Near Frankfurt we couchsurfed with a lady in a place called Laangan. She lived in a beautiful one bedroom apartment and she gave us her bedroom to sleep in because she was an early bird who wanted to work from home early in the morning. The stores were closed by the time we got near her home so we cooked some pasta we had from before and our host provided the sauce. She loved to cook so she prepared a nice dinner and we ate and got to know each other before calling it a night.
The next morning we wanted to visit the Bahai House of Worship near Frankfurt and our host wanted to accompany us. She prepared a delicious breakfast with scrambled eggs, bacon and peppers which we enjoyed. After several cups of coffee, the three of us drove about half an hour through the beautiful country. The temple is located on a hill in the countryside. It is an architectural masterpiece and a peaceful place to pray and meditate. We were greeted in the information center by a very kind and elderly man. He was of German, Protestant decent and had been serving in there for the last ten years with his wife. He was very knowledgable about the Bahai Faith and after showing us a very informative and well created video on the basis of the religion, we all discussed its contents. Our host was Protestant so the conversation was very interesting and I believe we all learned a great deal about each other and a few of the major religions of the world. The topics varied from life after death, to the fact that there is one creator that some people call God, to the need for spiritual and moral education for the betterment of society, to praying and other such things. Some things we agreed on such as the equality of men and women and some things we disaggreed on such as independant investigation for the truth without the need for preachers. The conversation went on for several hours which was much longer than any of us thought we would be there. Nevertheless it was necessary and after we were finished, the three of us walked to the temple. As an architect, our host was amazed by the design and the building of the structure. We walked through the colourful gardens and each prayed independently for a while.
Our host drove us into the center of Frankfurt and we got the one on two private tour of the place from the point of view of an architect which was a unique and refreshing take on the city. She taught us that after everything was destroyed in the bombings of world war two, some things we rebuilt to look modern and others were repaired to their original old look. Thus the effect is a mixture of very old brick buildings with modern white high rises. There are also very impressive gigantic funny shaped buildings that make the city look a bit space aged. There is something for everyone in the small town. There are, of course, many cathedrals. Some Protestant and some Catholic but all very breautiful. There is a bridge near the center of town that was apparently built by the local residents so that they could get from one side of the river to the other without having to travel a long distance. It is a unique place because it is a story of the citizens taking matters into their own hands and creating what they wanted. On one side of this bridge are dozens of museams and on the other is everything else. We saw a lot of street musicians and performers including one extremely intoxicated older woman who was dancing in the middle of a crowd of people who gathered to laugh at her. She was trying to be provacative but it was a rather horendous display of the effects of alcohol. We tried not to watch as we passed. We also passed by many gypsy ladies, some of whom had young children and puppies, we were instructed to ignore them. We went into a couple of the cathedrals which were very big and in line with all the others we had seen up until this point.
We stopped by a Thai store where we bought all the ingredients our host needed to make us some Thai food. Since she loved to cook, she offered to make us a few Thai dishes and while the ingredients proved to be more expensive than what we had expected to spend, the food was very good. At the house we ate a cold pasta salad with seafood to start. During the first of the two movies we watched on her comfy couches that night, we ate a big bucket of sweet popcorn between the three of us. Following that snack, we devoured all of the coconut cream chicken curry and jasmine rice she prepared. After this gluttonous evening, we slept well.
