25th April 2008
Today after a lot of farting around in Frankfurt this morning I went off to see Wiesbaden. It’s not too far and is not really a city of any substance, but it made a nice day trip, and the train ticket also included the city of Mainz.
I got the U-Bahn at around 1pm and it took about half an hour to get there. While I was posting some postcards, this little old lady came up to me and started rambling at me in German, I told her I didn’t understand, and she picked up one of my lingering rastas and said something with a smile on her face and walked off. “Dunka Seine!” I called after her. I can only hope she said, “I like your plaits” and not “You’re a drain on society” or else I’ll have looked really silly for thanking her.
I wandered around aimlessly for a while as I do, before I found the church of St. Paul, which was really impressive in anyone’s language. It was a big red brick, gothic style building and that to my eyes made it quite unique as gothic buildings almost always appear dark. The inside of it was also impressive.
I wandered around the town a little more and saw lots of little cute buildings. The town square was quite nice as was the big park in front of the museum, which I sat in for a bit, watching the ducks in the fountain before walking back to the station, which was quite a long way off by now. I got on the train and headed back towards Frankfurt.
After my visit to Wiesbaden, I got off the train at the city of Mainz. Not expecting to see much, I soon found out that the place was quite spectacular. It had its very own castle which looked very impressive. The city is also right on the river Rhine, which I’ve now crossed.
It was really beautiful standing on the bridge over the river and looking at the city, which is full of churches and other impressive buildings on the opposite bank.
I got across the river and went into this nice old church, it had wonderful stained-glass windows and painted frescoes on the ceiling, the frescoes were really old looking, something you don’t usually see in this neck of the woods. I also visited the ruined church of Saint Christopher, my patron saint, he is associated with travellers. I hung around in Mainz for a while and walked back over the Rhine and saw the little church the city is supposedly famous for.
I then got back on the U-Bahn and went back to Frankfurt to pack for Morocco!