December 6 -- Trip to the OTHER Frankfurt After resolving my bank crisis, I was ready to get out of Vienna as safely and smoothly as possible to have a stress-free weekend of sigh-seeing. I caught a bus at 3:00pm at the Westbahnhof train station that took me directly to the Vienna airport. The bus took about an hour, so I just took a short nap. Easy enough! :) I was quite early for my flight, so after checking in at the desk and getting to pick an isle seat, I sat down and had my first Starbucks in 3.5 months. It was glorious. While I was sitting, I just sipped my tea, read a book, and listened to the English Christmas music (they played old favorites such as the Little Drummer Boy!) over the intercom. -- At 4:55, I boarded my plane, sat in my seat, and fell fast asleep (it had been a very long couple of weeks up to this point!). Before we left, Alyssa and I tried to figure out how we would meet up in the airport. Our flights were supposed to get in very close together. She was supposed to arrive from Madrid about 35 minutes before my plane did, so I just told her that she could come to my gate. Then, just in case something went wrong or something happened, just meet at the front entrance of the airport. We figured it was better to have a back-up plan, so that we could eventually meet up. Alyssa knew all of the details of our hostel, so we were just going to leave the airport together to be safe. Well, due to bad air temperature or fog or something, my flight was delayed while we were in the air. We landed about 30 minutes later than we were supposed to, but I figured that would have given Alyssa time enough to come find me. I got out of my plane, and there was NO Alyssa to be found. Knowing about our second meeting point, I thought she might have just gone on to the entrance, so I headed that way. I got out into the main departure area, and my heart completely sank. There was, apparently, a concert going on inside the airport, and there had to be at least 2,000 people all over the place. I couldn't find Alyssa ANYWHERE in the huge airport, and everyone was partying but me. My heart started racing when I thought of not knowing even the name of our hostel, and not being able to find the one person who did. I looked all around, even outside. Then, I saw that there was a second level of departure floors downstairs, so I hurried down the steps. At the foot of the stairs, I saw an information desk, and asked them if they could page Alyssa Story. I started to get SO worried, and asked them to page her in English and in Spanish! (the things you think when you are freaking out) I stood at the desk for about 30 minutes, and she never came. I asked the information people to keep announcing for her, and they did two more times. How is she going to hear this, no matter WHAT language it is in, if there is a rock concert going on in the main floor?? This was not not not good. I looked helplessly at the desk workers, and started to cry a little bit. I kept trying to make the situation seem better to myself. No need to freak out, Amanda... I am sure if I can't find her, they must have a nice place that I can lay down and spend the next 3 days......... Then, I asked the desk man if there was ANY way that he could look to see if she was looking for me. -- He pulled up a screen of all of the pages that had been made that day. I practically jumped over the desk when I saw Alyssa Story at 8:20 for Amanda Tyree. "CALL THEM! THAT IS HER!" I pretty much scared the info. man to death, and he called up to another information desk. I don't think that I have ever prayed so fast in my life. I could only pray that she was still standing at whatever information desk that she had placed the distress call for Amanda from. -- About 10 minutes later, I see a familiar pair of feet coming down the stairs across the room. I started crying and then heard my best friend yell, "AMANDA, oh my gosh!" -- Alyssa and I ran to eachother and just cried and hugged. We had been lost from eachother (in what turned out to be the 3rd largest airport in Europe) for about an hour. It turned out that her flight had been delayed, too, and was also in a different terminal than mine, so she had to ride a bus over to this one! OF ALL THE THINGS! So, after surviving that experience, we knew that we were capable of getting through ANYTHING. We bought tickets for the Frankfort U-Bahn, which was very sketchy. When we got out, we saw that we were in the Frankfurt Red Light district.... but that wasn't going to bother us, since we just survived a real crisis..... we weren't scared!! We walked away from the craziness and found our hostel, which turned out to be VERY nice! The next obstacle was trying to open the door to our room. The key system was unlike anything that I had seen. You had to push a button, wave the card in front of it, and then turn in in a special way a special number of times to get in. It seriously took us about 10 minutes to get in the room, but we made an Israeli friend in the process. Alyssa and I were hungry, so we ventured out and found a very nice little pasta joint and had a nice, relaxing meal. We just laughed at the fact that I thought paging Alyssa in two languages was going to help, haha. The whole situation was crazy, but we had made it to Germany!!!!! Day 1 - - Frankfurt Alyssa and I woke up and went down to breakfast, which was free with our hostel, and then decided to set out for a day of just exploring the Christmas markets and enjoying German life. We heard that it was supposed to rain, but today it was very nice outside! -- One of the first things we saw while navigating through