Once I left Karla in Nürnberg, I hopped on a train and headed to Frankfurt. Here I met up with Audrey and waited for Cassie to show up. I had figured since I had flight leaving for home in the beginning of April, it gave me the perfect excuse to spend some time at Audrey's. Audrey is an Au Pair for a lovely German family. She's sort of like a nanny, but luckily the mom decided to take a year off of work so she doesn't have to do as much as she normally would have had to. But, the family has a basement apartment, so that's where she lives. She has her own entrance, bathroom and kitchen. It's really nice.

I believe I stayed for a total of 5 days at her apartment. The first couple of days Cassie was with us, so one of the days while Audrey we went out and explored Frankfurt a bit. We went on a cute little boat tour of the river main and enjoyed drinks on the top of this really tall shopping complex. From there the view of Frankfurt was great. I was actually a little taken aback by the skyscrapers that lined the view, since Frankfurt is one of the only cities in Germany that actually has them. Who would have thought?

The first night we cooked dinner for Audrey. Sort of a little thank you, and a super easy way to save money on food. I believe this was the night we enjoyed quite a bit of wine, and made our way to a part of Frankfurt called Alte Sachsenhausen. Here is a bunch of old German bars all smushed together, so we had the idea we were going to bar hop. One drink at each bar and just make our way down the strip. Well we walk up, see a bunch of bars to choose from and instantly gravitate towards the one with good music. After about 3 or 4 drinks and meeting some guys, I had to pry the girls out to the next bar. Needless to say… we ended back up at the first bar.

A long night of dancing lead to us closing down the bar and winding up back at a German frat house. At first none of us really noticed anything odd was happening, until I actually started looking around. We were in a big room, with a bar in which the guys were serving the beer. The most noticeable thing was that all of the guys were wearing these thin sashes across their chest. Soon after these observations we left.

The next morning I woke up around 7:30am to Cassie jumping up and yelling "OMG!" Her parents had a flight coming in at 7am, which she was supposed to be there to meet them. She ran out the door, with no shower, wearing the same clothes as the day before to meet them. I got a text later that night saying: "Still in the same clothes, haven't brushed my teeth, and I'm introducing my parents to my host parents." Priceless.

The next couple of days before my flight home are one big blur. Except on Saturday, with gorgeous weather we spent the day out on the banks of the river. We bought an unbelievable amount of junk food, baked goods, beer and wine. We spent the entire day soaking up the sun, and enjoying each other's company. Probably one of my most favorite experiences here in Germany.

Other than that the blur consisted of dinners, meeting all of Audrey's friends, wine and oh… did I mention wine? Audrey and I decided it's a good thing that we didn't meet each other when we were both living in Ann Arbor. We probably would have turned out to be bums begging for money to feed our wine addictions.

On that Monday Audrey had a flight leaving to London at some ridiculously early time like 7am. My flight wasn't until 11:30am, so I made really good friends with a comfy bench at the airport.

Getting on the plane to make it home was such an event. First, I didn't have my Visa yet, so the guy almost didn't let me through customs. Then my carry-on got searched since I was carrying two cuckoo cuckoo clocks. After the search I had to follow the man so he could check them for explosives. Ah! Anyways, I finally made it on the plane and was on my way to home sweet home!

Up Next: Home for Easter!