The next morning we had a slow start which we blamed on the gloomy weather, it rained on and off with beautiful rainbow breaks in between. We drank coffee and watched movies before finally dragging ourselves out of the house. We got dropped off at the train station near our host's house and decided to hitchhike from there. We were not familiar with directions to the city so we asked people to guide us. The first lady drove us to a more appropriate spot to catch a ride to the city and after about thirty minutes a friendly Turkish guy took us out of his way into the city. Another very generous gesture from a complete stranger that we will not soon forget. We noticed that, for the most part, their seemed to be trends in the people who were picking us up. They seem to be young, male, single Turks in Volkswagons. While this has not been every time, it has been enough that we took notice. In town, we walked along the waterfront and stopped at a near by playground to use the teeter-totter. While we were playing, a lady walked by and asked if she could take our picture because, "you are really in love". Further down the waterfront, we decided to walk along the bridge that our host had pointed out the day before. It was a small simple foot bridge but there were many people enjoying their time on it. There were thousands of small locks attached to the structure as symbols of the love of the couples who put them there. Some of them had initials engraved or quotes written and this gesture also takes place in other European cities such as Venice and Paris. We did not have a lock but Tyson carved a very sweet message on the bridge in pen. We also heard that when couples break up, they return to their lock with bolt cutters and take their anger out on the metal representation of what used to be.
We spent the majority of the afternoon shopping and people watching. We went to a mall that had an observation deck at the top and took in a panoramic view of the city with all its cathedrals and high rises. We made lunch out of meat and potato chips with a side of McDonalds french fries. We had also bought a small square of what we thought was butter but turned out to be a foul smelling mystry food. We never discovered what it was but Tyson got our money back for it. We checked out the sites some more and somehow we were late to meet up with our host (as planned) to watch a classical music performance at one of the churches we visited the day before. There were two female opera style singers and a piano player who performed for over an hour. Opera is not generally the music we like but these women had beautiful voices and we really appreciated the quality of the music. I cannot say I didn't fall asleep for part of it but the part I was awake for was a wonderful experience. The acoustics in the church and the atmosphere added to the performance to make the evening even better. After the show we decided to head back home for dinner of pasta (again) and have an early night because we were all so drained from the day.
In the morning, our host took us to a rest stop on the highway that she suggested would be a good place to hitchhike to our friend's place in the Netherlands. Yes, we decided to hitch through Germany and into Holland. We had tried to use public transit or carpooling websites but nothing worked out and we still wanted to see our friend. We realized that we were not experienced after only two prior experiences but we felt confident that it would be okay. With zero preperation or knowledge of the route, we took the advice of our host and started our journey. We ended up going in a huge circle around the entire country in the wrong direction. We were picked up by at least a dozen people that we trusted to get us closer bit by bit. Since we did not have a single set destination, we went all over the map. We had a list of places that were near my friend's home so each driver took us toward a different one until we had been close to every place but had not actually reached any of them. Finally, from about forty five minutes to our friends house a nice young couple drove us the rest of the way (out of their way) to my friend's exact address. Actually we did not even flag these people down, Tyson had asked them a question as they were pumping fuel and they offered to take us. The driver of the VOLKSWAGON was TURKISH.... just saying. They gave us a dozen cans of pop to drink on the way and promised to visit us in Vancouver. The total journey took over nine hours when we were only three hours away to begin with. We withstood rain, wind, embarrasment, honking, taunting, laughing, joking and cold thumbs throughout the adventure. Tyson even raised his pant leg to show a little skin but for some reason it did not exactly work.
We knocked on the door and were greeted by familiar smiling faces. It was so nice to see our friends with their super adorable kids. We got there on a Saturday afternoon and soon learned that the grocery store would be closed on Sunday so we walked with my friend's two year old to the store. It was a short walk and he is at an age where he likes to stop and look at everything and try to pronounce their names. Half way through our shop, the staff shut the lights out to inform us they were closing. We grabbed what we could and rushed through the till. On our way back to the house we ran into my friend who was walking with the baby in a sling towards us. She made us spaghetti with meat and spinach sauce which was yummy and filling and we spent the night talking and catching up. Tyson and my friend's husband spent the night talking hockey and wandering the town gathering air matresses and sleeping bags for our sleeping arrangements.
We slept in the baby's bedroom which has dark curtains making it look like night all the time. This is our excuse for sleeping in until eleven thirty the next morning. We woke up to rainy weather that made it okay to have slept in. We spent the day playing with the kids, hanging out, drinking pots of coffee and catching up some more. It was exactly what we had come there to do. During a break in the rain, Tyson took the three year old to the park so he could burn off some energy. For dinner my friend prepared macaroni which we ate all together and then we quizzed each other about movie quotes and hockey trivia. We ate bags of candy until our mouths hurt and watched a classic Will Ferrell movie that was kinda funny and kinda not.
