JPNSaturday, a peaceful morning.
The sign of the German post office is a horn.
Mike explained to me the reason; in the old days, when the post man arrived in the town, he would blow a horn to summon the townspeople.
Speaking about the Post Office, the goods were displayed neatly on the shelves, to perfection... This aspect is similar to Japanese.
Walking back to Mike's house, I noticed another interesting thing.
Germans are obsessed about recycling.
Look at all the different kinds of garbage bins they have...
Starting from the right: white tins, brown glass, blue glass, white glass, then (maybe) papers, clothes etcetc.
Soon they'll have separate bins for cotton clothes, linen clothes, 40% cotton and 60% acryl clothes, I'm telling you.
Speaking about pet bottles, currently, if you return the bottles to the shop where you bought them,
you'll get a small refund (I think it was 15 cents). But Mike told me that soon they'll introduce a law that allows you to get a refund
from any shop you like (which makes more sense, as when you're travelling, you're unlikely to go back to the same shop).
I was very impressed.
Another similarity to Japanese is that German people smoke a lot (perhaps because cigarettes are relatively cheap)
There are (like in Japan) vending machines for cigarrettes.
Our plan for today was to go to Frankfurt to see the football match.
We left the house at 10:30 and cycled to Darmstadt station (Darmstadt is a town next to Weiterstadt).
And oh yes, German people cycle a lot as well, not for pure recreation, but for commuting to work and stuff as well.
There's usually a lane for cyclists in most of the streets, so it's nice and safe for cyclists,
Frankfurt Main Station.
This is another characteristic of Germans - they wait at the traffic signals, even when there are no cars coming.
This is another similarity to Japanese I think.
When everybody waits, it's quite difficult to ignore the signals.
Since the match was from 3pm, we had a short time to do sightseeing in Frankfurt.
That's the famous Eiserner Steg (bridge).
Mike, posing infront of the sky scrapers.
This famous place (which I managed to miss the day before yesterday), is called Romerberg.
It's a square surrounded by beautiful German style buildings and in the centre,
there is Gerechtigkeitsbrunnen (fountain of justice).
What amazes me about the Germans is their language skills.
For one, their spelling skills are amazing, I mean some German words are like ten thousand letters long and they can still spell it and read it.
They compete very well with the Welsh people in this respect.
Secondly, most Germans can speak fluent English, this really amazes me.
The great German poet, Goethe lived in Frankfurt.
He was living in one of the rooms in the tall skyscrapers (yeah right).
The Goethe museum is in the city centre, and next to it, there's his family house (reconstructed after it was destroyed after the WWII).
We didn't actually go into the museum, as we didn't have time.
This is the Stock Exchange, we made couple of thousand euros here (yeah right).
Some random statue infront of the Deutsche Bank.
The two men facing each other is part of the design - yeah right.
So the match started from 3pm.
This Commerzbank Arena was used during the World Cup, it can accomodate 40,000 people,
The stadium was nearly full today.
The reason being, today was the first home match for the Eintracht Frankfurt, the local team.
The opponent was VfL Wolfsburg.
Mathiase, Mike's friend from Church and his children joined us.
After a heated battle, they drew, 0 - 0, but it was a good game.
German supporters are just as agressive as the English ones.
Mathiase's children were tired after the match.
It was a wonderful day.
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