Friday I kind of took it easy but needed something done in Bamberg so I took Pat along with me so he could see the city. He's about to move there as he got transferred to another unit. I finally remembered to bring my camera to take this picture.
Friday evening we took it easy and watched Cliffhanger, ate pizza, and drank some beers in my hotel room. Saturday Pat and I headed off to Frankfurt. It was a lot different than Munich in so many ways. Frankfurt is very modern and industrialized with lots of skyscrapers everywhere.
Alte Oper (Old Opera House)
We stayed in the "Center City" which was near the Hauftbanhof (train station). It was an extremely international community which Pat says is much like New York City. People from every corner of the world lived and worked beside each other here. Frankfurt also has a red light district that is crazy. You just walk past these places and half-naked girls are trying to get you to come in. The "businesses" have some pretty funny names but I don't know if our forefathers wanted our country's name used in this manner...
It took us awhile to find a good bar (bad planning) but eventually we made it to a place called Sachsenhausen across the river which had a really great bar scene. There was almost every kind of bar there but of course we ended up in the Irish Pub after some crawling. We met up with some girls that were celebrating a birthday. Most of these girls had American parents but were born and lived their entire life in Germany. We also hung out with some Marines who worked at the Consulate and had to do some Journey on the Karaoke
It was a long night but a lot of fun. We decided to head down to Heidelberg for no particular reason. I think Frankfurt got the best of us. Heidelberg is the US Army Europe's Headquarters but we weren't there for official business. Our buddy Jeff happened to be down there so we met up with him on the "beach" which is a large grassy park area on the river. There were lots of people out there and it was a nice place to just lay around and relax. While lounging around we were attacked by a blitzkreig of German Geese; as you animal lovers know these are the most aggressive of any fowling on the European continent.
We then headed up to see the Heidelberger Schloss, which is an old castle.
Courtyard inside the castle where they had a stage and lighting equipment set up. It looked like they might have had concerts in there which would be pretty neat.
View of Heidelberg from castle
Jeff decided to head back but Pat and I went out in Heidelberg's Altstadt (Old Town) where a lot of restaurants and bars were. It was Sunday night so not many people were out but we managed to hop around a little which was a nice change of pace from Frankfurt. We stayed in a hostel for my first time in Europe and Pat's first time ever. The room was bare but it did have its own bathroom which is a good thing because my snoring made Pat pull his mattress right into the shower.
Oh yeah, the only place you can get free refills in Germany is at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Even though I got food poisoning from there 4 July 2001 in Flagstaff, Arizona, I couldn't pass up the chance for some fried chicken which is nonexistent here.
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