We spent our last morning there drinking coffee and getting ready to go out. As we learned, getting two kids up, fed, packed up and presentable enough to go out is quite the task. My friend is a pro and managed on her own while we watched and learned. We all walked to the grocery store to shop a bit and then continued into town. The town was dead because nothing opens on mondays before one pm but it was still a nice quaint place full of friendy-ish people. Once we got back to the house, we packed up and got a generous lift to the border of the Netherlands and Germany where we could begin another series of hitching rides from strangers. Although it was a short visit, we were happy we got the chance to see them and we had a great time together.
Luckily the rain held up as we held up our poorly written sign and stuck out our thumbs to the traffic. We always start off with fresh energy and an optimistic attitude which slowly fades away to pessimistic behavior which eventually turns into anger at the singly occupied vehicles driving in the direction we want to go without a glance. Normally we do not get to this stage between rides but when it happens I usually give up and sit down while Tyson forges on baring his legs, waving and performing other stunts that don't work but make us laugh. The experience of hitching with a known path and a knowledge of the area we want to go to makes a world of difference. We looked up and wrote down the way to the airport from my friend's house so we knew exactly where we wanted to go. We made signs and got to our destination two hundred and fifty kilometers away in only four vehicles. After being dropped off at the border by my friend, the first pick up was a lively Turkish guy who was ever so interested in our trip, the second was a young German guy with a new baby on his way home from work, the third was a middle aged truck driver who did not speak English in a huge semi truck, the last one who drove us completely out of his way was a young German guy who also wanted to hear stories of our travels. We got to the airport around seven pm for our eleven am flight to Ireland. We spent the time organizing our bags to not exceed the permitted ten kilograms by setting aside huge piles of clothes we had to put on the next morning. We watched movies, ate all of our food, watched people hugging their loved ones in arrivals and blogged. We slept along with dozens of other poor backpackers on the floor in the airport and it was a great time.
In the morning, we woke up in front of a huge crowd of people in line to check into their flight. When we checked the clock it was five am so we grabbed our stuff, found a quieter corner and went back to sleep until after nine. We waited in the unorganized line up to get our passports checked, scarfed down some pudding and rice cakes with peanut butter, squeezed into every piece of clothing we could and went to get our bags tested. After a thorough examination of the size and wieght of our bags, they passed and we were allowed to cross through security. Tyson set off the alarm because there were so many buttons on his several layer of pants and shorts so they checked each layer of clothing to make sure he was not hiding anything in his drawers. We continued to the waiting room which is not the nicest we've seen but it suited its purpose and we did not complain. We waddled our sweaty selves onto the plane and out the other side into our thirty fifth country.
