• There is no Sunday trade here, which not only means you can’t shop on Sundays, it means NOTHING HAPPENS on Sundays. The streets are empty, you can’t amuse yourself by purchasing groceries, and if it’s raining and the “outdoors option” is gone, it’s s*** boring here.
• The buses seem to stop at about 8pm, which is when the shops close, which left me stuck in the middle of nowhere with my groceries in the rain (more on that story another day). They also have limited services on Sat and Sun, and the journey planner one their website gives impossibly short times to meet connecting buses.
• Despite being an “International ATM”, there is no way to change languages once you put your bankcard in, and I have so far failed on three separate occasions to withdraw money. I have, however, managed to move €50 to something called “Vorgemerkte
Umsätze”, which means nothing to me, but hopefully I can retrieve it :\
Now, onto the much more entertaining subject of ballet. No, really, it can be entertaining. I found the costumes (or lack thereof) quite amusing, and the fact that we nearly missed the 3rd act because we thought it was over after the 2nd was hilarious. Even more amusing was the fact that the Wölfel kids were already well on their way home by the time we realised we had to go back inside, so only Catherine and I saw the last act. I couldn’t take any photos in there, but I took the following photos of photos in the program:
Act #1: Space, Distance, Measure. This was very modern, and the dancers looked like they’d just walked in off the street and were dancing in the clothes they’d been wearing all day. This act involved lots of falling around, as if the dancers had consumed a few too many Wodkas (yes, that’s how they spell it here) before they started. And baldy here spent most of the time trying to unstuck his feet and hands from the stage floor. Odd.
Act #2: Frank Bridge Variations. This act was much happier, with Christmassy-coloured bodysuits that left little to the imagination, and lots of springing around en masse.
Act #3: Pathétique. I dubbed this the “Men With No Shirts” act, because that’s the majority of what we saw (but for some reason, the photo in the program has them wearing shirts). Fine by me. But in addition to this, there was a lot of man-with-man dancing action, which I refrained from pointing out as sus. BUT I later found out from one of the violinists in the orchestra that this act was a bit of a Tschaikowskij bio, and was about him having an affair with a young man and being torn between conforming to the beliefs of the day and his inner gayness. Quite interesting.
Skip to Saturday, when I visited the Lennerz house (reminder: Volker Lennerz is the post-doc from my lab). Volker had previously mentioned to me that I could borrow his wife’s old bike, which she didn’t use anymore because it didn’t have a sturdy enough frame for the kiddy seat. So on Saturday, I finally went to check it out. Well, really, Volker checked it out while I chatted with his wife upstairs. Once it was ready to ride, Volker and I cycled back to the Uniklinik and dropped off the bikes, then we went to the park up the road with his family. The two little Lennerz girls showed me some very interesting things around the park, which I’ll tell you about after I go back and take some photos. Anyhoo, here’s my new racing machine:
I have since removed the basket, but it hasn’t affected the aerodynamics, as far as I can tell. I don’t need to go too fast anyway, because I don’t have a helmet and don’t want to kill myself. Anyway, to test out my new vehicle (and to avoid the aforementioned crappy buses), yesterday I rode to Wiesbaden, which is across the Rhine from Mainz. My map only took me halfway there, so there was quite a lot of guesswork involved, and I probably ended up cycling twice the distance I needed to. First up, I couldn’t work out how to get onto the bridge. I did a few laps, considered walking along the train line, then gave up and went back to the steps you see at the left of the picture below. Painful, but legal at least.
Here’s the view from the top of the bridge – to the left is Mainz and to the right is Wiesbaden.
I then rode waaaay too far east and ended up in some fields, then did a bit of a trek and finally found civilisation. I also found this creepy-looking tower (well, I think it would be creepy in the rain):
I rode for ages, hoping for a sign that would tell me I was actually in the city, then I found this:
The great thing about Germans is they build bloody great big churches/halls in every town centre, so you just have to look for the largest red-brick structure you can find to know you’ve made it!
I had lunch in the beautiful park pictured below, where people were kicking soccer balls and lazing in the first decent rays of sun we’ve had in awhile. A few of you will know about my fondness of big areas of cushy grass, so you’ll appreciate my love for this park.
After lunch, I wandered around in search of pretty old things, and found another enormous red brick structure…
…and a medieval-looking wall…
…and what I think is the Theatre:
On the way home, I went waaaay too far west and had to backtrack a very long way to get to a footbridge. At least it was along the Rhine, which a lot of people were sitting along eating icecream (obviously there’s one shop somewhere that was open), so it was a scenic trip.
The whole adventure took me about 5 ½ hours, and whilst the ride may not have been of Linda or Nathan proportions (or speed), the pain I now feel when I try to sit down tells me that it was a pretty decent effort!
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