. (Everything was in Einzelfahrt Frankfurt Flughafen German!).
Our Hostel was located right in the heart of their famous red light district area, so umm the guys got really excited to see strip clubs and kinky adverts all around.
Our first stop was at Römerberg (the city hall square).
The one with the balding Christmas tree in the middle is the Römer, one of the city's most important landmarks. It has been the city hall for 600 years, used for weddings and other purposes. The Römer was partially destroyed in World War II and later rebuilt.
L to R: Saarvin, Yens, Chang Jin, Paul, Justin and I
See how excited they were about Frankfurt?!! (Haha)
We had lunch at one of the restaurants right in the middle of the city hall square, and lunch was simply... fantastic! We had their famous Frankfurters sausages YUM YUM which were at least a million times better than our Ayamas sausages. The guys shared a huge plate of German Pork knuckles and licked everything til the bone was clean and shinny.
Long, short, big, small, fat, thin: sausages come in all shapes and sizes! Err cough.
Germany was famous for their Ebbelwei, basically apple wine which taste like diluted cider and beer and apple which was... uh pretty gross.
L to R: Yens, Saarvin, Chang Jin, Paul, me and Justin
We visited churches, most of them being constructed during the 14th and 15th century.
We went to this store which sold all types of teddy bears and soft toys (I want that in my room, hint: mom and dad)
.....And Paul found his soul mate! Awww...
And she/he/it has the perfect height as well! :D
The Saint Bartholomeus' Cathedral, a gothic building constucted in the 14th century, destroyed by a fire in 1867 and rebuilt in its present style.
We walked on a this bridge which (I think) is called the Eiserner Steg and realized we were going towards the wrong direction
(This is what normally happens when you let a lady lead the way)......
(Okay fine, when you make Miss Ashley Chan Kit Kay read maps and bring you touring around a foreign country)
But the view from the bridge was lovely! (SO maybe,.. maybe she was thoughtful and sweet enough to intentionally bring the gang there for a nice scenic breath-taking view. Aha!)
Frankfurt being one of the biggest financial centres in Europe has some of the tallest buildings with a significant number of skyscrappers (>150m), all concentrated in a relatively small area.
We went up the Main Tower, which had an observation platform 200m above ground level which reminded me of our KL Tower but this one was open air and the sky was actually clear unlike our polluted KL. The view from above was amazingly beautiful and the entire city was all bright and pretty. But because it was open aired, it was seriously freezing cold (the temperature was below zero) and with the strong wind and all, we surrendered and went back down soon after.
Spot the Deutsche Bank's logo!
After our long and adventurous day wandering around the city, we went back to our hostel, took power naps and... had a finishing touch to "Day One". Details will not be included due to potential under-aged readers :P
On our second day, we decided to take a train to the outskirts of Frankfurt to a place called Heidelberg.
THIS is evidence on how everyone 'tak layans' me
(I'm actually quite an interesting person, you know......sniff )
We had to take the Funicular railway line from the base station up to the Heidelberg Castle. The Funicular Railway was a 100 years old! But it was so well restored so nothing was crumbling and falling apart.
And this is the Heidelberg Castle. Apparently, Martin Luther (Form four Sejarah people, refresh!) came to Heidelberg to defend one of his theses and paid a visit to the castle sometime during the 15th century.
The castle wasn't as majestic and impressive as the ones that were in Austria but nevertheless there was a spectacular view from above!
Justin and I :)
L to R: Justin, me, Saarvin, Yens, Paul and Chang Jin
Something I've just noticed: We're all in dull, boring, unimaginative Black! And all but one are wearing Zara coats. Spot the not! (Haha, you loser LOL)
This showed how much wine the king drank those days. That was where they stored their wine... And there were more!
Spot Justin and I! :D
The ultimate Boy Band picture!! LOL
I laugh so hard each time I see this picture, I mean omg,... look at them!!!
HAHAHHAA I'm about to fall of my chair HAHAHHAHAHA
Yen Li and I : our failed attempt for the Girl Band picture.
(We didn't have enough members to recruit)
(And we're not as good with the 'pose')
We took the train up, WALKED all the way down!
And toured around the city of Heidelberg!
We were all about to die from starvation, went around looking for a place to eat but instead we walked inside a shop selling food stuff with loads of free samples of cookies, chips, bread spreads etc... and felt sorry for the shop's huge loss of their free samples for that day.
Hungry Asians I tell you TSK..!
(We ate all their free food :P heehe )
On our very last day, we paid a visit to the Natural History Museum, the "Senckenberg". It was honestly really interesting, with their Dinosaur Hall, exhibits of mammals, reptiles and birds; exhibits of possible evolutionary paths, Egypt mummies, Anaconda and fossilization etc etc.
But the only problem was: Everything was in... German.
We didn't quite understand what Vergleich der Schadelanantomie was, or the long lenghty explanation for that..
So we came up with our own explanation and interpretation with our own excellent knowledge and managed to learn quite a bit in a few hours!
A brief summary:
(1) Elephants and Mammoths are scary and larger than an average man.
(2) A whale's brain looks like a person's backside and is as large as Saarvin's head.
(3) Through evolution, the size of men's skull has increased significantly.
And at the end of our tour around the museum, we were completely drained and exhausted; BUT we all had gained some knowledge on human evolution and err elephants... and a slight improvement in our German language.
Ausgang = Exit !
And we headed back to our hostel, packed our bags, had our last bits of Frankfurters sausages, and passed out in the plane.
So that sums up our interesting eye opening three day adventure in the land of yummy sausages and kinky
A finishing touch to this post: an artistic picture of our silhouettes
(Some say it's because we had a lousy photographer, bad camera settings and sun light at the wrong angle BUT we think it's art =P )
I can't believe how long my post is, the next post isn't due til a million years later!
Auf Wiedersehen Und Gute Nacht! (Goodbye and Good night)
1 comment:
I think I was in Frankfurt and Heidelberg a few days before you guys. Was there over the New Year thanks to the "cheap" flights but end up paying much more for the coach into the city.
Anyway, preferred Heidelberg much much more. The scenery was breathtaking especially after being bored to death in Frankfurt for the previous 2 days odd.
Post a Comment