Preparation Day in Frankfurt

Today is Saturday, and we made it something of a holiday. We walked to the railway station here in Bad Vilbel and took a train into Frankfurt. Then we took subway trains, streetcars, and buses to various parts of the town. This picture shows Dad at an entrance to the subway.

We had prepared a list of places we wanted to go so we could find some things we wanted. We bought an all day pass for the whole transportation system. It was only good for the frankfurt area, but that was all we wanted. Being Saturday, some of the places we wanted to go to were closed. But we had alternatives in our list. A funny one: We wanted to find a hair cutting kit, and I looked up addresses for business that sold beauty supplies. The first one was closed, and the second one was three stories of wigs. When we found someone to talk to we stated our need, and they pointed out a window and told us to go there. It turned out to be a store where they sold weapons. Guns, swords, bows and arrows, rifles, knives, etc. But they had scissors. They had several really nice hair cutting scissors. The salesperson got a black velvet tray and arranged these scissors on it for us to look at - almost like in a jewelry store. It was fun.

We went walking down the streets stopping regularly to check our lists and study our maps, and we found several stores that had some other stuff we needed.

We were only able to find popcorn in a "Reform Haus," and then only in small packages of 500 gramms each. We bought both of the packages we found in one Reform Haus, but our list shows several more places to go another day, or we could go back to the one where we bought these later when they restock their supply. I mentioned to the saleslady that we bought it in American in 40 pound bags, and she loudly laughed about the Americans' ways of doing things. By the way, a Reform Haus is a health foods store.

We also tried to find a popcorn popper and a crock pot. We found neither, though we thought we were coming close once on both. The popcorn poppers were all sold out, and the thing that looked a little like a crock pot turned out to be a rice cooker. We love our rice cooker at home, but the price on this one was far too high for us. The German stores make a funny distinction between house wares and small appliances. Anything that plugs in is sold differently from the normal kitchen/dining products. Tomorrow, is Sunday, and we'll find out how our popcorn pops then, but in time we may be able to get a popcorn popper. As a general rule, we are avoiding buying anything that will run on only German power (230 Volts at 50 cycles).

Mom brought her hair curlers, but they work on 110 Volts, so we had to get a transformer to change the voltage. We finally got that today, and so Mom should really look beautiful tomorrow for church.


Can you imagine us walking around downtown Frankfurt, looking for all these strange things, carrying our purchases, and turning to our notes and maps at every corner? It was fun, but we were very tired when we got through. Once we got back to Bad Vilbel on the train, we took a bus back to our area rather than walking. The bus goes only one-way past our house, and it gets here from the train station in just a few minutes. But to get from here to the station we'd have to take it all over town before it would finally get us to the station. You can see a picture of this long bus in a previous posting on our Blog. It has a flex-point in the middle, and the engine is in the "trailer" part at the back.