Shilpa and Niyanthi go to Marburg!

So for my first weekend out of the US, I decided to meet up with my old friend Niyanthi at her residence in Frankfurt. There's nothing like seeing someone you've known forever to help you ease into a new and unfamiliar life. Besides, she's awesomely independent and bad ass in general so seeing her all happy and settled makes me excited for my big life changes.

Wasn't joking about N being an "old" friend. See if you can spot us :)

I caught the train from the Bochum Hauptbanhof to Frankfurt where she was waiting for me on the platform with her friend Josip who speaks very difficult languages (Croatian, German and Russian amongst others) and knows pretty much everything.

We then went to her apartment where Josip introduced us to a drinking game called looping louie which involves an Italian man in a plane knocking down chickens. I don't know, it made sense at the time. I was a terrible loser that night choosing not to partake in the festivities which led me to be a smug sally the next morning because I didn't wake up with a headache ;)

Also there was karaoke at some point. Both N and I were BIG Spice Girls fans growing up so we sang "wannabe" and embarrassingly enough did not have to look up at the lyric screen once. Oops. We also rode a metal bull. Oh, and I ate my first McRib! In Germany! It was terrible.

There are no pictures of ANY of this because Niyanthi is being delinquent in sending them to me. I'm hoping this cyber blast cures her of her laziness ;)

The next morning we woke up bright and early (fyi- it was neither bright nor early) and caught a train to Marburg. Niyanthi's friend, Genno, HIGHLY recommended we go to Marburg as it was, very Germanly speaking, OK. 

Side note (heavy stereotyping ahead, tread with caution) : I think it's a very American/Indian trait to call things "fantastic", "amazing" and "wonderful". To the Europeans I've met so far, good things are "ok", great things are "nice" and MIND-BLOWINGLY awesome things are "good".

Marburg is a university town about an hour train ride away from Germany. It is a quaint little town with a lot of cobble stoned paths and cafes. We visited the church and the  Landgrafen castle and then sat down at a cute cafe with small Radlers (beer+lemon tonic) and ordered an appetizer. Neither of us speak German so the "mixed grill" that we ordered ended up being dolmades. Life is too short to learn German, and luckily the dolmas were good (and shellfish free).

St. Elizabeths Church

Beautiful organ inside the church

Any ideas what this might be?

A onesie tied between two buildings

Oh, to be a fly on that wall!

Marburg from the Landgrafen Castle

Jacob Grimm: "The location of Marburg and the surrounding region is certainly very beautiful. Especially when one is in the vicinity of the castle and looks down from there. But the town itself is very ugly. I trust that there are more steps on the streets than in the houses. In one house, the entrance is even through the roof."

Finally, drenched and exhausted, we caught the train back from Marburg and ended our day with a  "typical German meal".

Indian food ALWAYS sounds good to us!

PS: Sorry about the terrible picture formatting, it's too much work to lay them out all pretty-like :)