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I realize it's been a month since I wrote last, but my first priority these last two weeks has been finding a place to live in Frankfurt. As I left Berlin on August 2, I though I'd have a lot of help finding an apartment from the company I'm working for. After some miscommunication of some sort, I didn't receive any help and was forced to turn to another source - those at CDS in New York. They promptly made a spreadsheet of housing options, and I ended up choosing one of those options. Sure, I made some attempts on my own to find housing, but it's not easy when you don't speak the language well enough and aren't familiar with the way housing works. The apartment I've found has two other people, an older lady from whom I'm renting and a younger German guy. I'm paying only €270 per month including the utilities, which is cheaper than my apartment was back home. The location is great - surrounding me are plenty of shops for food, clothes, and anything else, and my office is only a 10 minute bike ride away. My room in the apartment is large and is fully furnished, and I even have my own refridgerator. It's stressful though, because the others smoke in the house, and whenever I want to use the kitchen the place smells like smoke. The landlady also tries to be a bit like an overbearing mother at times...
As I've told a couple of others now, it's really weird having a full-job. Now that I'm not going to school and making a little money, I feel differently than I did as a college student. I now have limited time during the day to enjoy the weather or do other things I used to enjoy - instead I sit in an office and do research or translate from German to English from 9-6. The work environment is great though - other than me there are only 5 people here, so it's more like a family. The company CEO, Mr. Winkler, has been more than welcoming. On my first week he was nice enough not only to clean my laundry for me, but he also invited me to his home for lunch. He cooked a really nice meal and we had some coffee and relaxed before returning to work. He then offered to give me a personal tour of Frankfurt! That was last weekend - he took me around in the (Mercedes) convertible and showed me the Kleinmarkthalle, which is where all sorts of food are sold by the locals. He finished the afternoon by showing me the shopping district and also some old churches. And if that wasn't enough, when I wasn't able to take enough money from the ATM to pay my security deposit, he lent me €500!
As for my travels throughout the last weeks, I've been to many places and seen even more things. Among my favorites is Krakow, Poland. When you're there you get this feeling that you're in a medieval town - a place where you can actually see locals walking around. In some of these other places, like Prague, I was hard-pressed to find any locals other than the shopkeepers. But that's not to negate the beauty of these other cities. I found that when I was in Krakow, just like in Poznan, I had a good feeling about everything. The Polish people are wonderful, the food is good, and the music, dancing and singing the culture is a lot of fun. Since Poland is no longer a Russian satellite, their economy and standard of living have been steadily increasing in recent years. That, combined with the wonderfully preserved churches, castles, and monuments, makes this country a great place to visit.
I also traveled through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria. Seeing these places in a span of a week and a half is pretty easy, because it's just a matter of deciding where you want to go next. For example, at the beginning of the two weeks I was staying in Prague. While in my hostel, I got on the internet and simply booked a hostel for two nights in my next chosen destination, which was Brno (the second largest city in the Czech Republic.) Because Brno is not very big, I could see everything in a day and a half, and moved on to Krakow, which was only 5 hours away by train. That ride turned out to be more than I had planned - that day there was an accident on the tracks and all trains were delayed by at least three hours. I found myself getting off the train before my destination, and being ushered onto a bus in the middle of the Czech Republic. I had no idea where I was headed, but other people looked somewhat calm, like this had happened before, so I didn't worry too much. We came to another train station, but by this time my connection had already left. What was I going to do? At the information counter I ended up meeting a girl from Slovakia who was also traveling to Krakow - and she could speak Czech! We got to talking, and decided to hitchhike once we got across the Polish border! We made signs and everything, and stood there in the rain until we got tired. We discovered that the train would be arriving in a couple hours, so we went to a local restaurant and had dinner. When we finally arrived in Krakow and I found the hostel it was late, so I went to bed.
Budapest is also a grand city - regardless of only being there a day and a half I was able to see nearly everything. My favorite parts were the indoor market, which sold everything from fruits to clothes, and the parliment building, which was on the riverfront. And of course, seeing Vienna during the summertime was something I've wanted to do since I saw it two years ago during winter. This time around I could walk around much more without being bothered by the cold. And seeing St. Paul's Church in the sunlight was well worth the trip in and of itself!
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