All Flights Fly From Frankfurt.

1:44 pm CET

Arrived in Frankfurt, my final resting place before heading home on Wednesday.  I am sitting on the 3rd story of the "Frankfurt Hostel" and looking across the street at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), easy access to the airport Wednesday morning.  It's a beautiful summer day in Germany the kind of what we call "Seattle Sucker" weather back home, it shows a few sunny days and you think this is how it always is, in reality it's so green here, meaning it usually rains.

I spent Wed, Thurs, and Friday night in Freiburg with Robin and his roommates in their WG.  They are a good group of guys and were very helpful and welcoming.  We made German-German pancakes on Friday night, tasty.  I worked out a few days and caught up on some sleep.  It was a national holiday on Friday and so all supermarkets and stores were closed.  Europeans have so many dang holidays, especially the Spanish, I can remember running across the town to the University to go to the gym only to find out it was closed because of Fiesta de Cerveza or Enrique Iglesias birthday, etc. jk. I ended up going to McDonalds for dinner.

On Saturday morning I took a blablacar share with 3 Germans but due to all the rain the autobahn was closed and many other roads and so it took 4 hours to get from Freiburg to Mannheim when usually it takes two.  The driver and girlfriend of driver were very friendly and they drove me the extra way from their original destination to the Heidelberg train station just to make sure I was on time.

In Heidelberg I saw two LDS missionaries.  I said "hi Elders!" kinda of cheekily and they were caught off guard.  They were actually both pretty cool and not socially awkward.  We chatted for about 5 min, they have both been out for over a year.  One from Utah and the other from Houston.

From Heidelberg I was picked up by a friend of Robin's roommate, Paul.  His friend Phillip lives in Mannheim about 30 minutes away and was in the neighborhood and let me stay at his apartment.  He is a writer for a famous German guitar magazine (it's called "Guitar").  He had  the opportunity to interview Slash from Guns N' Roses multiple times.  Said he's a very nice, guy and "you can't mess up an interview with him because he's so easy going".  Phillip drove me to Mannheim and then we ate at a Turkish restaurant.  He lives in an urban downtown area in Mannheim, it's pretty cool.  He lives with 4 other roommates in a very nice place.  I spent the night talking with another one of his roommates who had traveled the U.S.  It was a great little visit.  Phillip was extremely nice and nice to be around. I told him about my sisters and dad who play guitar and collect guitars.  He thought that was cool, he obviously plays as well and said, he wished his parents were into music. He wanted to hear some of Lauren's music. This has happened numerous times Lauren, that is why I made an account on Sound Cloud for you to upload your music so people can take a listen. ;)

I will spend the next 3 nights in Frankfurt.  Chilling, running, looking around.  I do have to say.  I've been to Frankfurt before and for Riley's interests, it's not the best German city.  It's regarded as the ghetto of Germany (maybe that'll be cool) but I'm sure he will be placed in many of the cities around.  Heidelberg and Mannheim are both very pretty, just an hour south.  The thing about this area and much of Germany is during the war, as you might know it was basically bombed to rumble by the Brits and Americans and so many of the cities are very new and so you don't get to see a lot of the old architecture as you do in other areas of Germany.  So Riley, you're going to a dump German town but you will speak better German than me when you come home. ;)

This is my last post in Europe unless something unusual happens so for the record.

I went to 6 of the largest cities in Europe.  Hamburg, Berlin, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Munich.  Lived with 2 families for more than 4 months each, 2 other families for a week, learned 2 languages at a B1-B2 fluency, Spanish and German, visited the continent of Africa, made countless close friends and acquaintances, developed as a person, was out of my comfort zone for 9 months and learned to be comfortable in it, swam in the Mediterranean, climbed the alps, slept in the Sahara, walked on the Baltic shore, strolled past the Colosseum, ran in the black forest, ate the worlds greatest pizza in Naples, saw Cristiano Ronaldo play futbol, only kissed 2 girls ;), and did much more, which hopefully was written down and can be retrieved from this blog in time to come.  Mom and Dad it was the best reason anyone could have spent the family fortune.. I will now become more successful than Ben and buy you a house someday. (Ben loves it)  I owe it all to you, thanks. ;)

bis gleich.

-f