Holidays are coming....

So after promising a more regular update, this post comes almost exactly one month after the last one - sorry!

Since Josh left I've been here there and everywhere, exploring more of the areas within reach of my free travel card and meeting more wonderful people.

On Friday the 8th of November I nipped over to Muenster-Sarmsheim for the afternoon to catch up with Maike who I'd met earlier in September. She was doing a work experience placement at my school when I arrived and made the long staffroom hours pass a whole lot more quickly! I hadn't seen her in a while so we had a good old catch up in between playing with her cat and planning Christmas market adventures!

Work experience students!

Maike :)

Saturday then marked the beginning of a wonderful little weekend break with Alison and Alie from Frankfurt as we met in Mainz for the day. Alison and Alie both study German with me in Oxford and it's been wonderful being so close over here too! We met at the train station and began our day sightseeing starting at Schillerplatz before hitting the cathedral, altstadt, neustadt and exploring the river front with a lovely Italian and Kaffee und Kuchen in between!

Alie then headed back to Frankfurt ready for a trip the next day and Alison accompanied me back to Bad Kreuznach where my flatmate was having a games evening which was actually really helpful for our German! Some Flammkuchen and potato smileys and the evening was well under way.

The next morning I dropped Alison off at the train station and headed back home for some admin and lesson planning before walking over to my teacher's house to spend the afternoon baking Kekse and Plaetzchen which are like biscuits and are a German speciality at this time of year! We made two good batches and after decorating the whole lot sat down with a cuppa and munched our way through the lot of them!

Full of tea and biscuits I cycled into town and met Birgitte and Erica to grab a few cocktails in what was left of Happy Hour at Kornchen before Erica introduced us to one of the best Italian's in the town, Da Vinci's,

which serves not only amazing food but at a very decent price!

Monday school began again and as per usual the mini holiday of a weekend seemed a distant memory. This particular week however, had plenty to keep me occupied!

On Tuesday I was invited to a Sankt MartinsFest which is a festival which happens every eyar on the 11th of November. This year, however, the service was on the 12th and we all gathered in the church listened to the children sing songs and show us all their lanterns before hitting the streets for a lantern lit procession! We were all following Sankt Martin himself dressed in a long red clock accompanied by a red-cloaked rider on  the back of a Shetland pony!

The procession ends in a field where a massive bonfire is lit and everyone eats Weckermann, a huge sweet bread baked into the shape of a man with raisins for eyes and coat buttons. They're delicious!

The afternoon of Wednesday the 13th was spent in a lovely little bakery in Bad Muenster am Stein for some Kaffee und Kuchen with Birgitte. I'm slowly working my way through their selection as this is the only bakery open here on a Sunday afternoon so it becomes a little bit of a treat to walk down after lunch and grab a little afternoon snack!

Thursday saw the beginning of a three day travelling bonanza with an afternoon trip down to Worms to catch up with Georgina  from the induction course. Worms is a beautiful town with loads of history, there are dragon statues all over the place and after having puzzled over it for a while Georgina and I finally figured out that there was a dragon slayer who came from the town and killed the last dragon to threaten the land and in the legend he was regarded as a hero so the town honours hum and the beast he destroyed! There are also very important links to old German as parts of the Nibelungenlied, which is a staple German medieval text, is based in and around the city so it's got a very historical feel as well as a modern centre with loads of shops!
It also has an ice rink at the moment for its Christmas market which is definitely a plus!

Straight from the train on Thursday evening I then met Erica for some more Da Vinci sampling and to catch up before her trip to Berlin which sounded amazing, I'm so excited to be going in January!

Friday was then earmarked as a day to explore a new and very popular town which I'd heard so much about and been told to visit by so many people! Koblenz was the destination and Rhi and were back at our travelling again, meeting on the train and heading North to see the sights and re-unite ourselves with another friend from the Induction course (we're everywhere!). We made it into town where we met Naomi before wondering a bit through the main centre and grabbing some lunch in a wonderful little French cafe (I know we're meant to be experiencing typical German culture but the smell of a good French cafe is just so inviting - so many wonderful cakes!). Unfortunately the Seilbahn was closed fr the low season so we didn't get the chance to ride the cable cars and see the castle at the top but we didn't get a good Titanic pose off the Deutsches Eck which is the meeting point of the Rhein and the Mosel rivers and is a pretty amazing sight to see. Koblenz also has some lovely churches and after exploring a few we also managed to grab a quick look at the massive palace near the river front. It was absolutely huge and provided a perfect photo opportunity!

