Frankfurt: The 38 Hour Day

I think it's fair to say that I hit the ground running in Germany.

After a smooth flight in a bulkhead row chatting with two Americans also backpacking in Germany that also didn't pay for the upgraded seats we were all in, we landed in Frankfurt at about 9am local time.  Leaving Seattle at 2pm the day before, we never went through a period of night on the flight.

Once logistics were taken care of, I arrived at my hostel somewhat before noon with one of my new flight friends in tow. Despite check-in not being until 4pm, the hostel was nice enough to let me store my baggage and help myself to the free breakfast they put out every morning. (Breakfast is until noon....my kinda place.)

I'm a sucker for spiral staircases.

Thus unburdened, my new friend and I walked the kilometer and a half to the Naturmuseum Senckenberg. So far, I have found Frankfurt to be architecturally diverse and incredibly walkable, and impression that started heading to the Naturmuseum on tree-lined streets with beautiful but dense housing--5 and 6 story apartment building with great stone facades and architectural details. Also, stupidly good bicycle treatment: separated tracks, traffic calming, and drivers that are conscientious.

For me, the most standout part of the museum was the bird collection. Cases and cases of stuffed birds filled an entire wing and it took probably an hour to get through them. (Wikipedia says there are over 2000 specimens.) I certainly expanded my knowledge of the diversity of birds on earth.

There museum also houses some impressive fossils, exhibits on geology and biodiversity, a live bee hive, and specimens of crabs and butterflies, and a somewhat creepy room filled with things pickled in jars with an eye towards educating on the history of scientific inquiry.  Seriously though, filled with lots and lots of things. Overall, a great way to spend an afternoon; my thanks to my friend that recommended it.

The museum was also strikingly pretty.  It is made out of some kind of brown stone with lighter colors swirled through it that I quickly dubbed "latte-stone".

Latte!

Back to the hostel for some backyard grilling, a debate with an American about linguistics, friendly chatting over some beers, and....a pub crawl.  The crawl went about like one would expect: good German beer was had, everyone gets friendlier and warmer until by the fourth bar I'm having a soul-baring conversation with my new German friend Stephan. (We originally bonded because he recognized my Pebble watch and wanted to know more about it. Nerds unite!)  This kind man spoke with me for about an hour after everyone else had left.  We meander home just as dawn is coming into the sky, at which point I stopped us to notice the colors. I don't know that I've ever seen a green dawn before, but as the sky first lightened the silhoettes of old churches and modern skyscrapers were back-lit with a unique emerald glow.

That would have been a good end to my 36 hour (and counting) day. The universe, however, has a sense of humor.  On the latter half of our walk Stephan and I began chatting with a friendly bicyclist laden with groceries.  I have no more idea why he was biking home with groceries at 4:30am than I do why he decided to talk with us, but once he started talking there was no getting rid of him.  He shared his homemade chocolate-peppermint schnapps from his biking water bottle, and after he tipped over his bike and spilled his groceries he tried to send us off with some of them. I'm mostly smiling and nodding while Stephan talks with the guy.  After some time friendly is becoming tedious and cold...then alarming.  We try to say our farewells and walk off, but the cyclist follows us instead of continuing in his original direction, once again dumping his groceries out in his excitement to talk with us. (Stephan cannot convince him to take back his loaf of bread.)

With more insistence we try to continue on our way while the man is, absolutely literally, asking us to declare ourselves as his Nazi brothers.  At this point I feign illness and drag Stephan off while he makes apologies to the interloper that seem to satisfy him.  However, just a few minutes later he's biked up to us again.  At this point the city is beginning to wake, and crucially we're about 20 yards from a police officer standing at a road closure.  Unable to deter the cyclist and not wanting him to know where I was headed, I walked determinedly off while he and Stephan still spoke trusting that the police were in range if Stephan needed them.  After walking several blocks in the wrong direction to deter stalking, I circled back and through dead reckoning and some amount of luck arrived back at the hostel shortly after 6am, begging the reception to text Stephan and tell him I was safe.  Shaken, I sat in the lobby for half an hour to decompress, when finally Stephan arrives....still carrying the loaf of bread from the Nazi cyclist. Now that we're all safe and sound, it is my long overdue bedtime.

I hope to run into Stephan again before I leave Frankfurt tomorrow to get his side of the story, and at least some idea of what the several hours of German conversation I stood by for were about.