Hello, Hannover

Good Morning, Hannover... To escape the complete emptiness that envelops Frankfurt every Friday night for the entire weekend, and in order to be with Anna’s family for a family celebration, we went up to Hannover last weekend for a change (which is supposed to be as good as a rest). Needless to say, owing to our usual quality planning, it also ended up being my first day of ‘proper’ work in a long time so, barely able to see from tiredness,... Read More

Cycling the Radweg

Just what I needed... The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy over here in Frankfurt – I’ve finally gotten a job, which I know will come as a resounding relief to some folk, we’re looking at new places to live as our rent contract is up soon on our current apartment, and I’ve been doing other projects besides. I’m also travelling back to Ireland for an extremely short visit this week, and we’ve still been travelling up north at... Read More

Whatever Happened to the Clothes Hanger Trick?

The last couple of posts, in my mini-series, I was writing about everything to do with train travel – partly inspired by my series of journeys last week down to Frankfurt and back (which ended up being in a car anyway). In all this time, I’ve been half-living in the north-west of Germany, half down in Frankfurt. So what’s been happening?   Today, Beer, Tomorrow, Pfand... Well, following a job interview on Thursday, I repaired forthwith... Read More

Re-Uniting with an Old Friend…

And that was the last time I was seen in this get-up... It seems strange, but only this time last year, I took part in the ‘Wicklow 200’, an event that puts your love of cycling, or insanity, to the test. You get to cycle all around the Wicklow countryside for the afternoon for a distance of 200 kilometres, wondering why it’s taking you 3 hours to go between two towns that you know to be only 20 minutes drive apart, only to realise that the... Read More

The Empire of Mainhattan

I’d have had no idea what to call this blog post, only that the guy who drove us back to Frankfurt last night in our car-share (or ‘mitfahrgelegenheit’; see, we’re getting there!) informed me, by way of finishing off a sentence about how Frankfurt was full to the brim with bankers, that the city is informally also known as ‘Mainhattan’. It took me a while to get what was going on but since Frankfurt sits on the river Main, and there are... Read More

Germany & Her Cuisine…

Anything that can cook food, WILL be used... Having been in Frankfurt now a couple of weeks, I’ve begun to develop something of a routine in terms of eating. In fact, while we all laughed at how it was more the ‘norm’ to eat out in Malaysia than to eat in, Frankfurt it must be said, also provides ample opportunity to increase the waist size whenever and wherever you happen to be.   Tuesdays and Thursdays for example, bring a lunchtime food... Read More

300km in a Handshake.

As I’ve said before, Germany is very much reliant on websites that offer up car-sharing opportunities, what with the national train service being obscenely expensive on a majority of journeys (but very good value on others, it must be said) and not actually having any intercity national coach service. Strangely, I know this sounds stupid, but this situation is new to me – Ireland always had a train service and a half-competing national bus service,... Read More

Sprechen Sie Deutsch? No, Not Really…

After a hard week of good work in Frankfurt, which saw us making regular commutes to the internet café owing to the complete lack thereof in our new apartment, it was time to head back up north to Anna’s family to spend the weekend in relative peace and tranquillity. While I love our new apartment (relatively speaking), it comes equipped with no blinds to really speak of which can lead to a horrible dreariness at 5am (a bit like coming out of... Read More

4 Bodies, 6 Bags & A Giant Rucksack Bound For Frankfurt.

The relative expense of the Deutsche Bahn national train system in Germany means that, unlike back home where insurance and potential murder concerns have prevented a nationwide take-up, car-sharing on long journeys has become very much part of the norm over here. I’m not entirely sure how it all works, but it seems to be mostly borne out of financial necessity, with ticket prices from Muenster to Frankfurt for example seemingly often... Read More

What’s ‘bed’ in German?!

After a really great Easter back at home eating good food, drinking good drink, and catching up with friends, it was high time to head back to Germany to begin the settling down properly. Unfortunately, when we planned our period of yo-yoing back and forth between Dublin, it seemed most likely that we still wouldn’t actually have a place to live when we came back to Frankfurt and thus would have to continue our apartment search. Like I say though,... Read More