We watched a movie on the flight while attendants constantly tried to tempt us to buy overpriced cigarettes and booze from their duty free options. When we finally got to Knock West Ireland Airport, it was pouring rain and windy. We had to wait just under two hours for our bus to take us to LetteryKenny but the covered waiting area was full so we stood just outside of it. In some countries, people would have squished together to give us spots out of the rain but in this one, people stoof a comfortable distance apart and did not seem to mind that we were under a downpour. We drank several cups of hot tea and rode the three and a half hour bus through the country. It rained throughout but we did not mind as much from inside the comfortable (but higher priced) bus. We watched the scenery of small towns, hundreds of churches, cute little shops and more green than one can imagine. Small hills of green, pastures of tall green grass and green trees along with acres of cattle and sheep passed by as we watched and waited to get to our destination. We called Tyson's cousin and planned to meet an hour later in front of some nearby shops. We spent the time trying on clothes and checking out our new environment. We got picked up and drove ten minutes to their very large, very beautiful house among acres of green grass, cattle and sheep. Twenty eight hours after leaving my friend's place in the Netherlands, we finally made it to our intended destination in Ireland. We met their baby
"If we are not happy and joyous in this season for what season shall we wait"
The next morning we wanted to visit the Bahai House of Worship near Frankfurt and our host wanted to accompany us. She prepared a delicious breakfast with scrambled eggs, bacon and peppers which we enjoyed. After several cups of coffee, the three of us drove about half an hour through the beautiful country. The temple is located on a hill in the countryside. It is an architectural masterpiece and a peaceful place to pray and meditate. We were greeted in the information center by a very kind and elderly man. He was of German, Protestant decent and had been serving in there for the last ten years with his wife. He was very knowledgable about the Bahai Faith and after showing us a very informative and well created video on the basis of the religion, we all discussed its contents. Our host was Protestant so the conversation was very interesting and I believe we all learned a great deal about each other and a few of the major religions of the world. The topics varied from life after death, to the fact that there is one creator that some people call God, to the need for spiritual and moral education for the betterment of society, to praying and other such things. Some things we agreed on such as the equality of men and women and some things we disaggreed on such as independant investigation for the truth without the need for preachers. The conversation went on for several hours which was much longer than any of us thought we would be there. Nevertheless it was necessary and after we were finished, the three of us walked to the temple. As an architect, our host was amazed by the design and the building of the structure. We walked through the colourful gardens and each prayed independently for a while.
Our host drove us into the center of Frankfurt and we got the one on two private tour of the place from the point of view of an architect which was a unique and refreshing take on the city. She taught us that after everything was destroyed in the bombings of world war two, some things we rebuilt to look modern and others were repaired to their original old look. Thus the effect is a mixture of very old brick buildings with modern white high rises. There are also very impressive gigantic funny shaped buildings that make the city look a bit space aged. There is something for everyone in the small town. There are, of course, many cathedrals. Some Protestant and some Catholic but all very breautiful. There is a bridge near the center of town that was apparently built by the local residents so that they could get from one side of the river to the other without having to travel a long distance. It is a unique place because it is a story of the citizens taking matters into their own hands and creating what they wanted. On one side of this bridge are dozens of museams and on the other is everything else. We saw a lot of street musicians and performers including one extremely intoxicated older woman who was dancing in the middle of a crowd of people who gathered to laugh at her. She was trying to be provacative but it was a rather horendous display of the effects of alcohol. We tried not to watch as we passed. We also passed by many gypsy ladies, some of whom had young children and puppies, we were instructed to ignore them. We went into a couple of the cathedrals which were very big and in line with all the others we had seen up until this point.
We stopped by a Thai store where we bought all the ingredients our host needed to make us some Thai food. Since she loved to cook, she offered to make us a few Thai dishes and while the ingredients proved to be more expensive than what we had expected to spend, the food was very good. At the house we ate a cold pasta salad with seafood to start. During the first of the two movies we watched on her comfy couches that night, we ate a big bucket of sweet popcorn between the three of us. Following that snack, we devoured all of the coconut cream chicken curry and jasmine rice she prepared. After this gluttonous evening, we slept well.
The next morning we had a slow start which we blamed on the gloomy weather, it rained on and off with beautiful rainbow breaks in between. We drank coffee and watched movies before finally dragging ourselves out of the house. We got dropped off at the train station near our host's house and decided to hitchhike from there. We were not familiar with directions to the city so we asked people to guide us. The first lady drove us to a more appropriate spot to catch a ride to the city and after about thirty minutes a friendly Turkish guy took us out of his way into the city. Another very generous gesture from a complete stranger that we will not soon forget. We noticed that, for the most part, their seemed to be trends in the people who were picking us up. They seem to be young, male, single Turks in Volkswagons. While this has not been every time, it has been enough that we took notice. In town, we walked along the waterfront and stopped at a near by playground to use the teeter-totter. While we were playing, a lady walked by and asked if she could take our picture because, "you are really in love". Further down the waterfront, we decided to walk along the bridge that our host had pointed out the day before. It was a small simple foot bridge but there were many people enjoying their time on it. There were thousands of small locks attached to the structure as symbols of the love of the couples who put them there. Some of them had initials engraved or quotes written and this gesture also takes place in other European cities such as Venice and Paris. We did not have a lock but Tyson carved a very sweet message on the bridge in pen. We also heard that when couples break up, they return to their lock with bolt cutters and take their anger out on the metal representation of what used to be.
