Frankfurt, Germany

What do you do with a 10-hour layover? Book a ticket on a hop-on/hop-off bus and tour the city of course! Now, this only works if you are in a place during the daytime and you don't need a separate visa for said frolicking. Luckily for me, it worked out well this layover.

My flight from DC landed at about noon local time, so by 1:15 I found the correct train to the city center. 

 

So now that I've been on a German train, I understand even more how much metro sucks. These were really nice, modern trains. Of course, the map was in German and looked like this:

 

So like, holy hell, I had no idea what train to get on. Luckily people here speak a fair amount of English and nice people pointed me to the correct train both times.

 This was the view leaving the central train station in the middle of Frankfurt. Such a beautiful city.

 Last week I bought a ticket to a hop-on/hop-off bus to tour the downtown part of the city. It was a gorgeous day, so I rode on the top.

 The Main River (that is the name of the river) flows right through Frankfurt and then converges later with the Rhine. There are lots of walkways and bike paths along the banks.

 

There was a lovely dog on one of my buses. I tried to ask the owner if I could pet him, and she looked at me wearily and said no. Then a few seconds later she said, Oh! The dog! And said yes with a smile. I have no idea what she thought I was asking at first, but I did get to pet the dog- mission accomplished.

 One of the stops on the bus route was a science museum, so I decided to check it out.

 

This place is like the Smithsonian of Germany. So so many displays of animals. This was just the bird room.  They had a room like this of mammals, tons of dinosaur skeletons and other fossils, a big room on plants, several rooms on geology and earth science, and neat displays on evolution. It was a bummer I couldn't read anything since 99.8% was in German, but I loved seeing the displays.

 

They had a cool and weird room of animals and parts of animals preserved in jars. 

 Which leads to this picture, and made me feel like I was in the Department of Mysteries in Harry Potter. Brains! Ahh!

 

I love how bike-friendly the whole city was. 

After touring and museum-ing I grabbed a Bockwurst in the train station. As I was about to order, I stepped up to the counter and accidentally cornered a large pigeon, which freaked out and flew about 2 inches from my face. So I jumped back and said Ahh! Everyone around me laughed and one guy apologized (for the pigeon?) as I was leaving. Highly amusing for them- I would have liked to be able to explain that I'm not actually afraid of pigeons, just things flying at my face. Oh well.

I made my way back to the airport by about 6:30pm local time. I had bought my ticket at the airport train station, but didn't see anywhere to scan it. I wondered if I was illegally riding the train. Then on the way back the conductor came around asking to see tickets- I guess I just missed him the first time. Don't worry, I had tickets for both rides!

Germany, what tiny bit I saw today, is really beautiful. The climate and flora of Frankfurt is very similar to the east coast of the US. Hopefully I can see more of Germany on another trip sometime.