Adventures in the German countryside

Adventures in the German countryside

We got on the road to the factory outlet a little later yesterday afternoon than I expected - had to wait an extra half hour for our car to arrive from another location. And then I forgot the maps at home. And then we went the wrong direction on the Autobahn - which actually turned out to be a good thing b/c Janine needed to change money still, so we found a bank when we went to turn around and changed her money.

So by the time we got to Waechtersbach, it was 4ish. And the factory outlet isn't there! We found a big grocery store and went in to ask. Found a nice lady that told us it was a couple towns over. So, after shopping a little bit, we found the factory, but it closes at 6, and we got there about 7. BUT, we knew where it was now, so we figured on coming by early the next morning.

I thought we'd head to Heidelberg from there, have dinner and then come back to Frankfurt to go out dancing. But by 8:30, we weren't even to Darmstadt yet, so I decided on dinner in Darmstadt. Found a nice German brewery pub in the center of town and had typically German food. :) Then we had some ice cream while we people watched the skin heads clustered around the statue in the center of the square. Lots of interesting hairdos! The snag in the plans came when we went to get the car out of the parking deck. The sign had said it was open from 8:30 til one hour after the shops closed (we got in there about 8:30ish pm). I figured that meant you couldn't come IN after that, but you could leave. NOPE. Shit. Sigh.

So we found which bus we needed to take to the Hauptbahnhof in Darmstadt, and proceeded to get on it going the wrong way. So we spent a good 30 min going round trip and having the African bus driver talk nicely to us (and try hitting on us a little too). Got to the train station, waited half an hour for a regional train. Got to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, got the 12:14 am train to home. Talked to some American National Guard reservists (here for training and staying in Hanau) on the way home. Cute and they were hitting on us. :) Of course, one of them was drunk and just hitting on any cute girl, but the other ones were focused on us. :)

So, by the time we got home, it was 1ish and we were dog tired. Got up at 7 so we could leave here by 8 to be there shortly after the parking garage opened to get the car out of hock. Ug.

On an up note, Janine found the dishes she liked and bought a set of 8 dinner plates, small plates, mugs, bowls, some platters and serving bowls all for about 150! Woo hoo! :)

We were planning on going to Rothenburg today, but we got out of the factory outlet around 11ish and drove the back roads towards Wurzburg (VERY pretty countryside). Rothenburg is about an hour south of Wurzburg. We finally made Wurzburg around 2:30-3ish. We were dog tired, hungry, and a little tired of being in the car. So, we got out, found a restaurant and had dinner. The restaurant was a classy, inexpensive, family owned wine celler. We had an extremely good pork steak, with potatos and a really nice white wine. It was so good we bought a bottle (cheap! 6Euro!). Janine's going to take it home with her.

After that, we walked around for another 30 min, but then we just came back home and crashed! We slept for 2-3 hours before getting up, doing some laundry and returning our videos from the other day. We're going to head back to bed now. Posted by Jinglelady at July 20, 2003 12:27 AM | Previous Blog | TrackBack