Tag Archive | Frankfurt
Monday October 10, 2011  

25 September: Frankfurt to Berlin

We woke up Sunday morning to find that everything was closed in Frankfurt. Bummer.

With no shops open, we had the choice of walking around or going to the zoo. We decided to go for a wander along the river, see what we could see and head in the general direction of the zoo.

Along the river, we found concrete table tennis tables next to a decent little skate park. What a brilliant idea! If only the shops were open, we could have bought a pair of paddles and a few ping pong balls and we’d be set.

Following the sound of bass thumping from somewhere in the distance, we stumbled across a fun run. We were suddenly surrounded by pink t-shirts and sneakers. We must have arrived before the event started, because there was not a drip of sweat to be seen, only stalls giving out charity information and selling cupcakes. Wait… what?

Deciding that this was about all we could do in Frankfurt (it is a very commercial city), we headed to the station and jumped on the next train to Berlin.  Berlin was our destination, and we had bought a seat reservation for 3pm (travelling on a EuRail pass) but without anything holding us in Frankfurt we took the opportunity to push things along.

Train travel is not nearly as tiring as plane travel. This was our discussion as we neared Berlin. We came up with a few reasons:

  • The seats are bigger, so your elbows aren’t pinned to your ribs
  • You can walk around more
  • There is a restaurant car!
  • The windows are huge, so you don’t feel so cramped
  • You can actually watch the scenery go by without giving yourself permanent neck damage

It took 4.5 hours to reach Berlin, but we were feeling reasonably fresh when we arrived. I had been on Google maps before hand and worked out the route from the nearest train station to the Baxpax Downtown Hostel, where we were staying.

First challenge, though, was the Berlin Hauptbahnhof. We were lost. Not only were we lost, we were lost inside the train station. There were four or five storeys and every time we followed the sign to the S-bahn platform, we ended up at the Brandenberger Tor line which has all of 3 station on it and heads off in the wrong direction. And each time we ended up there, we met the same confused looking lady. Mind you, she was wearing a race number and had just completed the Berlin marathon, she had earned her disorientation.

We had passed an info point on one of our earlier permutations of getting lost and headed back to figure this out. The bloke spoke good English, and pointed us to platform 15 to get the S-bahn to Freidrichstraβe. “Thanks, but can you explain to us how we are supposed to know to go to platform 15?” “You need platform 15.” “Yeah, but why?” “Platform 15”

Um… ok. At least he was right. Thanks to our scrawled directions and that handy little Buckingham Palace compass-keyring, we made it there on the first try. Things were looking up.

When I had booked the room, they had no twin/double rooms available. I had the choice of either splitting us up into male/female dorm beds of paying for an extra person and scoring a three bed apartment all to ourselves. Booyakasha! It paid off. We were able to make lunches and a few dinners at home and easily paid off the extra €30 per night. On the downside, from the bedroom window we looked straight at the Ernst & Young building. There is no escape from Uncle Ernie’s relentless grip.

We made a little mission to find a supermarket, which ended up being directly under the train station we had arrived at and we find king brown (500ml) bottles of delicious German beer for 85c Euro. We also bought cheeses and dark german bread for the following day’s lunch. Win all round!

And, conquering the hostel’s laundry facilities, we had clean clothes for the first time in over a week.

Friday October 7, 2011  

23 September: Frankfurt

We had packed our bags the night before so that we could get up early. We knocked back our standard breakfast of muesli, yoghurt and a banana and used the special tea bags we’d been given from Brown’s back in London.

It was a chilly morning as the sun came up. In Switzerland, we had been told that “you call it ‘fresh’, because ‘cold’ means below zero.” We wandered up (up, in Switzerland means quite a long way up) to the base of the waterfall that was opposite our cabin. It was called Staubach falls and was the most prominent waterfall in the valley. Following the path through the cow and sheep paddocks, we found that a path had been carved out of the rock so that you could walk up behind the falling water. Apparently, this was the only safe way to approach it, given the glacial debris that comes down. Even the sheep were kept away from the edge.

