I am writing now from the bright (though not sunny) living room of my cousin Sarah’s apartment in Frankfurt, Germany.  A cute little two bedroom place centrally located just a couple subway stops away from downtown.  It’s in a lovely old charming building a block away from a really cute little shopping/restaurant area.  I arrived yesterday morning and we went to a quaint french bakery for a yummy brunch: german style soft boiled eggs and a delicious and bountiful bread and pastry basket.  Headed downtown to say hallo to Carlo on his lunch break and do a little city-seeing.  Came back home and took a little nap, had some soup and then got ready for dinner. 

Rewind a bit to my flight:  I ended up sitting next to these nice ladies who were on their way to Florence for vacation.  One of them knew the flight attendant, so I totally lucked out and was included in their special service.  Unlimited free wine, cheese tray, first class dessert…it was fabulous!  I knew from the moment the lady said “red or white?” that this was going to be a good trip.  The flight was pretty painless, obviously long, but I read, slept and watched some movie.  Not bad.

Anyway, back to Frankfurt: we ended up going to Adolf Wagner Apelwein house for dinner, a very traditional German style restaurant famous for their Apple wine (which is a big thing in Frankfurt; it’s like unsweetened apple flavored wine, but only with the alcohol content of beer…it has an interesting flavor, some say it tastes like dirty shoes, but I disagree) and Schnitzel (I had Yagerschnizel, which sounds like Yagerbomb, but is actually fried pork (schnizel) with mushroom sauce and potatoes. Yummy, but very rich and heavy).  We met up with Carlo and his and Sarah’s friends Hulgar and Kate who were very sweet and funny.  We talked about cover letters and naked people mostly.  Apparently Germans are very open about nudity: in the saunas and bathhouses here everyone just hangs out naked.  Kate (from London) had some good stories.

Headed back to the apartment and went to bed fairly early, got a good night’s sleep (filled with bizarre dreams) in my own lovely guest room.  Woke up early to get ready for my flight, checked in online, and then (lucky for me Sarah was home and able to check) found out that my flight had been cancelled!  Momentarily freaked out, wondered whether the universe was against me going to Italy, calmed down as Sarah called the apparently bankrupt Allitalia airline, the lady was very helpful and booked me on a better flight (Lufthansa, direct to Florence instead of stopping for 4 hours in Rome) that arrives earlier than my original!  Phew, that was scary.  Thank goodness Sarah stayed home from work and helped me through that.

Anyway, that’s where I am now.  We’re about to head out to do some errands and have lunch (and vino :)  .  Everything’s working out great so far!  Next time I’ll be writing from Florence!  Tschüs!

Oh and P.S. it’s currently 5 degrees outside and feels like 0 (farenheight!) yikes