Mainz - Hermeskeil

It snowed lightly overnight.

Breakfast was spent with Renate, our American German friend, telling us pretty much the same things as she did the day before about how terrible the American education system was. She also gave us some useful information on shoes and leather - leather is much cheaper here and so shoes that we had seen for €20 weren't necessarily incredibly bad quality. We had been thinking that our shoes didn't have enough grip in the snow and ice so she suggested we try a particular shoe shop.

We had to be out of the hostel by 9am, so we vacated and left the car there to walk into town to go shoe shopping. I couldn't find any I liked with either good enough sole or were comfortable enough, but Tim found some good sturdy boots for a reasonable price.

After our shoe shopping expedition we headed out of Mainz to Hermeskeil. The night before Tim had gone over our maps and had written down the route to take, including names of towns and road numbers, which really helped, so our trip was relatively easy. We did however find that spray from other cars made the windscreen incredibly dirty, and once the sun came out it was almost impossible to see through. The problem was that we hadn't yet worked out where the knob to spray water on the windscreen was, and we couldn't find a place to pull over to check. I tried to assist by getting the car manual out of the glovebox,and reading out the German to Tim (complete with appalling pronunciation) and he eventually guessed enough of my mangled German to work it out. Finally we could see again!

Hermeskeil is a small town and the Youth Hostel wasn't nearly as big as the one in Mainz. We had chosen Hermeskeil to stay in because we really wanted to stay in Trier, but the Youth Hostel there was booked out, and Hermeskeil was the closest from there. The lady at the front desk showed us our table for our meals (you couldn't just sit anywhere) which was in a small room, and we shared the room with about 6 other families who were holidaying together. There were lots of Americans also staying at the youth hostel, apparently on a Christian retreat. It was quite weird, as there didn't seem to be any dedicated meeting rooms in the hostel, so you would turn a corner and discover a group of Americans sitting at a table (virtually in the corridor) having a bible study. I don't know how they concentrated!

We went for a walk after we had settled in and had our lunch. First we went to the tourist information centre and got a few brochures on Hermeskeil and Trier, and walked through the very small museum display on the town. Apparently there was a concentration camp nearby. We then walked through the town, where I found a wool shop, so I bought some wool and needles to knit a scarf for a present. We also found a $2 shop which had some nice Christmas decorations, so I bought a whole lot both for me and for presents. We also finally found a post office to buy some stamps for postcards. By this stage it was getting quite cold and slowly darker, so we went back to the youth hostel and attempted to translate the knitting instructions I had been given for the scarf. I transliterated it with Tim's help and that of a German dictionary, and though I couldn't totally translate it after about 1 and a half hours I was reasonably confident that I was knitting the same pattern I had seen in the shop.

At dinner the other families quizzed us about why we were there, and where Tim had learnt his German.

Mainz

For some reason at about 5am we were woken by someone from Melbourne calling Tim's mobile. We'll never know who it was, because he didn't get to it in time!

At breakfast we got talking to a Renate, a German lady, who had been living in America for over 30 years, and pretty much hated it. Her very American phrase of the day was "Hell no!" She had some interesting thoughts on American culture from a European perspective.

View down the promenade beside the Rhine

At about 9:30am we set out walking to the Roman German Central Museum, of which we had a vague idea of the location. After walking around in circles for ages, plus many misdirections from helpful but misguided locals, we finally found it at about 12 noon, having already walked past it at about 10am, but missing it for the lack of signage. Tim had a great time, and took lots of photos, and the staff were very impressed with his language. I was greatly impressed by the number of Roman/ancient safety pins on display, and was disappointed on our return to discover not one photo of said ancient contribution to our modern way of life. Below are examples of artefacts we saw. Don't understand the need for a statue of gold chickens myself, but obviously someone thought it was worth spending hours creating!