We handed back our key and got a lift to the Lauterbrunnen train station. Our bags were heavy and it was an up hill walk, so a lift was appreciated. We found the post office while waiting for the train and managed to send some of our goodies home.

We jumped on the Lauterbrunnen to Interlaken Ost train, and then switched to the Interlaken Ost to Luzern “Golden Pass” scenic train. The terrain for this leg was flatter and a lower elevation than the Montreux to Interlaken Ost leg. While still beautiful, if you could only do one scenic leg, do the Montreux-Interlaken section and on the way out of Lauterbrunnen you could get a connection directly from Interlaken to Basel.

In Luzern, we had an hour to kill before the train to Basel. We had taken the long way from Interlaken to Basel to take the scenic train. We knew we were going to be on trains all day, so the extra train time to catch some scenery was worth it. We dropped into the ticket office there and booked the last leg of the day’s journey (Basel to Frankfurt) as this was an Inter City Express (ICE) train and seats could not be guaranteed. Likewise, we booked an afternoon ticket out of Frankfurt to Berlin for a few days later. With 45 mins to spare, we stepped out of the train station and were greeted with a vista of Luzern from the river front. Across the river and amongst the hotels and businesses rose half a dozen old watch towers, a few churches and some remains of the city walls. To our left, next door to the train station, was the Modern Art Gallery and in front of that was the pier. We found a seat on the pier to eat our lunch (we’ve been carrying bread, cheeses and salami just about everywhere) and watch the swans. It was perfect.

A leisurely wander back into the bahnhof (train station), and we jumped onto the train to Basel and from there transferred to Frankfurt.

Frankfurt was our destination. I had booked a hostel not too far from the train station. There were no double rooms available, to we had a twin with two single beds. As it turned out, the hostel (Hostel Frankfurt), was across the road from the train station and we could see the sign as we stepped into the sunlight. We found our way in, up the smallest elevator ever and checked in. Our room had a nice new bathroom in an otherwise Spartan turn of the century building. It was clean, the sheets were fresh and the place seemed well organised and friendly. They had some good touches like soap dispensers in the bathroom so you didn’t need to carry a slimy bar of soap around. I also quite liked the window (which sounds really lame). If you turned the handle one direction, it tilted into the room to allow fresh air in from the top of the window. If you closed it again and turned the handle the other way, it opened on the other axis and swung in like a door. Magic!

Settled in, we went for a walk to find dinner. As it turned out, the bahnhof area was a bit dodgy. There were a fair few seedy looking characters and homeless people lingering about. It must also have been the red light district, given the street full of sex shops. Past this, however, were a few trendy cafes and pubs. Further up as we started to enter the CBD, we stumbled across a market in the middle of town. There were cows to be patted, some kind of über strong cherry schnapps to be sampled, cheese and sausage sellers and a bunch of beer and food stalls.

At one point, we wandered into a stall with someone cooking up seafood. They had a bunch of tubs with fish swimming around in them. As we walked up, one little fish about the size of a decent ciclid poked his head out and seemed to look at me. Weird fish. Next moment, out he wriggled and splotched himself on the cobble stones in front of me. What the hell just happened? I grabbed the little bugger off the pavement and foiled his escape attempt by chucking him back in his water. Some of the people walking past were watching by this stage. I noticed that some of the tanks had Perspex on them, so I slid a sheet over this little Houdini and looked up. Across the tanks from me a bloke and his girlfriend were looking a bit freaked out. I followed his eyes to the eels in the tank in front of him. By sliding the Perspex onto my fish, I had uncovered the eels. We looked at each other, and I hurriedly  pushed the Perspex back on to the eels. Better of two evils. Andhey, maybe the little guy would make good his escape.

We found dinner at a pizza stall and a bratwurst stand and necked a stein of beer at the beer hut. It was turning out to be a good day.

Back at the room, we confirmed the train times for the next day and went to bed.