Chronicles of the Frankfurted Heart
Here I begin
my chronicle of the visit to Germany.
Dad and I took a stroll on the first morning there.
The weather was awesome.
No hint of humidity, nice and cool breezes around 14 degrees celsius.
Our hotel was in the suburbs, near a beautiful park and a river with green feathered ducks.
Buildings like the one in the picture above were all over the place.
The place we were at was called Zuckswerdstrasse. (pronounced zouk-sch-werd-stra-ser)
Man, do they have funky names for their streets.
They had places called Bad Hob and Bad Rugens or something along those lines.
By the way, "morgen" is German for "morning", "danke" is "thank you".
The vulgarities, you can find out yourself.
These guys are also liberal with nudity on their local TV programs.
After the morning stroll we went to the exhibition venue, called Messe-Frankfurt.
We had to get off the tram at a place called Hauptbahnhof (howpt-barn-houf).
The picture below shows Frankfurt's Hauptbahnhof.
Its the equivalent to a city's Central Station or City Hall MRT.
Germany's major cities all have Hauptbahnhofs with connecting railways.
Frankfurt's had more than 15 city subway lines, 13 hi-speed inter-city trains and countless tramlines to boot.
I just began to realise how itsy Singapore really is.
Frankfurt's Hauptbahnhof
The Messe- Frankfurt.
The exhibition grounds were huge. I reckon it would be half the size of Tampines.
We actually needed shuttle buses to get around.
The Messe has ten halls, each of the halls having 4 sub-halls.
Each subhall was about the size of a hall in the Singapore EXPO.
That's like forty sub-halls, each the size of an EXPO hall.
The Automechanika occupied all the halls. Just imagine the number of exhibitors.
Our booth was in Hall 4.1.
I snapped hundreds of photos, but I'll only post a few.
Forgot to take photos of our booth though.
This tractor had 6500 Horsepower.
A Lamborghini has around 500 to 700.
Go figure.
Yep. Its a Hummer with 31 inch rims. 31!
Talk about bling.
My personal favorite.
A really classic Cadillac restored to it's old royal splendor.
I drooled when I saw this baby.
This Chinese rim manufacturer got full marks for presentation.
This leggy babe got full marks too. Haha.
Here's a peek at what we had for dinner most days.
This is a pork knuckle in beer sauce or something.
Big enough to feed three.
Beer was good there, but I missed Chinese food.
We went for drinks with some customers one night.
Crazy things happened. Really funny.
Order from the left: Mark's wife, Mark (JCL Europe), Derek (JV Thailand), me, David (UK), Uncle Andrew (JCL), Craig (UK), Justin (JCL), my dad and Lawrence (JCL Malaysia)
CJ and I went exploring on the second and third day to get a good feel of the city and here are some sights we saw:
I think it's a hotel or something, not really sure.
This theatre was a real beauty. Damn classy.
This boutique was found along Goethestrasse (goo-th-e-stra-ser), a street with all the high-fashion brands.
Hugo Boss is a local brand.
Branded stuff is cheap there due to the 10% tax rebates.
This was my favorite fountain in Frankfurt. I think its near Hauptwache.
Here comes the interesting bit. Here's what happened:
After work one day, CJ and I went exploring the city again.
For some unknown reason, this time we decided to give the subways a try.
We wandered around, got lost for a bit, then we went back to Hauptbahnhof.
There we saw trains packed with tonnes (and I mean tonnes) of Eintracht Frankfurt fans with their jerseys and scarves singing and shouting on the way to the game.
They seemed real rowdy at first, but I soon realised they were all pretty nice.
Thus, I decided to make some friends and try to get myself into the game.
Apparently, Frankfurt was playing in the UEFA Cup for the first time in more than ten years and were hosting Brondby from Denmark.
So what the hell, I just tagged along with some of the fans and got to the stadium.
The Germans are real friendly people, especially so when you're rooting for their local club.
I made many friends just on the way to the stadium.
A couple of them even helped me negotiate for black market tickets.
(I got the tickets for 20 Euros! Now that's a good deal right there considering it was a full house.)
World cup stadium, packed to the brim.
You could hear them cheering 400 metres outside the stadium.
The spectators were on their feet nearly the whole of the match.
Do you see the Brondby crowd?
Aahh.. There they are.. with police protection and all.
Some random dude whose name I can't remember.
