Our Travels

August 25, 2009

Frankfurt, Germany

Eric had to travel to Frankfurt, Germany for some work so Keenan and I tagged along and made a vacation out of it. My first impression of Germany... "Wow, this feels so "normal" compared to Kyiv" Some people might wonder what I mean by this, well in Germany cars are not parked on the sidewalks you can actually walk on them, lots of people riding bicycles as drivers are actually considerate and seem to give pedestrians and bikers the right of way... it didn't feel like I was taking my life in my hands trying to cross the street, the women weren't dressed in 4 inch stillettos nor in see through clothing that revealed everything underneath, people spoke English, grass is actually mowed and cared for, no packs of stray dogs which also means I felt comfortable walking barefoot in the park. I'm not trying to say Kyiv is a bad place, just different from what I'm used to.

We arrived in the late morning on Wednesday and after getting settled into our airconditionerless hotel room set out to find lunch and somewhere to exchange some money. We've been spoiled in Kyiv as when we change money we get back a whole lot more (exchange rate is 8.4 griven to 1 USD) but the Euro doesn't quite work in our favor. The Euro exchange rate was 1 Euro to about $1.43 USD and prices seemed to be a bit higher everywhere. Needless to say we blew through a lot of money on our trip, mostly on food.

For our first lunch we sat outside and had a plate of schnitzel which was pretty tasty and of course of German brew to wash it all down.

I checked the weather forecast before we left and swear that it said it was going to be in the low 70's the entire time we were there...wrong! The first few days were sweltering hot. Eric nor I packed shorts and Keenan had 1 pair that he got to wear over and over again. We found a nice park not far from our hotel that had an awesome sand play area. Most of the kids were running around in their under-roos or nothing at all so we stripped Keenan down too but, made him keep on his undies.

Traveling wore Keenan out!
Sand digging tool
Lots of kids enjoying the sand and water.
More playground.
This man was walking around selling pretzels... they were very tasty.

2 comments:

Laura Olson said...

Sounds like a great trip! I love the pic of you guys eating lunch. It looks like every meal I've ever eaten in Germany/Austria - schnitzel and fries. :)

mom said...

Sounds like fun, except for no airconditioning. My parents loved Germany when they went years ago. Love, Louise