On the choo choo

As I sit here on the train to Munich Hauptbahnhof and ponder over the weekend (and time is what I have - another two hours before I need to awaken and deal with reality once more), I wonder what one is to do for company when you're overseas and travelling. What would Bill Bryson do?

Well, he wouldn't have gone to a murky underground dance club, but I thought it would be a good way of tackling the problem of not knowing many people in Frankfurt. However, I'm getting ahead of myself here. All enthusiastic and German, I arrived at the opera house for Il Viaggio a Rheims, or The Journey to Rheims, fashionably early. I was as well-dressed as one could be when one brings two tramping backpacks in to the country. It seemed to work as I blended in satisfactorily enough. The first opera I was to see in real life was in two parts (or as Con the fruitseller would say, "yeah, there was an intermission") and I'm happy to say that it was a success - especially the actors heralding a good five minutes of audience applause. I felt rather young milling about in the foyer on the way out - by a good 8 years.

Since it was my first weekend in Frankfurt for a while, I figured the city must have something to offer in the way of nightlife. One rather inviting building (from what you could see of it from the footpath) was an underground nightclub that pumps out dance music till 12 in the morning called U60311. Not really a name that rolls off the tongue with as ease, so I was to see whether the ravers would be saving saving their mouth gymnastics for other activites.

The doorman was happy to relieve me of the onourous burdon of me carrying around 9 Euro as was the barkeep to be glad of relieving me of 5 euro a beer. I plopped myself at a barstool and surveyed the surroundings. The club was a big affair with atypical German dance music and very young (but legal in Paraguay I'm sure) dancers who looked like they had large electrodes attached to their legs. If you can imagine MC hammer having an epileptic attack (but without the Hammer pants), you should be able to picture what I mean. I stayed for another beer, and after feeling like an old grandpa I headed home, feeling dissapointed. The queue outside had grown by around half a century as I left and I couldn't help but feeling that I could save them 10 bucks by letting them in on a secret, but I figure I would have got several quizzical looks. Kids today!

Fast forward to today and the train has stopped somewhere between Munch and Nurenberg waiting for some signals to change. There's lots of snow around the tracks, so hopefully the snow gods will look kindly upon my eagerness at hitting the slopes tomorrow with gifts of falling flakes. The following day (Wednesday) I'll have a walkabout in Munich. Still not sure if I'll be able to get a visit to Dachau concentration camp - guess it'll have to be an early tee off :)