He taught me a few cheers and songs.
We sang our lungs out and jumped around like madmen.
And when the crowd cat-whistled the opposition, I almost went deaf.
The floodgates opened after this penalty. Two red cards!
Happy strangers hugged me screaming "YEAH!".
Including one policeman. WTH.
You cannot imagine how loud the cheering got after the final whistle.
I felt like we just won a war.
Quite an experience, seriously.
On the second last day there, CJ and I went city-hopping while the rest went to work.
Come on, everyone needs some fun right?
We took an hour's train ride down to Heidelberg to take a look at the old town still stuck in the romanticism ages.
Man, the views were panaromic.
Do you see the Heidelberg castle on that hill?
This magnificent arch, believe it or not, was built in one night.
Note the attention to detail. Amazing.
Each sculpture on this building are past princesses.
None of them are identical.
An alley inside the castle.
Check out the view from the castle.
This old wine barrel has the height of a double-decker bus and is the biggest in the world.
What's funny was that a dwarf was tasked by the king in the past to look after the barrel.
The dude drank wine every day for fourteen years during the king's reign.
If you thought that was ironic, someone gave him a glass of water and he dropped dead immediately after drinking it.
Its not folklore, its true.
Ok, enough of Heidelberg and it's old tales, off we went to Stuttgart.
It's some old parliament building or something, next to a gargantuan park with two fountains and giant obelisk-like structures.
Here's one of the structures. Did I mention that they were HUGE?
By the time we got back to Frankfurt I was nearly dead.
Started coughing on my way back from Stuttgart.
Bayer Leverkusen were in Frankfurt for a Bundesliga match and the team actually stayed at our hotel!
How cool is that? Too bad I don't like Leverkusen.
Then I had to endure a 12 hour flight back to Singapore and suffer jetlag.
But I can't say the trip wasn't fun.
To sum it all up, Germany had really nice people, a good mixture of old and modern architecture, a hell lot of interesting history, crazy football fans, good shopping, great weather, a few pretty babes and purportedly fantastic beer.
Now all they need is proper Chinese food.
Here end the chronicles of a Frankfurted heart.
And suddenly I'm really starting to miss Germany. Damn.
my chronicle of the visit to Germany.
Dad and I took a stroll on the first morning there.
The weather was awesome.
No hint of humidity, nice and cool breezes around 14 degrees celsius.
Our hotel was in the suburbs, near a beautiful park and a river with green feathered ducks.
Buildings like the one in the picture above were all over the place.
The place we were at was called Zuckswerdstrasse. (pronounced zouk-sch-werd-stra-ser)
Man, do they have funky names for their streets.
They had places called Bad Hob and Bad Rugens or something along those lines.
By the way, "morgen" is German for "morning", "danke" is "thank you".
The vulgarities, you can find out yourself.
These guys are also liberal with nudity on their local TV programs.
After the morning stroll we went to the exhibition venue, called Messe-Frankfurt.
We had to get off the tram at a place called Hauptbahnhof (howpt-barn-houf).
The picture below shows Frankfurt's Hauptbahnhof.
Its the equivalent to a city's Central Station or City Hall MRT.
Germany's major cities all have Hauptbahnhofs with connecting railways.
Frankfurt's had more than 15 city subway lines, 13 hi-speed inter-city trains and countless tramlines to boot.
I just began to realise how itsy Singapore really is.
Frankfurt's Hauptbahnhof
The Messe- Frankfurt.
The exhibition grounds were huge. I reckon it would be half the size of Tampines.
We actually needed shuttle buses to get around.
The Messe has ten halls, each of the halls having 4 sub-halls.
Each subhall was about the size of a hall in the Singapore EXPO.
That's like forty sub-halls, each the size of an EXPO hall.
The Automechanika occupied all the halls. Just imagine the number of exhibitors.
Our booth was in Hall 4.1.
I snapped hundreds of photos, but I'll only post a few.
Forgot to take photos of our booth though.
This tractor had 6500 Horsepower.
A Lamborghini has around 500 to 700.
Go figure.
Yep. Its a Hummer with 31 inch rims. 31!
Talk about bling.
My personal favorite.
A really classic Cadillac restored to it's old royal splendor.
I drooled when I saw this baby.
This Chinese rim manufacturer got full marks for presentation.
This leggy babe got full marks too. Haha.
