Frankfurt for Some Old Farts

For those who read my blog on a regular basis, I am fortunate enough to be able to see one of my best friends from college, Erin, on a pretty regular basis and the two of us have managed to take some of the craziest European vacations, including Istanbul, Paris, Amsterdam and numerous nights in Zurich. However, in the past 2 years I had not made it to see her in Frankfurt, the headquarters of the company she works for, which requires her frequent trips to Europe. So with little less than 2 months to go before I moved home, I thought it was time to check out what the city had to offer. Due to my busy work schedule, I had to limit my visit to Saturday night, less than 16 hours to be exact. But with our resourcefulness and traveling skills, we were able to make the most of the few hours. And in fact, we some how managed to do more damage in those few hours than our weekends in Amsterdam and Paris combined.

The night started off in the normal fashion, a bottle of wine in the hotel room, followed by a late night dinner some place fun. That evening we chose an Apfelwein restaurant on the south side of the river. Come to find out Apfelwein isn't that good, but thankfully the food was tasty and the crowd was lively. After a few beers, we managed to get a recommendation for a bar nearby which promised rock music. However we quickly realized that the promise was either false, or the question was misunderstood as we walked into the 60-70s soul music bar, asked to hear Bon Jovi and were quickly turned down....Suddenly on a mission to hear Bon Jovi, we pounded our drinks, headed back outside, asked the bouncer where we might have more luck…we were pointed in the direction of left.

We found ourselves in a more promising neighborhood with plenty of loud bars and made our way into the most crowded one. The bar became even more promising after we took two free shots of some fruity concoction that screamed hang over and a round of jaeger purchased by some friendlyGermans. But that was where our luck ended. We were again turned down for the Bon Jovi request and finally gave up the play list fight, settling for bad 80s German pop. We called it quits around 3:30 and found our way back to the hotel to pass out with thoughts of brunch the next morning.

Unfortunately for us, we are no longer as resilient as we once used to be...Things were not as pretty in the morning and brunch was the furthest thing from our minds. With a slight, but increasing head ache, the beginning of the shakes and Erin in the bathroom puking, we both had a dose of hard cold reality...apparently we are not that young any more and can't keep doing this to our bodies, because, come to find out the bodies will fight back... I spent the 4 hour train ride home and the rest of the evening trying to recover. Not fun, but so worth it.