We spent the majority of the afternoon shopping and people watching. We went to a mall that had an observation deck at the top and took in a panoramic view of the city with all its cathedrals and high rises. We made lunch out of meat and potato chips with a side of McDonalds french fries. We had also bought a small square of what we thought was butter but turned out to be a foul smelling mystry food. We never discovered what it was but Tyson got our money back for it. We checked out the sites some more and somehow we were late to meet up with our host (as planned) to watch a classical music performance at one of the churches we visited the day before. There were two female opera style singers and a piano player who performed for over an hour. Opera is not generally the music we like but these women had beautiful voices and we really appreciated the quality of the music. I cannot say I didn't fall asleep for part of it but the part I was awake for was a wonderful experience. The acoustics in the church and the atmosphere added to the performance to make the evening even better. After the show we decided to head back home for dinner of pasta (again) and have an early night because we were all so drained from the day.
In the morning, our host took us to a rest stop on the highway that she suggested would be a good place to hitchhike to our friend's place in the Netherlands. Yes, we decided to hitch through Germany and into Holland. We had tried to use public transit or carpooling websites but nothing worked out and we still wanted to see our friend. We realized that we were not experienced after only two prior experiences but we felt confident that it would be okay. With zero preperation or knowledge of the route, we took the advice of our host and started our journey. We ended up going in a huge circle around the entire country in the wrong direction. We were picked up by at least a dozen people that we trusted to get us closer bit by bit. Since we did not have a single set destination, we went all over the map. We had a list of places that were near my friend's home so each driver took us toward a different one until we had been close to every place but had not actually reached any of them. Finally, from about forty five minutes to our friends house a nice young couple drove us the rest of the way (out of their way) to my friend's exact address. Actually we did not even flag these people down, Tyson had asked them a question as they were pumping fuel and they offered to take us. The driver of the VOLKSWAGON was TURKISH.... just saying. They gave us a dozen cans of pop to drink on the way and promised to visit us in Vancouver. The total journey took over nine hours when we were only three hours away to begin with. We withstood rain, wind, embarrasment, honking, taunting, laughing, joking and cold thumbs throughout the adventure. Tyson even raised his pant leg to show a little skin but for some reason it did not exactly work.
We knocked on the door and were greeted by familiar smiling faces. It was so nice to see our friends with their super adorable kids. We got there on a Saturday afternoon and soon learned that the grocery store would be closed on Sunday so we walked with my friend's two year old to the store. It was a short walk and he is at an age where he likes to stop and look at everything and try to pronounce their names. Half way through our shop, the staff shut the lights out to inform us they were closing. We grabbed what we could and rushed through the till. On our way back to the house we ran into my friend who was walking with the baby in a sling towards us. She made us spaghetti with meat and spinach sauce which was yummy and filling and we spent the night talking and catching up. Tyson and my friend's husband spent the night talking hockey and wandering the town gathering air matresses and sleeping bags for our sleeping arrangements.
We slept in the baby's bedroom which has dark curtains making it look like night all the time. This is our excuse for sleeping in until eleven thirty the next morning. We woke up to rainy weather that made it okay to have slept in. We spent the day playing with the kids, hanging out, drinking pots of coffee and catching up some more. It was exactly what we had come there to do. During a break in the rain, Tyson took the three year old to the park so he could burn off some energy. For dinner my friend prepared macaroni which we ate all together and then we quizzed each other about movie quotes and hockey trivia. We ate bags of candy until our mouths hurt and watched a classic Will Ferrell movie that was kinda funny and kinda not.
