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!
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| 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!
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| 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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