Frankfurt, Aschaffenburg, The Bavarian Forest - Germany pt. 1
The Fall of 2019 I was given the opportunity to travel to Germany for my masters program. As someone who loves to travel, I hadn’t given much thought to ever going to Germany, but I wasn’t opposed. I had always been enamored with Christmas markets and the unique architecture I had seen in films. On the other hand Germany has a sordid history, these things give me pause about how I may be treated in a country. After some conversation with people who had traveled there and the amazing opportunity to get a full semester of credit hours in a week, I booked my flight.
I’m never going to waste a good trip so I convinced Kaje that it would be good for him and I to both get out of the city. The flights were surprisingly cheap and I’d be willing to give up Christmas for this vacation. We planned for me to land in Frankfurt on Friday morning and for him to come the following Wednesday.
I landed in Frankfurt Friday morning to a gloomy morning. I connected to the airport wi-fi, called myself an Uber and was on my way. My driver was great he took me around the city a little bit and made sure I knew that my hotel 25 Hours Hotel - The Trip was a cute boutique hotel but my neighborhood wasn’t the safest; this Kaje and I confirmed to be true about two weeks later but thats neither here nor there. After a quick nap I got dressed, told my family I’d be headed to dinner and went down to my hotel lobby for a quick cocktail, The Bloody Bomba. I called an uber and headed to Morleos ( I was originally headed to another restaurant but it’s pretty common for European Restaurants to close early if no one’s there). Anyway, I ordered a Philly, the bartenders favorite German beer, and of course a Gin and Tonic with his favorite German gin.Until this day I will maintain that I had the best Philly Cheesesteak of my life at Morleos in Frankfurt Germany and yes I’ve been to Philly.
This blog isn’t about my class but it’s important to note that I was taking this class in Aschaffenburg, Germany about one hour by train away from Frankfurt. It’s also important to note that before I hopped on this train I went shopping of course and had the best chicken schnitzel and potato salad at Heidi und Paul. I popped off my train to Aschaffenburg around 10pm made fast friends with a few people from the trip, went to a german house party got introduced to real Pfefferminz or “Pfeffy” as they called it for short lol not a fan but I had a great time nonetheless. Shout out to the German hip hop scene it has it’s on its own vibe.
So let’s fast forward a few days to the big class surprise. I hate surprises and this was arguably the worst surprise of my life, we got to university at 9 am, luckily I woke up to have breakfast with a few of my Finnish friends because I was given a cold cut with an egg and told we were hiking a 4 hour trek into the Bavarian forest to have dinner. It was cute I saw the places that inspired the Grimm brothers and the view was breathtaking but Vans and hiking trails weren’t really ideal. At sunset, we reached the cutest little restaurant and if you have strong eyes you can see the name of it in one of the photos, I can’t. I did however order a sausage and the Glühwein (This begins my current obsession with it), you will also see pictured below the pork belly and potatoes that a lot of the other people ordered. To wrap this portion up, we were given flashlights and told to hike down quickly to avoid the bears. I don’t know if it was a joke or not but I was the first one down that trail lol. Ok this isn’t about my class but we were served the best free lunch and Glühwein everyday.
