HERA'S BLOG
Day 1: Arrival in Frankfurt, Germany Loses Semifinal
Wednesday, July 5, 2006 4:35 AM
Welcome to the Browncoat at the World Cup weblog.
ok, first blog about my trip. This keyboard is german, and i am not so this will be slow and painful. it's about 5.30 a.m., and i'm not all that sure why i'm awake, but oh well.
made it here without too much incident, the flight went quick, but i didn't sleep on the plane, as by the time it was midnight for me, i could see the sun rising out the window, so i gave up on resting all that much. so let the marathon awakement begin! near as i can tell, i was up for 33 hours straight. almost as bad as an all-nighter at work! only more with the walking around and such.
also, the women around me on the plane were wearing too much perfume. like to drive a person insane. and it nearly did.
Stephen and Britta collected me at the airport, and we took the train to their neighborhood, the Neideradd. we walked around after dropping off my gear, and visited the grocery stores to stock up on food, the butcher to buy sausages (hey, it's germany), the bakery to buy bread, all within a few block radius. s and i were standing outside the grocery, looking at the adverts posted in the window, that sported photos of small children wearing funny little cartoon underwear. s quips 'oh, look. they sell children too.' For a german fellow, he's quite irreverent, and he cracks me up on a regular basis.
the weather is very hot currently, and the folks here are suffering from it. 95 degrees today in a country that has no AC. i'm from Texas and i thought i was tough, but sheesh. these folks don't even own fans! i showed britta how to make a hand-held fan with a piece of paper, something i learned while attending elem school in San Antonio. she came back from class later carrying her own little fan that she had made from my example. seems the building was so hot they moved her class to the cellar, it being cooler. wild!
this was my first time meeting Britta, Stephen's SO, and i think we're going to get along great. she's a tiny thing, with a very dry sense of humour. i like her, and she is very kind to invite me into her home having never met me. i'm looking forward to spending more time with her.
later in the afternoon, we walked down to the Main river, which is about 4 blocks from britta's apt, as stephen and she are members at a sailing club. they don't sail, but the club building is beautiful. it sits at the top of a rise from the water, with it's own little pier, and 3 boat sheds. s and i camped out on some deck chairs in the shade, watching the scullers and kayakers and 'dragon' boats and huge industrial-sized tankers go by. We sat and chatted and waited for 9pm to roll around, as the members were gathering in the main salon to watch the match on the projector TV. the building also sported a full kitchen with the largest window in it i have ever seen, a wet bar, and the most amazing maps hanging on the walls in the hallway to the bathroom, where the waterways, seas and oceans look like land masses with diagrams and shoals and all types of indicators all prominently marked. on those maps, the land masses are just vague outlines, something to be ignored, the only interest being what waterways encroach upon them. My host, Stephen. Drinking. Imagine that.
german toilets are cool, as like in new zealand, you can choose a full or a half flush. great idea that i wish would catch on in the states.
i passed out for about 30 minutes with the cool breeze off the water, and woke up not knowing where i was, asleep next to a river in a foreign country. it was quite surreal, what with the sleep deprivation and all. S introduced me to apfelwein, which seems to be a local alcoholic beverage. it reminded me oddly enough of ginger beer, only with an appley note to it, not sweet at all. it was refreshing. Me and my world view. Do you hear snoring?
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