Here's a peek at what we had for dinner most days.
This is a pork knuckle in beer sauce or something.
Big enough to feed three.
Beer was good there, but I missed Chinese food.
We went for drinks with some customers one night.
Crazy things happened. Really funny.
Order from the left: Mark's wife, Mark (JCL Europe), Derek (JV Thailand), me, David (UK), Uncle Andrew (JCL), Craig (UK), Justin (JCL), my dad and Lawrence (JCL Malaysia)
CJ and I went exploring on the second and third day to get a good feel of the city and here are some sights we saw:
I think it's a hotel or something, not really sure.
This theatre was a real beauty. Damn classy.
This boutique was found along Goethestrasse (goo-th-e-stra-ser), a street with all the high-fashion brands.
Hugo Boss is a local brand.
Branded stuff is cheap there due to the 10% tax rebates.
This was my favorite fountain in Frankfurt. I think its near Hauptwache.
Here comes the interesting bit. Here's what happened:
After work one day, CJ and I went exploring the city again.
For some unknown reason, this time we decided to give the subways a try.
We wandered around, got lost for a bit, then we went back to Hauptbahnhof.
There we saw trains packed with tonnes (and I mean tonnes) of Eintracht Frankfurt fans with their jerseys and scarves singing and shouting on the way to the game.
They seemed real rowdy at first, but I soon realised they were all pretty nice.
Thus, I decided to make some friends and try to get myself into the game.
Apparently, Frankfurt was playing in the UEFA Cup for the first time in more than ten years and were hosting Brondby from Denmark.
So what the hell, I just tagged along with some of the fans and got to the stadium.
The Germans are real friendly people, especially so when you're rooting for their local club.
I made many friends just on the way to the stadium.
A couple of them even helped me negotiate for black market tickets.
(I got the tickets for 20 Euros! Now that's a good deal right there considering it was a full house.)
World cup stadium, packed to the brim.
You could hear them cheering 400 metres outside the stadium.
The spectators were on their feet nearly the whole of the match.
Do you see the Brondby crowd?
Aahh.. There they are.. with police protection and all.
Some random dude whose name I can't remember.
He taught me a few cheers and songs.
We sang our lungs out and jumped around like madmen.
And when the crowd cat-whistled the opposition, I almost went deaf.
The floodgates opened after this penalty. Two red cards!
Happy strangers hugged me screaming "YEAH!".
Including one policeman. WTH.
You cannot imagine how loud the cheering got after the final whistle.
I felt like we just won a war.
Quite an experience, seriously.
On the second last day there, CJ and I went city-hopping while the rest went to work.
Come on, everyone needs some fun right?
We took an hour's train ride down to Heidelberg to take a look at the old town still stuck in the romanticism ages.
Man, the views were panaromic.
Do you see the Heidelberg castle on that hill?
This magnificent arch, believe it or not, was built in one night.
Note the attention to detail. Amazing.
Each sculpture on this building are past princesses.
None of them are identical.
An alley inside the castle.
Check out the view from the castle.
This old wine barrel has the height of a double-decker bus and is the biggest in the world.
What's funny was that a dwarf was tasked by the king in the past to look after the barrel.
The dude drank wine every day for fourteen years during the king's reign.
If you thought that was ironic, someone gave him a glass of water and he dropped dead immediately after drinking it.
Its not folklore, its true.
Ok, enough of Heidelberg and it's old tales, off we went to Stuttgart.
It's some old parliament building or something, next to a gargantuan park with two fountains and giant obelisk-like structures.
Here's one of the structures. Did I mention that they were HUGE?
By the time we got back to Frankfurt I was nearly dead.
Started coughing on my way back from Stuttgart.
Bayer Leverkusen were in Frankfurt for a Bundesliga match and the team actually stayed at our hotel!
How cool is that? Too bad I don't like Leverkusen.
Then I had to endure a 12 hour flight back to Singapore and suffer jetlag.
But I can't say the trip wasn't fun.
To sum it all up, Germany had really nice people, a good mixture of old and modern architecture, a hell lot of interesting history, crazy football fans, good shopping, great weather, a few pretty babes and purportedly fantastic beer.
Now all they need is proper Chinese food.
Here end the chronicles of a Frankfurted heart.
And suddenly I'm really starting to miss Germany. Damn.
resolute at 12:52 PM
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