Frankfurt....whoa, where, what, huh?

Looking back on previous posts this seems to be the place I can sarcastically complain about our wacked trips. So, here I go again!

First off, I must discuss the difference between my approach to travel, directions, eating, walking (well, really anything) and the J man's approach to aforementioned events. It's all different, I mean 180 degree different. Nuff said.

My Way -- Last week, when taking a babysitter home to tim-buk-too I went about it like this:
1) look up directions on google maps
2) right them down
3) briefly think I should take the GPS as back up
4) totally forget about GPS, grab purse, kids, and water
5) turn wrong way while looking at directions and get back on autobahn!
6) get right off and end up amazingly going quickly back to where I was!
7) make wrong turn on B30 (well a B#'d main road, but not gonna tell you the real one here crazies!)
8) notice not going the right direction about 10 minutes later
9) turn confidently around
10) remember about the GPS about 4 minutes later
11) about 9 minutes later briefly hope I don't really need the GPS I left at home
12) finally see the village I was looking for and know I'm getting there, later than thought, but getting there nonetheless
13) Remember a 2nd direction to go and try going home that way with absolutely no problems at all (& even no directions this time, all from memory)!

His Way - J man, on the other hand had me go back to get the GPS when we were going to a new restaurant to celebrate my princess day. Which of course we get to the restaurant, fairly quickly, but now I can't tell you were it was or how to get there, and I was even driving!

Today, Frankfurt. Had to go pick up friends, take the man (hereto will be known as BioMan) to the train station and take his daughter (AKA "Pony Girl") home with us for the week. I had already looked up restaurants to eat lunch at on the web, because living here I have come to know that there are restaurants that are open for lunch, while some choose to only be open for dinner after 5pm, and still others will be open until 1pm then close and reopen at 5pm. [I had also looked up a sight seeing opportunity, but alas we all voted for lunch instead]. We put the destination in our GPS and started driving. Before we had even reached the destination, and before the "I'm the little red line on your GPS that tells you were to go" red line could even be seen ending, the J man started looking for a parking building.

This parking lot excursion took a good 20min, while we circled around the block a few times, went down a one way street, circled the block a few more times, and finally got the car in a parking lot. I'm skipping alot of the details, because if I told them here and the J man actually read this thing he might kill me!

Then we get out, and don't know where the restaurant is because we never drove past it. The GPS is completely screwed up at this point (might have something to do with the 40 laps around the sky scrapers, but it also might have something to do with the sky scrapers themselves. You choose to believe what you will!) And at this point are just walking in a random direction because we DID see the train station we were suppose to take BioMan to after lunch.

In our randomly picked direction to walk and cross the street, BioMan says "Did we find the red light district of Frankfurt?". Oh he's a card isn't he, walk walk, oh wait that place is named "American strip club", oh and look there's some names I probably shouldn't mention here! Then, me being the prior city girl I am, notice a group of people and grab corn niblets hand and prompt sweet pea and pony girl to walk faster. One of the group starts saying "Familie mit Kinder Vorsichtig! Kinder Vorsichtig Bitte!" [He was saying alot very quickly, but that's all I really heard while I was watching what was going on trying to judge what they might do. So I really only heard him say "Watch out family with children, watch out children please"]. Luckily they all paid attention and sat still, and there wasn't a lot of trash on the sidewalk. Corn Niblet asked me what they were doing and the honest mom who explains everything in detail found that all I could say right then was "bad things, very bad stuff"...which BioMan echoed. Later J man was shocked to find that the bad things was "shooting up". It's a good thing he married me, I notice all the things he doesn't even dream really go on! Lucky for us they already had what they wanted and weren't searching for anything else at that point. (Don't worry mom, you didn't raise a dummy, I told you I'm very aware of my surroundings now that I have my own kids to protect! Nothing you didn't have to deal with in SF back in the day!)

Since we now had no idea where the restaurant was, we ended up going to the train station and eating there. Needless to say, on the way back to the car we went down a block and stayed in the business looking area. See, if we'd just had directions we'd have still been looking for the restaurant and been driving around a totally different block 40 times and we wouldn't have been anywhere near the Amy Winehouse people!! It's all in how you look at it!