Frankfurt's streets to the markets was a very interesting store. This store was called CHRIST seit 1863, which means Christ since 1863..... and all this time I thought that Jesus was born in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago! According to these people, he wasn't any older than the United States. haha. We laughed a lot about that! Using our amazing sense of direction, we soon found the markets! It was soooo beautiful. For lunch, we ate traditional Frankfurters, which were quite good. We spent the majority of the day looking at all of the wooden crafts, checking out a cathedral, and laughing at all of the random things we could find. -- After leaving the market, we strolled through the financial district of Frankfurt. I got pretty excited when I saw two statues in the middle of a square of a big Bear and a Bull. This was to symbolize the bear and the bull markets! I am a business major, so I get really pumped about these things. haha. We also got to see the amazing Opera House, which was right down from the financial part of town. After that, Alyssa and I decided to do what all girls our age do around Christmas... SHOP! We went into our new favorite store, Promod, to look for what Alyssa called a "Eurotastic" outfit. I succeeded in getting a cute little shirt that was on a great sale. To escape the cold weather, we had gingerbread lattes at Starbucks and some Amaretto nuts. Frankfurt is more of a shopping city than anything else, but Alyssa and I were completely content just enjoying the company and taking in the Christmas scene. We heard some loud music coming from a nearby square, so we decided to check it out. When we got there, we realized that it was a HUGE Coca Cola Christmas party! The music that we heard were these two peoploe singing about Jesus on a big stage. It was wonderful!!!! I am definately in the Christmas mood now!! We started waking around some more after the Coca Cola Christmas. We passed a large crowd of people standing by a rather large Christmas booth. What sort of Christmas cheer is being spread that everyone is so excited about? I wondered to myself. Then I saw it...... mounted atop a big booth was the craziest, strangest bit of Christmas that I have ever seen in my life....... There was a Giant moose head with a Santa cap.... and it was singing. The moose started off with a lovely version of Silent Night or something, but then the real show began. This huge moose started singing Feliz Navidad.... yes.... a bi-lingual singing Christmas moose. I thought that I couldn't be amazed any further, until the moose started singing in GERMAN! This moose knew 3 languages, and was spreading Christmas cheer to the whole square. Alyssa just looked at eachother and died laughing and took pictures. This was SO random, but very funny. Near to the square were some of the random tourist shops. Alyssa needed a postcard and a few little things, so we ducked into the store for a bit. The shop owner was this older lady who was very excited to see us. She just talked and talked and showed us all of the things in her store. Since we didn't know much about the city, we decided to ask her about a good traditional German place to eat that night. She drew me a map to a restaraunt across the main river to a place called Wagner, where she said we could enjoy some German atmosphere and food. -- That sounded good to us! We got cleaned up at the hostel, and then followed the lady's directions to the Wagner restaraunt. When we got in, we saw a VERY German-looking place. There were no private tables, but instead big long tables with random people sitting all around. The waiter seated us in between two groups of older "Bingo" looking people. They were thoroughlly enjoying their apple wine and kept their conversations to themselves. Alyssa hadn't ever tried schnitzel before, so we ordered some and also the traditional apple wine of Frankfurt. -- Alyssa and I were two of the most friendly people around, and we wanted to make friends! We were happy when the old people left and two well-dressed guys sat down. We found out that they were on business from Munich (one of them was Polish, though)! We talked to these guys for the entire meal. We then asked them if there was anything good to do in Frankfurt this time of night, and they told us about this nice bar close by. We decided to check it out and see if we could make any more friends, lol. When we walked into the pub, we quickly realized that it was VERY upscale. Everyone in there looked pretty snazzy, so Alyssa and I weren't exactly sure if we belonged. We were approached by this group of 3 people about our age, and instantly struck up a conversation with them. We sat down at a table and talked with this guy named Simon for quite a while. He was originally from Frankfurt. He was studying Economics, and his friends had all just finished law school. Wow! Respectable, intelligent people! We got some inside local information, and went to a club pretty close by. Alyssa and I were incredibly excited when we heard a song by Usher. :) We spent a while in that club just talking and laughing with our new Frankfurter friends. Our favorites were Simon, Oli (a crazy little guy), and Jan (translated, means John). They were very cool Germans! Day 2 -- Heidelberg Alyssa and I woke up early to catch a train to Heidelberg. One of our friends studied there all of last year, so we thought it would be nifty to see everything that he saw. -- While we were getting ready, we talked to the other people who were in our hostel room. First, two girls walked in speaking Spanish. Alyssa's eyes lit up, and she immediately