It was snowing lightly as we left so we made an unscheduled visit to the Museum of Ancient Shipping, which was on our way back to the youth hostel. The museum houses the remains of 5 Roman long boats which were uncovered when they were building the Mainz Hilton Hotel. They have also built replicas to show what they may have looked like.

Kuala Lumpur - Frankfurt - Mainz

The flight from KL was a much smaller plane, and to our great delight there were only about 40 people on the plane. Once we had taken off we were able to spread out and I was able to sleep lying along 4 seats. There was no one travelling in business class, and only one person in 1st class.

I watched movies, and slept in between, for about 5 hours in total - arguably the most and best sleep I have ever had on a plane!

We arrived in Frankfurt just before dawn at about 6:30am, where it was snowing as we landed. There were great long lines of snow ploughs along the outer tarmacs, all with orange blinking lights on. We managed to clear customs without actually picking up our luggage (a number of people did this, still not sure how!) We then had to find someone to let us back in to pick up our luggage, and then waited in a queue for ages for "Nothing to Declare", while passengers had their bags quite thoroughly searched. Because of our mishap with the luggage, we were almost the last in the queue, even behind the cabin crew. When we finally got to the check I hauled my bag onto the counter, and I was asked if I spoke Deutsch, to which I replied no. I was then asked where I had come from, and once we said "Australia" they said "that's ok, you can go." We still don't really understand why - perhaps Australian customs has a pretty tough reputation?!

We found the car hire place, where we requested winter tyres for our car. As the original car we had hired didn't have them (an Opel Astra), we fluked an upgrade to a Mercedes C Class!

When we got to the car we sat in it for quite a while, trying to find the hand brake, headlights, windscreen wipers etc. Once Tim finally got up the courage to drive (I decided I wouldn't drive - not confident enough to negotiate the wrong side of the road, from the wrong side of the vehicle!) we set out, with Tim finding it difficult to get used to positioning the car in the middle of the lane, rather than almost driving me up the gutter! Thankfully by this time it had stopped snowing (Welcome to Germany, please drive on the left hand side of the road, whilst negotiating snow falling in your face - aaaarrghhh!). After a few wrong turns, and a few short excursions onto the incorrect side of the road (oops!) we finally made it onto a dual carriage way, taking us in the direction of Mainz.

Some building in Mainz - it looks nice, and shows you it is cold and snowy!

We got a bit confused about which turn off to take - there seemed to be an awful lot of turn-off signs starting with "Mainz" but eventually we worked out that these were for suburbs of Mainz. We finally got into Mainz proper, and then realised we had no idea where the Youth Hostel was, so eventually found a place to pull over, to locate the address, which we had helpfully put in the boot. Unfortunately that didn't help, and neither did our Lonely Planet guide which only had a map with an arrow pointing off the side of the page with "YHA → 2km". After missing turn offs many times, not seeing lanes clearly because of the snow, and almost going around a roundabout the wrong way we finally ended up 2km away from the YHA, but still none-the-wiser as to where it was. After stopping at a petrol station to ask, we discovered it was just down the road, around the corner. We finally got there at 10:20am.

As it was a very stressful drive for Tim, we decided that we would go for a walk, though I had a shower first to freshen up, and briefly thought I had left my wallet on the plane (though it was eventually found in the car - phew!)

We walked through a park beside the youth hostel, where there were lots of families with young kids, tobogganing down slopes. We discovered that our shoes didn't have very ice-friendly soles, and spent a lot of time almost slipping over. We walked and walked and eventually ended up in the main shopping area, with pedestrian malls and cobbled streets. The sales were on, so we bought a new beanie to better cover Tim's ears. We also bought bratwurst on rolls for lunch (a common lunch option in Germany, from street stalls). We got lost walking back to the youth hostel, though eventually found our way.

The slippery park, devoid of tobogganing families.

We filled in time until dinner, which bore absolutely no resemblance to the weekly menu stated meal, and was accompanied by raspberry tea (great to tone our uteruses with!). Early to bed - jetlag.