I went on a long run today. I needed to get out so I went
way out. I headed up to Rosenhohe for a warm up (about 0.5 mile) then headed
out into fields before turning off into the trees (1.7 miles). I followed dirt
roads through the trees with minimal turns to keep navigation simple. I could
have kept going and going for these roads go on for way farther than my legs
could handle. The weather was super nice, the birds were making noise, and
traffic was only a dull hum in the distance. It was warm enough to run without
me shirt which was unexpected. The past few days have been quite cold. Since I
brought water, I was able to get in some distance without feeling like junk. A
gel packet helped fuel me too.
I didn’t see many people at all. It’s Thursday late morning
so I timed it pretty well for solitude. Checking my Garmin, I saw that I was
super close to 4 miles, so I pushed my turn around point a bit further down the
road. I’m glad I did because I ended up running along the edge of a wide open
field. This would be a perfect place for watching stars. I would just take a
long time to walk out here with cold weather gear. At just over 4 miles I
turned around. What a run. I made it back to my flat feeling great with minimal
soreness.
Rita asked us to head to Frankfurt to visit her while she
worked. She tends bar at a place called Alte Liebe which means Old Life. It’s a
small bar along an unassuming street a short walk from what I would call Beer
Street. First, I’ll tell you a bit about our journey getting there. It took us
a bit longer because we made a few rookie errors while navigating the train
system. Lauren seemed to know exactly where to go and which train to take, so
we followed her. It turns out she didn’t, and we took the correct train the
wrong way. We wasted about 45 minutes with the detour, but we all stayed
positive.
Once off the train, at the correct location, we hit the
street on foot to search for Alte Liebe. My phone was having issues with the
maps and searching for Alte Libe. It told me it was along to ocean in north
Germany. WRONG! We asked a couple people on the street with no luck too. Then
Andras looked for the address on his phone that had internet. His Handy, as
they call it here, doesn’t have maps so once the address was obtained I
searched for it on my map. I found Alte Liebe and our current location. We were
super close. The map was cutting out and losing our location, so Sam took a
picture of my phone with his phone to keep the map visible. I felt like such a
tourist, but since we actually were lost tourists I couldn’t help but chuckle.
The four of us huddled around our phones searching for directions. Once we had
the pins sorted out on Google maps, we turned and began walking in the correct
direction.
We walked by the window and saw Rita inside. It was a relief
to have finally found it after our detours.
Alte Liebe has a nice warm feeling to it, and we lucked out by going on
a day with live music. Sam calls it gypsy jazz. Whatever it’s called, I liked
it. The guitar players were super good. Rita gave us the first round free. We
had some drinks, a soda for me, and listened to the music. We enjoyed the atmosphere
and once the band was done, we called it good and began gathering our jackets.
Even though the first round was free I did end up paying for
my soda. 2€ isn’t bad. I was going to tip her generously, but it’s rude to do
so in Germany. Rita wouldn’t accept it and was firm about it. I did as I was
told and said, “Danke schön.” Sam tried to tip her well too, but he was given
the stare like me. “Friends don’t tip friends here.” She said. Ok, I can accept
that even though it’s so different than how we operate in the states.
Lauren brought here polaroid, actually not made by polaroid, and snapped this cool picture.
We missed our train home. It was there, but I was hesitant
to get on another train without confirming its destination. Even though it said
Darmstadt, I wanted to double check. The train was the one we wanted, but our
hesitation was too much and it left without us. The next bus was 40 minutes
later! We hung out in the Localbanhof talking Titanic and playing on the
escalators. Walking up the down escalator backward looks funny. Sam slid down
the handrail and almost crashed. Once back in Darmstadt we walked out of the
station to find blank buss screens. No more busses means we were walking home.
This added another 40 minutes. Still, we kept our “adventurous” spirit and
walked home.
I've never seen graffiti on an escalator.
We played on the escalator to kill time. It's still as fun as it was when we were 12.
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