Frankfurt/Friedberg

It's now the middle of the night and I am not exactly sleeping - the phone woke me up and I am having trouble regaining sleep mode.

Before I got to Ilmenau, I went to visit Tom Aney and his family in Friedberg, which is a suburb of Frankfurt. I don't know if we've ever actually met before, but family is family right? Cecilia and Ben are great kids - they don't fight too much and have generally sunny dispositions. Ben isn't quite old enough to talk yet - but his two favorite words are "Cah" and "Ah-oh" - which both can loosely be translated as referring to cars - but ah-oh can really be made to fit all situations.

Saturday I went into Frankfurt to go to the Museumsuferfest. All the museums in Frankfurt are arranged along the shores of the river (hence the name Museumsufer) and every year they throw a big festival with food, shopping, entertainment stages, and cheap admission to the museums and their special activities and exhibitions. I got really fascinated by the multicultural dances at one of the stages and basically just sat and watched them for a couple of hours. I also got to see some dragon boat races. It was a fun time, but it's one of those things that it's more fun to have someone to go with.

Sunday I decided to hang out with the Aney-Szilagyis. Tom and I took the kids to the Friedberg Feuerwehrfest (fire department festival). The kids got to run around and sit in the trucks and bounce on a bouncy house type thing. It was your typical cute little small town festival. Later, we went to the swimming pool. Their swimming pool is in Ockstadt, another little town in the area, and the pool is fed by a mountain spring of some sort and it is COLD. The water is definitely not clear like a mountain spring though.

Going to the pool made me reflect a bit more on the differences between Europe and the United States. Think about the last time you went to a public pool. Do they allow jumping into the water? Do they allow running by the edge of the pool? How about pool toys or floats and things like that? Of course not - and there would have to be at least ten lifeguards. This Ockstadt pool allowed you to jump in wherever you liked and run around as much as you wanted. They have a giant black inner tube which all the kids fight over and hang off. And there are NO lifeguards. And of course, because you are in Germany, you can buy beer at the pool.