Talking with hands and feet

Since my last post I have travelled from Nurnberg to Wurzburg and now am in the wonderful metropolis of Frankfurt. The last of my stay in Nurnber was much improved... I managed to not get lost once in my final 24 hours! On my last night I went out to a nice little Italian cafe on my own, sat and read my book and splurged on dinner with caprese, bruchette, risotto, white wine, persecco etc. Here I met Eugene, possibley the most lovable italian man on the face of the planet. First he wouldn't let me not finish my dinner and then he wouldn't let me leave when I asked for my bill! Instead he brought me Italian liquor (rammazzoti I think?) that was so potent I literally had to choke it down. Let's just say that Eugene was looking out for me because half way through the evening (keep in mind I stayed here for about 5 hours) he made me join his young italian friend and an older German man who were both eating alone too...and then he made them(and I literally mean made because he didn't give them much of a choice) pay for my entire dinner/drinks! haha so I walked away full, slightly drunk and with an extra 35€ in my pocket. The last thing Eugene told me when I walked away was 'you have the nose of an angel'...I told him he should refrain from using that line on too many girls.

After Nurnberg I travelled onto Wurzburg, the land of wine and churches! Here I stayed with my moms second cousin ElVira and her husband Richard...who I had never met before. Talk about amazing people...Never having met me before, having only met my mom and nana briefly the year before, they not only took me in for the weekend but they planned two days packed with sightseeing and paid for my entire stay. And of course I loved Wurzburg because it's just like the Okanogan...only in Germany and with some churches and ancient archetecture. The area if famous for white wine (which I sampled in plenty) and its plethora of churches. Apperently...you could go to a different church every Sunday for two years and never repeat churches. How crazy is that? We walked up to the fortress on my second day and with the view of the city you could count over 30 steeples on any one side.

So the challenge with staying with Elvira and Richard was the communication. Let's just say that after 6 weeks of living in Germany I am a little short of being fluent in German! I am however a pro at saying hellow, how are you, I would like one pretzle please, shit (shiza!) bless you and goodbye. For goodbye everyone here says Cheews! I have no idea if that's spelled correctly but that's how it sounds...and really it's the most incredible sounding word for goodbye. It always sounds happy! You can be listening to two people having an arguement and then randomly they say 'cheews' like their in the best mood possible. I love it! I'm adopting it for when I come back to Canada so watch out...But back to my communication break-down...whoever said that language barriers don't exist was full of it. I've gotten by so far with a combination of the following...using my hands (and feet when necessary), speaking my limited German but more often then not speaking English. But Elvira could speak a little bit of English, I can understand about 50% of German, and Richard could understand about 50% of English...so somewhere in the middle there we found common ground. On the Sunday we travelled to Aschuffenberg, a smaller city about an hours drive, to visit with Elvira's mom and dad (my nanas cousin) Loni and Karl. Here is where the communication really got tricky! Although by the end of the day I had taught Loni some English and my German vocabulary had expanded. They are also truley lovely people. We looked at old photographs, had lunch in a castle (of course...we need to remember that were in Germany here), lounged in the backyard, ate icecream and attempted conversation. It's incredible to think that just a few days ago I hadn't ever met these people and that only a few weeks before that I hadn't really heard their names before. Yet they treated me like family...and I know that we are family but like family members that have known each other our entire lives. That's one thing I've noticed about travelling alone...people really reach out to you. I have met soo many people so far! Restuarants, trains, hostels whatever...doesn't seem to matter, theres always people to talk with. For that I'm really glad the past little bit has been on my own, I don't think I would have made some of the connections with people that I have so far.

This next part will have to be short because my computer is counting down the time (only 8 minutes left!!!) I arrived in Frankfurt yesterday afternoon, and haven't been overly impressed so far. My hostel is in the red light district (again!) but it's a lot less sketchy. Overall the city has an interesting mix of modern buildings (the tallest skyscrapers in Europe) and old ancient buildings...but it just has the feel of any big city, which I'm not the biggest fan of. Although I had a really wonderful dinner last night, met an English man and two other men from Canada and we had a great discussion about diffferent school systems. So since everything has been such a whirlwind the past couple weeks, I decided to spend today in a nice botanical garden spa! I ended up going with two other Canadian guys from my hostel (dave and shane) but of course we took the wrong train and instead landed in this tiny tiny German town about an hour away from where we needed to be. So my spa idea went out the window and instead we hiked through this really old fortress/prison, which was actually really cool! We somehow scaled the walls of this one part, and got into the old tower that was blocked off from visitors. Challenging for me since I was wearing a dress and flip flops but I still managed. Then we had a nice lunch in the town and went swimming in the river.

Ok thats the speedy version of my life over the last couple days. I need to send this off before my time runs up (17 seconds!) Tomorrow I pick carolyn up from the airport, and we head off to Dortmund!