Frankfurt with Olga

Hi,

Today, I woke up really early (6:30!!!) and hopped on a train to Frankfurt.

As you may or may not know, there was this sporting event going on in Frankfurt this evening. The US was playing in it and so was my future wife, Hope Solo. The women's world cup came to an end with the US being defeated in penalty kicks. But more on that later....

I met Olga for the first time in London when I was traveling with my friend Tony in June. They knew each other from some summer program in middle/high school. I decided it'd be cool if we hung out and maybe try to buy tickets to the World Cup final match.

After we met up in the train station, we went over to the Palmengarten, a huge botanical garden in North-Central Frankfurt. It was quite cool with plants from all over the world, plus large ponds with the cutest baby ducks ever! Olga really wanted to kidnap one, but we didn't have any bread to use as a lure.

From there, we went over to the Römer Platz and looked at a few gift shops for touristy items. She got a shirt for her dad, and I found nothing worthwhile there.

We ventured down by the Main river to see if anything cool was going on, and there happened to be food tents and a stage set up for entertainment to World Cup visitors. We sat down and grabbed something to drink and chatted. She attempted to teach me something about what she is doing in her Neuroscience lab in Frankfurt, but in the end, I really didn't catch much. Complicated stuff if you ask me.

Next was Sachsenhausen, one of my favorite parts of town. I mentioned the Frankfurter grüne Soße in the past, and I really wanted to have more tonight. I took us to the same place that Zach and I ate at in February and it was delicious.

We then hopped on the U-Bahn and S-Bahn in an attempt to score tickets to the match. We get to the packed area around the stadium and there were more people looking for tickets than people selling them. WAY MORE. We heard some people being quote 200 Euros a ticket, so we decided to pass and just ended up documenting that we stood outside of where the match was going on.

We went back to the train station and watched the first half at an Irish Pub across the street until I had to catch a train at 10 PM tonight. I didn't get to watch the 2nd half unfortunately, which turned out to be some of the most amazing soccer this year. Congrats to Japan on winning the World Cup too!

I got home at about 1 AM after a long long long day. Time to pass out.

AK (17 days left)