Dodgy Travel Day

Note: this was written last night but only now have I found the connectivity to post it after a long day of traipsing around Mainz.

I am now in a hotel above the elderly nuns’ residence in Bingen on the Rhine. This isn’t an ordinary hotel and in fact is so far above the town that, after a long day of cancelled trains and unsure of how to get back up here, I’ve decided to call it a night. I’ll be doing some exploring in the morning.

Here’s what I’m thrilled about with regard to my German skills: nobody has immediately switched into English when I open my mouth. My German’s patchy, but I’m holding my own, even under the extreme duress of having boarded the wrong train in the Frankfurt airport, and of subsequently having arrived at the convent a few minutes after six, by which time the doors were closed. (It’s a convent.)

The internet here is so weak I can’t upload any photos just now, but I’ve been drawing the Roman baths in Baden-Baden, the buskers outside the cathedral in Freiburg (there is a pair of kestrels apparently nesting in the belfry!), the delicious cappuccino I had this morning in Freiburg before catching the tram going the wrong direction to the train station… More soon.

Postscript: Here are the buskers with no color yet…