After dinner, Mark dropped us off at Mario's apartment. Mario is a German student living in Frankfurt that Katie met through CouchSurfing.com. For those of you that haven't heard of it, CouchSurfing is a social networking site intended to create friendships outside of the Internet. It's a way to meet people in a new city by going for coffee or meeting as part of an interest group. For example, in Sevilla there are Spanish cooking groups as well as English/Spanish language groups. It's main appeal is the ability to couchsurf, or sleep on random people's couches when traveling. In theory, its a great way to save money on a hotel or hostel, and you have a built-in tour guide as well. Obviously, couchsurfers are also encouraged to host people as well to make the concept work.
As sketchy as it may seem, they do their best to make you feel safe about it. People build up references over time as they meet more people and connect with more people through CouchSurfing. No personal information is posted- you only share contact information with the people that you choose to. And you're free to reject any request to meet that you want. I was also slightly apprehensive about trying it, but we gave it a try. Ginger, a Fulbright scholar teaching English in a town about 45 minutes from Frankfurt, also stayed at Mario's place with us. She and Katie know each other from the University of Wisconsin.
His apartment was extremely nice- we slept in the living room with one couch and two air mattresses to split between us. We were able to go to a small convience store and buy some fruit, cheese, bread and orange juice for breakfast in the morning. Then Mario took us out to an electronic music club called Cocoon. I can't even begin to describe this club, so here are some pictures to give you an idea of the design, which was literally a cocoon concept: http://www.
We slept in on Saturday after a late night on Friday, enjoying our breakfast before heading out for the day. Mario had some things to do, but we had Ginger to act as our German translator and city tour-guide. She speaks fluent German and was quite helpful to have, despite the fact that almost everyone speaks English. I feel like its always better to be able to converse with people in the national language if possible. We went to the Main Tower, which is the tallest skyscraper in Frankfurt, for a view of the city. We also saw the cathedral (made with a reddish sandstone), the European Central Bank and some cool old-school German architecture. We took a rest stop at a German pub and enjoyed a pint of German beer- much better than Cruzcampo, which is the signature beer of Spain. Overall, it was a great day and a fun city to see. Where else can you find random castles in the middle of an intersection?
After a day of walking around, we met up with Mario and his girlfriend Anna for dinner at a traditional German restaurant. We enjoyed a meal of schnitzel, sauerkraut, potatoes, and many other foods that I can't pronounce along with apple wine. It was delicious but extremely heavy. Mario and Anna actually only eat traditional German food on holidays with their family, 4-5 times per year. But we appreciated them accompanying us for the experience. Both Mario and Anna spoke English very well so we were able to communicate perfectly. We had a fun night in on Saturday night after dinner because of the rain. We had music, a combination of American and German, as well as some snacks, beers and a few cards games. Overall, it was really a great experience staying with them. Unfortunately, we had to leave extremely early Sunday morning to catch a bus to the airport for our flight back to Madrid so we said our goodbyes before heading to bed. Hopefully they'll get the chance to come visit us in the States sometime- neither has ever been and they both said they wanted to visit Chicago!
No comments:
Post a Comment