My weekend wasn't over yet and after two decent trips number three was in the pipeline for Saturday. I met Rhi once more on the train but this time we were heading in the opposite direction, a direction that neither of us had been in before - uncharted territory! And for the second time this year we broke out of the Bundesland and explored pastures new in the wonderful city of Saarbruecken in the Saarland!

Thankfully there's a direct train from Bad Kreuznach and to make the whole experience even more wonderful we met up with a whole group of people from the Induction course who are living in Trier. Trier is one of the oldest cities in Germany and looks amazingly beautiful, one day I hope to visit it's just that as the crow flies it's really not that far away but for some reason there are no trains which go West from Bad Kreuznach! They all go either North, South or slightly East so to get to Trier takes a long time by train when by car it's so close! As a compromise we met up n Saarbruecken as it was about equidistant for all of us. Catherine from Kaiserslautern was also in Trier visiting Flo and everyone the day before so we had an even bigger group from all over Rheinland-Pflaz all converge on the capital of the smallest Bundesland.

Sunday was then a very nice and relaxed wind down day!

The following week was spent in anticipation of my parent's arrival which was on Thursday the 21st of November. I met Rhi in Mainz for a quick spot of lunch (loving the free travel card it's so amazing!) before getting the train on from there to the airport to meet them. It was so lovely to see them again and we had a lovely long weekend of catching up and sightseeing ahead of us. On the Friday my dad had to go to a meeting for work down in Mannheim so he left early Friday morning and I joined my mum for breakfast before we wandered into town and did a bit of (totally necessary) shopping and Christmas planning. he market in Kormarkt was on and mum got to experience how Christmassy the Germans can be as every single stall was decorated and lit up ready for the festive season!

Mum and I then had an adventure with the trains to head down to Mannheim to meet dad there, and despite literally walking out of the station and into the car I can technically say I've been to Mannheim which is another Bundesland ticked off the list. Only 13 more to go! We then drove up back towards Bad Kreuznach, stopping off along the way for another meeting which potentially needed some translating skills hence the trip down to Mannheim. We then crashed back at the hotel and had dinner before walking around the town centre and exploring the altstadt lit up and night, discovering the Christmas market which had appeared over night!

Saturday was a full on tourist day with no work or agenda, only holiday and sightseeing. We hit the town for a bit of early morning shopping (we were literally the first people in the shops outside the door at 9.30am) before getting in the car and heading to Bingen to catch the ferry to Ruedesheim am Rhein, one of the prettiest towns in Germany. Again the cable cars were closed but that didn't matter as the small, narrow, cobbled streets and typical German houses and inns were breathtaking as was the Christmas shop which had every type of Christmas decoration possible, all hand made and carved by hand! Before we left my parents also sampled a Rudsheimer Kaffee which was an elaborate recipe of burning a tiny amount of liqueur ont he table in front of you and caramelising some sugar before adding the coffee and cream - it looked amazing!

Next we headed on down to Mainz so my parents could see the town I always seem to go about! We walked through the altstadt and had a look at the cathedral and Schillerplatz before grabbing a Ditsch pizza on our way back to the car to get back in time for dinner.

They left on the Sunday and to stive off the inevitable homesickness, Erica and Birgitte came over for a pizza and nibbles evening which was lovely.

The next week was largely spent in bed with the flu but it ended lovely with a trip to London to see Josh one last time before Christmas. We hit the aquarium which is something neither of us had done before and then had a wonderful dinner at the foot of the London Eye! It was so lovely to be back home for a bit and now there's only 15 days before I fly back for Christmas - the time's gonna fly by!

Hopefully I'll post again before then ;)

Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

Cara x

Bye Bye Autumn, Hello Winter!

The regularity of my blogging appears to be a little shameful but nonetheless today marks the day that I have sufficient free time to kill to sit down and update you all on my travels!

My last post was centred on the city of Mainz and since then I have visited the city many times as well as discovering a few new locations along the way. But I should probably begin where I left off!

Wednesday October 2nd was my last day in school before a two week holiday (woop woop!) called the Herbstferien and meant that even though I had only been teaching for three weeks I now had a glorious 18 days holiday to whatever I wanted! :D The 3rd was a National Holiday here in Germany and they're known as Feiertage. This one was particularly special as it was der Tag der deutschen Einheit where Germany remembers the day of unification of East and West after the fall of the Berlin Wall. So to celebrate the fact that none of us had to work the next day Erica, Birgitte and I hit the Irish pub in town along with what felt like everyone else in Bad Kreuznach!