We spent our last morning there drinking coffee and getting ready to go out. As we learned, getting two kids up, fed, packed up and presentable enough to go out is quite the task. My friend is a pro and managed on her own while we watched and learned. We all walked to the grocery store to shop a bit and then continued into town. The town was dead because nothing opens on mondays before one pm but it was still a nice quaint place full of friendy-ish people. Once we got back to the house, we packed up and got a generous lift to the border of the Netherlands and Germany where we could begin another series of hitching rides from strangers. Although it was a short visit, we were happy we got the chance to see them and we had a great time together.
Luckily the rain held up as we held up our poorly written sign and stuck out our thumbs to the traffic. We always start off with fresh energy and an optimistic attitude which slowly fades away to pessimistic behavior which eventually turns into anger at the singly occupied vehicles driving in the direction we want to go without a glance. Normally we do not get to this stage between rides but when it happens I usually give up and sit down while Tyson forges on baring his legs, waving and performing other stunts that don't work but make us laugh. The experience of hitching with a known path and a knowledge of the area we want to go to makes a world of difference. We looked up and wrote down the way to the airport from my friend's house so we knew exactly where we wanted to go. We made signs and got to our destination two hundred and fifty kilometers away in only four vehicles. After being dropped off at the border by my friend, the first pick up was a lively Turkish guy who was ever so interested in our trip, the second was a young German guy with a new baby on his way home from work, the third was a middle aged truck driver who did not speak English in a huge semi truck, the last one who drove us completely out of his way was a young German guy who also wanted to hear stories of our travels. We got to the airport around seven pm for our eleven am flight to Ireland. We spent the time organizing our bags to not exceed the permitted ten kilograms by setting aside huge piles of clothes we had to put on the next morning. We watched movies, ate all of our food, watched people hugging their loved ones in arrivals and blogged. We slept along with dozens of other poor backpackers on the floor in the airport and it was a great time.
In the morning, we woke up in front of a huge crowd of people in line to check into their flight. When we checked the clock it was five am so we grabbed our stuff, found a quieter corner and went back to sleep until after nine. We waited in the unorganized line up to get our passports checked, scarfed down some pudding and rice cakes with peanut butter, squeezed into every piece of clothing we could and went to get our bags tested. After a thorough examination of the size and wieght of our bags, they passed and we were allowed to cross through security. Tyson set off the alarm because there were so many buttons on his several layer of pants and shorts so they checked each layer of clothing to make sure he was not hiding anything in his drawers. We continued to the waiting room which is not the nicest we've seen but it suited its purpose and we did not complain. We waddled our sweaty selves onto the plane and out the other side into our thirty fifth country.
We watched a movie on the flight while attendants constantly tried to tempt us to buy overpriced cigarettes and booze from their duty free options. When we finally got to Knock West Ireland Airport, it was pouring rain and windy. We had to wait just under two hours for our bus to take us to LetteryKenny but the covered waiting area was full so we stood just outside of it. In some countries, people would have squished together to give us spots out of the rain but in this one, people stoof a comfortable distance apart and did not seem to mind that we were under a downpour. We drank several cups of hot tea and rode the three and a half hour bus through the country. It rained throughout but we did not mind as much from inside the comfortable (but higher priced) bus. We watched the scenery of small towns, hundreds of churches, cute little shops and more green than one can imagine. Small hills of green, pastures of tall green grass and green trees along with acres of cattle and sheep passed by as we watched and waited to get to our destination. We called Tyson's cousin and planned to meet an hour later in front of some nearby shops. We spent the time trying on clothes and checking out our new environment. We got picked up and drove ten minutes to their very large, very beautiful house among acres of green grass, cattle and sheep. Twenty eight hours after leaving my friend's place in the Netherlands, we finally made it to our intended destination in Ireland. We met their baby
"If we are not happy and joyous in this season for what season shall we wait"
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