To Frankfurt and Valencia

This is not one of the promised blog posts to come.

Our plan had been to leave Magdeburg on Wednesday, May 26th to hitchhike to Frankfurt. We stayed Tuesday night so that Stina could go to choir practice. She's awesome at singing, by the way. ;)

But Wednesday rolled around and Stina wasn't feeling well. So we hopped on the ol' interwebs to find out what our options were. We decided we could take a Sachsen-Anhalt/Thuringen ticket (28€ for up to 5 people) to Gerstungen and then a Hessen ticket (31€ for up to 5 people) to the Hahn airport about 120 km from Frankfurt (Ryanair's hub). In theory, we'd then use mifahrgelegenheit.de to find 3 other travelers, and we'd wind up paying 12€ per person. Not bad, considering that the bus from Frankfurt to Hahn is 12€ per person alone. We'd spend the night in either the airport or the forest outside the airport. We weren't positive this would work. We couldn't be sure we'd find anyone to share the price of the tickets, but that was the least of our worries. The real problem was that, while there's information on the Hessenticket online, it doesn't show up when we use the train route planner. Also, the bus to the airport (which is the only way to get there) seemed like it might be another one of Ryanair's schemes to make money (I'm not saying it is, just that I couldn't tell if it was part of the national transportation network or a more private company that wouldn't recognize the Hessenticket).

Anyways, the whole point is moot. We found someone else's Mitfahrgelegenheit. It cost more than the ideal circumstance of our travel, but less than the probable outcome. So we left Thursday morning with this fellow, and arrived early Thursday afternoon in Frankfurt. It was still several hours until Angelika got off work (our CS host), so we ate some carrot-lentil mush, and found a park to read in. We met up with Angelika no problem. Made some dinner, went out for tea, and slept. The next morning we took this kinda expensive bus to Hahn, hung around for our flight (during which time I saw more Americans than I've seen in the past 9 months, including one reading a Magic novel), and flew to Valencia.

Here the airport is in the city. So we simply took the subway (1€ for a rechargeable card, 1,90€ per person for an AB ticket) to Christiane's flat. Since getting here, we have:

grown to hate my flip-flops

spent a total of about 10 hours on the beach so far

eaten many plates of tapas

gotten ice cream at regular intervals

gotten lost and seen a rat *this big*

visited a museum celebrating the 32nd America's Cup (which I now know is a sailing race)

stabbed my ring finger with an orange tree branch

seen the purplest flowers and agéd tiled buildings

learned "una carafa clara, por favor"

relaxed with Buffy and Smallville

buried me in the sand

and hung out on a balcony looking over the rooftops of the city.

Stina has managed most days to write her 2000 words. We've started doing sit-ups on the beach. And we never get out of bed before 11AM.

Tomorrow we start hitchhiking to Faro, Portugal. Press your thumbs for us!

A family of five

On Thursday, Stina and I bought the Quer-Durchs-Land ticket (39€ for 2 people), and took a 6 hour, 3 train trip to Frankfurt (am Main) to meet our friends Lena, Adam, and their 1 1/2 year old daughter Ilya. We had hoped to get their early enough to meet them at the airport, but there were no reasonable options for that, so we got there at 6 PM, and found them moments later across the street at their hotel. After a quiet evening including some Chinese food, hugs, and this (see the video halfway down), we all bedded down for a few solid hours of sleep.
The next day started pretty early. We went out to see the city as soon as it was light enough to see what was there to be seen. We walked along the Main for a bit, and then saw some ruins from the 1st century C.E. From there, we wandered to the main square, Römerberg, and found some breakfast. Walking around after breakfast, we happened upon a street market, and about halfway through it, were accosted by a man asking "Thema der Woche?" into his ZDF mic. I told him the theme of the week was Americans in France, er Frankfurt, because WE were Americans in Frankfurt. He wondered if I cared at all about German's deficit, and I told him America also has one that I'm worried about, and that the solution is to spend less, not more, because, and here's my quotable quote for the day "Consumerism breeds consumerism". Later we decided that what I meant was that, since any economic problem is only really a problem if people are not getting the things they need to live the happy lives they deserve, the solution to the problem is to make more goods available to them. Aside from increasing production, that can also be accomplished by not consuming the goods yourself. then they'll be available for other people to consume. This is contrary to what capitalism teaches, which is, if you consume more, everything will be okay. I generally find that when something is counterintuitive, it is, in fact, wrong.
But that was just a brief moment of our day.
We asked a security guard for directions to the Apfelwein. He directed us across the Main, where we enjoyed the company and giant glasses of Apfelwein. From there, we went to the park near the river, and we demonstrated the powers of the fulcrum and lever and pendulum.
Back at the hotel, everybody crashed, conveniently in phases. First I passed out, then Lena went, then Adam. Then I woke up and Stina passed out. Then Adam and Lena woke up. Then Ilya and Lena went out. Then I went for a walk to get some Döner Kebap and Falafels for us. When I got back, Stina woke up and we scarfed them down, read a little (I'm reading about the moon landing, and hoping I can someday be in a position to travel to the stars, or maybe write a show that compiles faux news articles about life aboard the generational starship), then went for a walk. Having Lena and Adam here really reminded us how much we want to travel, so we're figuring out budget stuff and where we want to go. I theorized that in order to enjoy our travels and live in the moment (as we haven't been as much), we both need to know that at the end of the moment we have a place to belong, and that nothing stressful is waiting for us at that end. So, we need a home base. We have a home base. Awesome!
We came back to the hotel, and went to sleep. Then Lena woke up, ate, and then we ALL slept.

Next morning, we dilly dallied until we wandered over to the train station for the ride back to Magdeburg (Schönes Wochenende Ticket-37€ for 5 people). This time, though, we had a mobile entertainment unit: Ilya. Now we're having a lazy Sunday as our first day as a family of 5.