struck up a conversation with them. I really had no idea how amazing she had gotten at speaking over these past few months. I was so proud! I could understand the basic conversation, but wasn't able to say much, so I just listened to them chit chat away. If Momma Story was worried that Alyssa hadn't learned anything this semester, I can completely vouche for her and say that she is, in fact, quite the Spanish speaker! :) After the girls left, another guy walked in from breakfast. His name was Adrian, and he was from Melbourne, and was back-packing around for 2 months alone before he started classes in Germany in February. He didn't have anything to do that day, so he just decided to hop the train with us! -- The train ride to Heidelberg was about 1 hour and 20 minutes, so not too bad at all. We arrived at the train station in the center of the city, and got out eager to explore! We weren't entirely sure where to go from the station, so I decided to put my semi-okay (at best) German skills to the test. I did great! I found out that to get to the castle, we would have to take tram 33 to the base of the mountain, where we would then take the Bergbahn up one extra stop to get to the Heidelberg Schloss (castle). So.... we did! -- While we were on the tram to the bottom of the mountain, Alyssa struck up another 10-15 minute conversation with some ladies from Spain. She was just awesome!! I guess that she gave me some confidence in my little language skills, because once we got off the tram, I communicated in German to the Bergbahn ticket lady and even got us a discount using our student IDs (studentin karte). This was definitely the day to test our communication, and we were passing wonderfully. -- While we were riding up on the bergbahn, Lys started singing the song from Sound of Music "Climb Every Mountain," and all of the other people on the ride thought it was hilarious.... it's never a dull moment with my best friend, that is for sure. Our Australian companion kept pretty quiet... maybe because he couldn't get a word in between the 3 languages we were speaking and our chatty nature! ;) The castle at the top was very awesome. It really reminded me of something that my dad would just love. The entire castle grounds were very rustic and manly. We got to see the winery and the place where all of the medical stuff was done. This city and castle are famous for their research in medicine and pharmacy things. Where was Bryce when you needed him?? After spending some time at the castle, we climbed our way back down the mountain and had a tasty lunch of sour kraut, brats, and hot chocolate (which I also ordered completely in German.... go AT)! YUM! -- We then explored the Christmas markets, tasted some German hot wine, took pictures of people ice-skating, bought some presents, and just enjoyed the most picturesque little town you have ever seen. It seriously looked like something out of a Christmas card. We left Heidelberg at around 4:30 and caught a train back to Frankfurt. I was quite aware that the stop for Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof was the very last stop, so Alyssa and I decided to take a nap and just wait for the end of the line. We were suddenly woken up by Adrian, who was like, "this is our stop, let's go!" Sleepily, Lys and I climbed off the train and walked down the platform. In about 1 minute, I realized that somebody (not naming names) had made a BIG AUSTRALIAN MISTAKE and told us to get off too early. Now, how is a kid supposed to backpack through Europe for 2 months if on his first trip, gets off at the wrong train station!!!???!!! -- Luckily for us (and for his life in particular), the trains ran hourly. We just got a snack, read a magazine, and talked. Alyssa was looking at one magazine, and saw a picture of a man, woman, and kid in the most awkward nude pose ever. Alyssa tapped my shoulder and said, "Now THAT is a special family picture!" I turned to look (expecting some happy smiles coming from a typical nuclear family), and almost spit pretzels all over the train station from laughing so hard!! haha. -- After an hour, we hopped back on a new train and caught the next ride home. Oh, Australian kid....... It was bitter cold when we reached Frankfurt, so Alyssa and I decided to stay in. Our hostel served free spaghetti dinner that night, which was delicious! We ate up, put on our pajamas, and sat up in my bed for a long time..... just laughing. We laughed about everything that had happened on our trip: me paging her in Spanish at the airport, our run-ins with the locals, our Australian baby-sitting job, etc. -- I really felt like I was back at home, chilling on the couch with my best friend. This trip was definately a perfect way to get into the Christmas mood and de-stress before the next 2 weeks of exams and hard work started up. Such an amazing trip to end my semester travels in Europe! December 9 -- Coming back..... Alyssa and I both caught flights back at 8am. We both had a lot of studying to start, so getting back early was the best idea. -- When I was on the bus back to the Westbahnhof train station (after my flight landed), I started a conversation with a man from the states. I found out that he (Chris) was from Michigan and was just vacationing in Vienna for a week. He was a travel agent in training, so was exploring around getting a feel for the land. -- I explained to him how to get around in Vienna, some of the must-see sights, and even offered to show him where his hotel was (because he had no idea and since it was quite close to where I live). He was a very nice man! What a nice end to a WONDERFUL weekend!