Frankfurt and Leipzig, Germany

Flew from Alicante, Spain to Frankfurt, Germany/Deutschland one evening. Ryanair duh. Spent the night in a hostel next to the Hauptbahnhof (central train/subway station) waiting for Nick to come in the morning. Which I figured out the U-Bahn, the German subway thing. In the morning I walked around a little and got a tea, which speaking German is hard guys. Seriously. I was doing some Duolingo (the language learning app) and I tried to order my tea but even that is so difficult. Thank God Nick was on his way. He can speak some German, being German himself and all. When we met up we got my stuff and took all of our luggage to the hostel he booked. Which while finding it, there were a lot of sketchy guys around. I mean, we had to weave through a group of guys lighting up their crack pipes, I'm not kidding. At noon! There were guys everywhere high on crack. I didn't see any of that while walking around for half an hour by myself that morning before Nick came. But wow, that area in Frankfurt, around the Hauptbahnhof is crazy bad.

Once checked in, we made our way to Romer, the city center of Frankfurt for the christmas market. And first things first, we got our first christmas market mug full of gluhwein. Actually I think I got apfelwein first which is hot alcoholic apple cider. Then next was a brat. Then more gluhwein. Walked on the love lock bridge. More gluhwein. Visited a church. Walked up a the spiral staircase of Cathedral of St. Bartholomew. More gluhwein, maybe apfelwein. Cheese and pepperoni pretzel. Back to the hostel to freshen up. Out for a beer. Potato pancakes (Kartoffelpuffer). Baumstriezel, these doughy, warm, sweet swirls with cinnamon and sugar. More gluhwein. Ended our night at O'Reilly's pub next to our hostel for a Kilkenny beer.

You could say we got excited about German gluhwein our first day. Even though we knew very well that the next 7 days together we will be going to a christmas market every day.

Next morning, we woke up early to get to the airport and pick up our rental car. He told me, more like scared me, this whole time while we were planning our trip that he is getting a manual car and I have to learn stick on the autobahn (the German highway with no speed limit so people are going over 200km). Well once we get into our car, I see that its a AUTOMATIC. I was so happy. If it were a manual, there was an 80% chance I would crash or stall the heck out of that car.

We planned to drive to Berlin this next morning. About five and a half hour drive. With a super quick stop in Leipzig, a smaller little city. Once we got to the city center of Leipzig we found the christmas market and got our second christmas mug full of gluhwein. Ate a brat of course. Got a coffee and a cheese pretzel to go. He drove the first half to Leipzig and I got the other half from Leipzig to Berlin. Okay, he got to see the first crabby and irritated Ryli. The car took me a while to get use to and the autobahn was scary at first. Once in Berlin, it was dark and I was ready to get to our hostel.