Just like every other Feiertag and every single Sunday everything was closed, and I mean everything. EVERYTHING! I was on my way to Ingelheim to visit Rhi who is an English assistant at a primary school there and due to the admittedly sizeable lie in I'd had, I'd forgotten to eat lunch which meant a hopeful trawl around Ingelhim in the search of anywhere which would serve me some food! Eventually we found a pizza place and 10 minutes and a couple of euros later we were on the way to Rhi's house pizza in hand :)

Ingelheim is a lovely place and I'm there relatively often visiting Rhi as it's so close to Bad Kreuznach by train. It has a really modern centre which brings together lots of smaller villages and a beautiful Altstadt which I still need to properly explore!

Rhi and the village pet

I was there on this particular evening though to sample the delights of the Rotwein Fest (red wine festival) which happens every year in the grounds of the Buergerskirche. The festival was like a massive fun fair with lots of stalls and fairground rides including a big ferris wheel, dodgems and a spinning ride called "Breakdancer". We walked around the festival for a bit and shopped at the stalls before heading to the wine tasting area and grabbing a bottle (or two) of local speciality wine Federweiss which is incredibly sweet and tastes almost like a non-fizzy Fanta. Having strategically located our table next to a creperie we of course had to sample the Nutella and Banana offering which came a close second behinf the Kinder-Crepe as our favourite crepe of the festival. The Kinder-Crepe is Kinder egg chocolate melted inside a crepe and is absolutely delicious!

I got the last train home and got ready for a thoroughly relaxing day of lounging around at home before hosting a pizza and wine evening with some au pairs I've met in the area. Erica is Scottish, Jennie is Spanish and Birgitte is Danish so together we're very international and in those situations English is the best form of communication! The evening was lovely and I discovered some great deals on frozen pizzas to boot!

The next day wasn't quite so relaxing as it was up and out for 9am to get the train to Bonn to meet Sinead who is teaching in Aachen near Cologne. Rhi and I got the MittelrheinBahn which basically stops at every single train station along the Rhein but it got us there eventually! Bonn is a beautiful city and we saw Beethoven's Geburtshaus and paid a visit to the Haribo factory shop which was just an amazing place to be!

Beethoven's Geburtshaus

The Sunday saw a return to Ingelheim for the finale of the Rotweinfest and some pretty amazing fireworks! The display kind of made up for the lack of fireworks on bonfire night even if it was a month early! Before we headed to the festival though, Rhi and I indulged in a truly English tradition of beans on toast even accompanied by some HP sauce and a cup of tea for good measure, the Germans just didn't understand it! We were loving every minute!

So after having said Auf Wiedersehen to the Rotwein Fest I said Auf Wiedersehen to Germany and headed home for a week to be with my family. I had a wonderful week and it was really hard to get the plane back but once I landed everything soon settled back down into it's normal rhythm.

I know this is a long one, I apologize, there's just so much to update you on! Next time I will post more often I promise :)

Returning to Germany brought an afternoon of Kaffe und Kuchen at a teacher's house which was so so wonderful and I'm heading back there soon to bake some cakes with the kids! The following day (Friday the 18th of October) Rhi and I made our way to Wiesbaden which is the capital city of Hessen despite being just across the river from Mainz which is the capital city of Rheinland-Pfalz! The town is beautiful and extremely old dating back 700 years and boasting some pretty impressive features such as an active hot spring! The sun was shining and the sky was electric blue meaning everything looked so pretty in the photos!

So the next day didn't bring any rest, I was off to Frankfurt to meet Alison who studies in Oxford and works at Deutsche Bank, it took us a while to realise we were so close together! She was a perfect host and showed me all around the city which has some really beautiful parts. We went on a boat trip down the river and had a lovely lunch at Va Piano in between exploring the older part of town. There are some lovely old buildings and churches and we went to the top of the shopping centre to stand on the viewing platform which gave us a wonderful view! We walked across the river on this bridge where lovers secure a lock to the railings to strengthen their love and all the locks together are so lovely! We headed towards the Sachsenhausen which is an older area of town and bumped in Alie who also studies in Oxford! We sat down at the pub and had a spontaneous drink which was wonderful! Sometimes the best moments are the ones which aren't planned!

To conclude this rather long post (sorry!) I'll skip ahead a few weeks to when my boyfriend came to visit for our six year anniversary! We went to a beautiful traditional restaurant called Wolpertinger in Bad Kreuznach to celebrate and had a wonder around Mainz where I had my first Bratwurst! The weekend was amazing and relaxed but it was just so special to be able to spend it with Josh considering how far apart we live at the moment!

Next time I will post more often I promise!

Cara
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