My new home in Frankfurt and 1st German hair cut!

And then there was one....

My husband Zac flew back home to New Zealand a few days ago after first arriving in Frankfurt and staying one night in my new apartment in the city. The place I´m renting in Frankfurt is a really nice one bedroom place which is small but homely (and no more sharing toilets - yay!). The apartment is the bottom story of a three story house which has been renovated, has it´s own seperate access; and is only a 15min train ride to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (central station).

Zac was super excited to be getting home after almost five months away, but he also admitted a couple of things he would miss, such as; the relative freedom (naturally he has to start working not long after getting home); the snow in Europe (during snowboarding season); the awesome public transit system; and the cheap food and drink (eating out included!); oh and the big German pretzels! (he could not get enough). As much as he was dying to get home, on his last day here he said he could've stayed longer (mind you I´ve no doubt he meant only an extra week to see Frankfurt - but I´m going to pretend he meant months longer!).

I´m just grateful forever that this trip, and Europe, will always be a part of our lives together now, *note: that ís not the same as saying I am content with having completed only this trip of Europe together, think of it more like now we have a stronger base to build from...

My 'building'. How do they get the grass SO green?

My 'seating area' - posh eh? Well maybe it would pass as such
if it wasn´t for the snuggly draped over the chair...

 

Now that Zac´s gone I have mostly been spending my time trying to get work completed before my mum and my aunty arrive on Sunday (exciting!), but today I ventured out to get my first German haircut. I was a little bit apprehensive after making my hair appointment as, at this point I realised the hairdresser didn´t speak any English, but I got by well enough, so I was determined I would get by at the crucial point when she was armed with scissors.

You can´t tell from the outside or even when your standing at the reception desk, but it turned out the Salon I picked, has likely not had a client under the age of 70 for some time. I felt like the hairdresser (who was younger herself and closer to 50ish) was extra excited to see a client who 1) didn´t want her hair done in rollers and 2) still had a full head of hair to play with. After explaining in German that I wanted 'something more natural looking but not drastically different', to which she replied with a rather long story about, from what I could understand anyway, two of her sisters are blonde.........one sister may or may not have a daughter............some one else is blonde? (a neighbour maybe?)...............these colours would suit you *she is now pointing at a picture in a hair magazine (or is that the neighbours hair colour she is indicating?). Suffice to say I was a little worried at first but she was quickly well on her way and I could tell she´d made her mind up (maybe this happened during the story...).

I must´ve been in the salon for around two hours, and in this time, little old ladies came and went and every single one of them got rollers. One particulary old lady had really not much hair left to roll (let's be honest!) and so the hairdresser had to use these teeny tiny little rollers, the likes of which I had never seen before. At one point one of the ladies tried to get up from her chair but struggled a little and made 'ähhh ohhhh' sounds then she made everybody giggle when she exclaimed 'äähhh meine Knochen!' (which translates as 'ahh my bones' - sounds a lot funnier in German!).

All in all the salon visit was a great success having met some sweet old ladies as I was honoured to be privy to their weekly tradition that is the hair salon visit.
Oh and I even came out with a hair cut I liked too...


Lé Result - with all 'Knochen' still in tact

Köln AKA Cologne

We have almost been in Cologne a week already and the time has flown. After being relatively isolated in the German countryside for six weeks, it´s been like a different world here.

We are renting an apartment right on top of Zülpicher Straße, which is a student area full of bars, pubs and restaurants. Our apartment is small and has a shared loo (but own shower), but it´s clean, cheap and the location is just unbeatable! The only downside is that we have spent a lot more money than we normally would this week on drinks and meals out, as it´s SO convenient and the food is great AND with 4€ cocktail happy hours! It also sucks that our room is 85 steps (!) up as we are on the 5th floor with no elevator - on the flipside we are both well on our way to buns of steel!

Our 'cosy' one room apartment in Cologne

Our first day after arriving was discount day at the zoo (Montag ist Zootag!), and seeing as the zoo here was rated in the top three things to do in Cologne by Tripadvisor, we gave it a go. I always love watching animals be silly and, although it was a hot day, the animals were being quite active and we even saw the tigers swimming.

Saw some parents pulling their kids around in these cute carts which
were all fine & dandy untill you have to pull them UP hill!

