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So, I am back from Frankfurt. And what an experience it wasn’t!
I arrived at Frankfurt airport early in the morning, and took the train to Mainz (which I had been advised was worth a look). I got off at Frankfurt central station to discover I had gone the wrong way and now had to get the train back again. What can I say? Sydney trains are easier to understand, because there’s so few of them.
I arrived in Mainz at a still quite decent hour and took a trip to the nearest tourist bureau. Unfortunately the glaring women behind the counter made my questions quail in my throat, and I left with only a few maps.
Essentially, I wandered around Mainz for a few hours with an utter lack of interesting things to see. All the museums were shut, for one thing – apparently Monday is the museum day off. However in the defence of the fair town of Mainz, they do have an absolutely stunningly beautiful cathedral. I spent most of my day there, going backwards and forwards from the cloisters to the crypts and amusing myself on the Latin inscriptions which were happily in plentiful supply.
I also met a relative – on the stained glass windows were the names and coats of arms of the various archbishops, and one fellow called Georg Friedrich von Greiffenklau caught my eye. Now my surname is Griffin, but what is more interesting is that the black-and-yellow striped shield he had is very similar to the Griffin one. I wonder if there is some distant cousinry there?
Anyway, by this time my bag was starting to get very very heavy so I took off to go to Wallau, the little village where I was staying, which everyone said was dull and boring.
But it wasn’t! It was totally beautiful. Little narrow streets, traditional houses, trees and bushes and flowers everywhere. The smells and sounds of Nature happy filled the village. The photo above is from Wallau, it is somewhere in the main street.
Anyway, all good things had to come to an end so I flew back and landed in the most God-awful storm ever. It was really pretty terrifying. But the pilot did okay and we made it to the ground without too much incident. And then Lauren and I were reunited and all was well again.
