"Blasten Colden," an afternoon in Germany

We left Orlando, slept on the plane overnight, and after a fairly uneventful flight we landed in Germany and had a few hours to kill so we went out of the airport (or for this post I think I'll call it the "Flughafen") to go see the Christmas Market in Mainz near Frankfurt. It was FREEZING!

Isaac loved the train from the flughafen. There was a lot of snow on the ground and there was no chance of it melting as it was 25 outside and "felt like" 9.  Isaiah slept on the train and only woke up as the cold air hit his face as we got off the train.

 I'm sure we sounded pretty dumb as we passed all the neighborhoods on the train and walking through the streets as we kept saying, "Wow. This is so neat. It looks just like Europe." and "Those houses are so cute. Very German like."  and so on. We left our "We're Tourists!" shirts at home so we figured we should make it extra clear. Expertessen aur we nau?

The Christmas Market was adorable and all we had hoped it would be and more. By "more" I of course mean "painfully cold" or "Blasten Colden" as Anthony so aptly named it.  We were layered sufficiently but we have a lack of decent cold-weather gloves so we looked for a little while, got a fried German potato cake thing with applesauce squirted on it, then sought refuge inside a nearby store. Thawed out then went to look for a nativity or something to buy. We ended up getting some sort of natural candle carved into a nativity scene and a small magnet. We pack light.

 

 

Then we asked a few locals where we could get "traditional German food" from and ended up at HDW, which wasn't like an old school German pub looking thing, but a sleek modern restaurant. Oh well, it was warm. We ordered a couple types of sausages and were delighted with the yummy saurkraut (we think?) but the oversized hotdog- in the menu described as a "Haggis type dish"- came back 50-50 on the review.  The Parents weren't too thrilled with it but the Kindersboysen really seemed to like it.

We hopped into a cab and caught the train back to the Flughafen. I give props to Germany in that every person we stopped to ask directions of or an opinion about where to eat, were all friendly and tried to help.  If we at some point find ourselves planning a trip to Europe, I think I'd like to go back to Germany and see some more, buy a Lonely Planet guidebook for it beforehand, and of course go in the summertimzen when its hottenaddel outsiden.

More posts about us arriving at our final destination later! We are here and safe and trying to combat jet-lag as best we can... photos to come!