The absolute must see attraction in Cologne is offcourse, the cathedral, which is actually also the only attraction you cannot avoid seeing in this city. As soon as we arrived at the main train station and walked outside to find a cab it was right there and blew us away! I still can´t believe it somehow managed to avoid bombing in WWII, it´s HUGE, just as well though as rebuilding it would´ve been a bitch!

There´s even boats all along the river that will take you up and down the Rhine for an hour for only about 8€ to give you a different view of the city so we did that a few days ago too for something different. Actually I was surprised Zac agreed to do this with me, as it´s not typically his thing, but I think the fact that it was only for an hour helped me sell it.

Our cruise vessel of choice - including 'oompa loompa'
Music blasting from strained speakers

Oh and that bridge you see in the photo above is the Hohenzollernbrücke, famous for it´s 'love locks'. What are the love locks you ask? Well I´m glad you asked ;-) There are so many of them that you can even see them from the ground, they are colourful padlocks that span the whole bridge mainly put there by couples who engrave their initials on them and lock them to the bridge to signify their commitment to each other. They are a nice idea and a beautiful sight, does kinda make you wonder how many of those couples have actually stayed together though...

 

...I know, I know, I´m missing the point right?

Renting an Apartment While Travelling Germany

I thought I´d better blog today as we only have one full day left pet-sitting the sausage dog in this pink house in Bavaria, and most of that time will be taken up with cleaning and packing, so if I don´t blog today it may not be for some time.

As we no longer have the van, the rest of our trip will be by train, and on Sunday our train leaves here (departing at 6:30am no less!) and we head up to Köln (Cologne) for a week. It´s a trip that is around four and a half hours by car,that will take us almost eight hours on the train as I booked the cheapest tickets possible (damn budget!). The good news is we´re being met at the other end by the lady who is renting out her apartment to us for eight nights. I found her on the German real-estate website Studenten-WG which has lots of ads for share-house accomodation, but also has the option to restrict your search for what the Germans' call 'Zwischenmiete'. Zwischenmiete is when a persons' apartment is available to rent for a short period only, usually just while they are away on holidays or similar, in my case it's because the renter spends most her time at her boyfriend's apartment while on uni holidays. Zwischenmiete is great if you want to spend at least a week in the one place, as they´re not usually available for less than this, and the apartment's come completely furnished with everything still in them. It does help if you're flexible with your travel plans and dates though, so that you can work around when a Zwischenmiete is available, the same goes for pet-sitting.

So yesterday we gave the sausage a bath so that she´s super pretty for when her owners get home (considerate much?) and afterwards she just went psycho with energy. Between appearing to be digging to China and barking at the wall, it was all pretty entertaining to watch, I even made a video out of it:

We´re both more than ready to move on and explore new places, but boy am I going to miss my little sausage friend, even though lately it seems to be Zac she´s more in love with than me.

haha man these dogs crack me up! Found this one on dachshundlove.blogspot.com



Awwww I´m gonna miss that face!

 

 

What to do in rural Germany

We´ve now been pet-sitting the sausage dog in rural Germany for four weeks, and we still have just over a week remaining. Since we sold our van almost three weeks ago, we are definitely more restricted with where we can go and when we can go there. Living here is great but I think we´re both ready to move on and explore elsewhere.

My husband, Zac, is well and truly over it and just wishes he was at home, in fact, he changed his flight home bringing it forward 2 weeks earlier than originally planned. He was definitely only here for the snowboarding and now that all the snow has well and truly melted, and it´s so hot out we try not to leave the house in the middle of the day, he´s super keen to get home. I definitely have to give him credit for sticking it out though, we last snowboarded about 3 months ago and after the visit to Miniature Wonderland in Hamburg, that was already everything ticked off Zac´s Euro wish list with still three months left of his time here. Since then he´s been ready to go home but has been following me around to humour me.

We´ve found ways to pass our time in rural Germany, however creatively, Zac brought a GoPro nearby at Media Markt so we tried to strap it to the sausage dog like a 'day in the life' sort of thing. The results were a little dissapointing as she has such a tiny frame that the camera was too heavy for her and the mount we used (a spatula taped to a wooden spoon) was not ideal. Having said that, it´s still pretty funny to watch, you can see it at the link below:

Also, I have taken the opportunity of having a postal address again to ensure I get as many things delivered that I "need" as possible...

A bit of excitement for little Miss sausage

It´s like Christmas time!