Willkommen sie Deutchland, Willkommen sie Mainhatten

So Germany... home of Lena and the stupid z-y inversion on the keyboard...

So I flew from Oslo-Torp (an airport forever away from Oslo... relatively) to Frankfurt-Hahn (an airport even FURTHER away from Frankfurt) thanks to Ryanair's policy of not actually flying anywhere people actually want to go. Now I'm not going to jump on the anti-Ryanair band wagon, the flight was very cheap given I booked it the night before I left and it did everything I needed (ie get me to Germany). Hell for the first time ever I actually arrived at an airport EARLY. That is unheard of... I still landed at 11pm though. My only issue with Ryanair and why I don't think I will use them again is because of the dicking about you've got to do to get to the REAL location you want to be... I think when you factor in the cost and time of getting to and from these 'discount airports' you're not saving any money. I also lost my sunglasses either on the bus to Torp or at Torp airport =(


So I woke in my hotel in/around Hahn on the first to be greeted by my first German infomercial... for a home beer tap pouring keg thing... Deutchland uber als! After a MASSIVE breakfast (free of course) I hopped the 2 hour bus to Frankfurt. Now on this bus was a Korean family of mother, son and daughter. I know they were Korean due to the fact the 6-7 year old daughter didn't stop whinging in two languages the WHOLE trip... and when not whinging in english she'd say things like ''ho gu'' which I recognised from my Greenspeak Korean lesson.

The imaginatively named Frankfurt Hostel I'm staying at is ok... much like any other hostel. It's pretty well in the middle of the red light district and it had a big food market out the front yesterday. So I could get a big pork steak and chips for €5 which was pretty sweet. At the hostel 'bar' it's also €1 for a tea €2 for a coke and onlz €2 for a beer! So the €200 I withdrew (not an unreasonable amount) actually equals 100 beers... interesting thought.

So day one in Frankfurt (Tuesday) I went to the Stadelsches Kunstintitut (Stadel Museum) intending to get me a bit of 'kulcha' given how much of a failure that was for me in Oslo. So of COURSE the main museum and gallery was closed for rennovations. But they did have a big side gallery with a retrospective on a guy named Kirchner. Now some of his stuff was really cool. Some was really crap. The more abstract stuff and his ''Berlin Period'' wasn't to bad and his woodcuts were really cool...

He was a really fucked up dude though... He exploded into a heap at the concept of fighting in the trenches in WW1 and after he got sent to an institute to recover started to starve himself so he was never sent back to the army. He was also trying WAY to hard to be a tortured misunderstood artist hating on the bourgeois (of which he pretty well was born into). He also used to falsify the dates of his paintings when someone was claimed to have influenced him... That and his artist group seemed to enjoy getting naked women to just walk around the studio to paint... and these women could be as young as 12-14... so he/they were a little bit pedo too... So all up, a decent artist but a much more massive wanker...

I then went to the Communication museum where I ironically couldn't understand most of it because it was all in German. On that note apparently I don't look or sound Australian enough for the Germans and at first glance they assume I speak German... So they something to me in German, I look at them blankly and eventually they then say ''sprechen sie Deutsch?'' and I answer ''nein'' ... then they look at me blankly...

Anyway, the communication museum had heaps of hilarious old computers, phones, faxes and post office stuff. Their was also a special exhibit on money upstairs which was partially in english so I could understand a lot of that! YAY

Now in all my exhaustive travelling (yeah not really) I've always found that I've met a lot of Germans... and never any ''locals'' (relatively speaking), so I wondered who I was going to meet in germany... The answer... fucking Australians... Of course (and some Seppos... but mainly Aussies... Including a friend of Maple's).

I spent Tuesday night chatting/drinking/playing cards in the hostel lounge with some pretty cool kids till like 2am (my how time can fly) including an Australian, some Seppos and an American soldier on holidays from Afganistan. But there was a table of annoying seppo frat boys nearby that just embodied everything you would, could and do hate about them. They were such dumbasses and all they could loudly talk about was fights they have seen while travelling, were the biggest brewery you could visit was , the alcohol % of the beers they were drinking (Becks of course, not a local/good one) and how much Amsterdam ''will rock''. I'm honestly surprised the conversation wasn't about ''chicks they've banged'' but than again with that level of charm their table was surprisingly bare of lady folk.

I woke this morning (Wednesday) to a rather detailed dream about reading a comic book version of the Quran (Koran) which was pretty weird... and if you think about it probably would have enough graven images of the profit to get a whole country fatwahed out of existance... But the comic was kinda cool.

I then did a walking tour of Frankfurt (after a massive free breakfast of course) with Ellisa and Katrina. This was pretty cool and I feel like I've seen a bit of the town now. It was run by an American guy who was quite crass and un PC... Which was pretty interesting, he could and would say things no German would ever consider saying. He was an ex soldier and told some interesting stories about the town and after about 4 hours of this 3 hour tour we finished up. We had lunch at yet another on street market thing and then I wandered off alone to the Comics and Caricature museum.
Now the Germans aren't world reknown for their cutting edge senses of humour but this was without a doubt the most serious Comics museum on earth. Worse than even hording plastic covered comics weenies. Everyone was super serious and viewing the place like it was a 16th century art exhibit and when one person laughed a little aloud there were stares... Obviously not speaking german I missed the vast majority of the jokes (and indeed was warned away buy the chick at the front desk) but just seeing all the pics was cool enough for me (and it was only €2.50 to get in). The main floor exhibit was on some female German comic/cartoon lady who seemed to be some sort of cross between Leunig (in style) and Cathy (topic...) except with more nudity... alot of it seemed to be about the trails of being a housewife, finding a man, waxing etc... So I don't think I would've laughed even if I COULD read them... But still it was nice to see so many comics being treated like a real art thing...

So tonight Katrina, Ellissa and I are going to make the trek over the river to go to one of the tiny little Apple wine bars and then tomorrow I meet Lex, Vou and Robbo I'm guessing at about 2pm ish. Then on to KISS!

Löve, hügs and kißes
ÄNt

Horns up! \m/