Blearily waking up in a hostel dorm room in Frankfurt, with frost curling on the windows, is neither the best of times nor the worst of times to have Julie Andrews dancing round trilling "My Favourite Things" incessantly in your head, especially not now you want to correct the damn dame and yourself by reminding both that schnitzel is served with fried potatoes and The Sound of Music is set in Austria and has nothing to do with Germany apart from the N-word.
Speaking of schnitzel, that restaurant and its Apfelwei that sneaks up on you like an n-word raid, what a night. Visions of Fritz ringing the last orders bell only to toast the entire patronage with a poem in honour of that appley substance dance like sugar plums (or Julie Andrews) in my head. We understood little enough but by that second jug we were ready to toast an invasion of England and certainly any word that sounded vaguely like "pissed"
There was no time to nurse a hangover however, and less still to wave a cheery "Guten Tag!" to Wolfgang in the morning queue for Rice Crispies. He swayed a little bit more alrmingly which I took as a sign of his deep affection and respect.
Then we wandered into an industrial meat freezer. I'm (partly) joking, we just stepped into the street and the blood froze in our veins. This strange occurence is the only reason I can think of for the sheer proliferation of sex shops, peep shows, Girls! Girls! Girls! and temples of sin and vice that greeted us when we went to look for a hastily remembered birthday card (greeting read "May the new year be a husky aufwind" Go not to Google Translate for council for it will say both yes and no) This street of iniquity 'twas clearly provided to warm the blood and stimulate circulation. How thoughtful of the Germans. Kaiserstrausse, for the more degenerate readers who have been trying to piece together clues on the whereabouts of my location in order to -ah- avoid such a place...Incidentally Occupy Franfurt has its headquarters down that direction, we accidentally occupied for a full 30 seconds. Fight the power and so on.
All aboard the Ebbelwei Express! Yet more apple wine was to be on offer on a tram that looked like it had been coloured in with Crayola by a small child with a big sugar intake. We hopped aboard, had wine, had pretzels, had unparalleled views of Frankfurt but we did not have a seat. We stood at the back, swigged from tall necked bottles and lamented our loss.
But we never lament for very long; because that glorious tram brought us to our first sight of the Christmas Markets! The word magical is actually very rarely used since the Church banned everything from shruken heads to Harry Potter and the new wave atheists went mad about particles but I take the liberty of using it here in its modern form. That Romerburg Square was absolutely fucking magical.
There were stalls everywhere, they were all red and green and gold and filled full of the lovely sort of trinkets very small children want to put in their mouths for some reason, older children want to play with and the ever-children are terrified of knocking over with their handbags. There were gingerbread house lining the plaza and a gold and silver carousel was playing music so sweet and true to life that we were all annoyed the advertised Italian choir had started without us.
We found a specially constructed Honighauschen (Honey House) which had been just finished with freshly sawn pine. There were honey candles we saw being made, honey liquer we tasted and tasted and tasted and honey preserves we fell upon like ravenous Pooh Bears.
Food and drink; mulled wine (Gluhwein) and roasted chestnuts, crepes and schnitzel, bratwursts pork and beef both strung up and prepared over an actual roaring charcoal fire, swung on a huge black iron skillet. Actually the sheer number of sausages had me wondering why the Carry On crew never appeared in Germany. The possibility for innuendo would have made Kenneth Williams weep for joy.
The stars were brillig in the slithy tove as we walked back that evening, past the riverbank, the unwashed occupiers, the dens of sin and escaped Wolfgang and we had Idstein to look forward to.
Idstein. Before we went Idstein was my screensaver. Idstein looked the sort of place you'd set a high budget medieval epic as the small idyllic village the fated hero-to-be wanders out of as a lowly cowherd. At least that's what it looked like on Google images. Like Google translate, same LOTR quote applies. Fecking useless piece of shite. We got off the train in Newry bus depot.
This is a signal for Norn Irish readers to provide a "Yeeeeoooo" which loosely translated means "Ah, a place that I recognise and in the context must mean Idstein wasn't particularly horrific, just grey and depressingly normal and smelled slightly of wet pavement and lonliness." We're economical with language in NI.
Yes, Idstein failed spectacularly to get it up, and while it was a pretty little place with many photo opportunities, we made our excuses and left without leaving a phone number.
But this meant we got to go back to the Christmas markets and the most funnest part of the whole trip! Secret Santa or Wichteln in Germany. This involved a count down and then much hilarity as we dived into the markets and tried simultaneously to see where each of us were going so we didn't go the same way and trying not to be seen ourselves. And so we had fifteen minutes to wander round the lights, the fir trees, the incense smoke curling from small ceramic gnome's pipes and the cut coloured glass and beechwood wind chimes to find our presents.
And there I think I must leave you, with visions of us dressed up warm in coats and wooly scarves, running round the smells of cinnamon and aniseed and in and out of the glow of the bratwurst stall's flames and the twinkling fairy lights. There was more, but it involves ending up in Irish bars yet again, tawdry games of Spin-the-Bottle and dragging ourselves onto a half six Ryanair flight and since I'm now Aileen - more Vacation Scheme applications than sense - Devlin one would hate to think the HR department of a major City law firm was snooping around my tales of debauchery. But more on that, both tales and applications, anon
xo
No comments:
Post a Comment