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I had met Sabrina and Keri on the train to Amsterdam several weeks earlier. The pair of them work at one of Frankfurt's international schools (one of the best, I had been informed) which lies to the north of the city. We had enthusiatically agreed to convene at a suitable location in Frankufrt to meet the rest of their cohorts. This rendez-vous was to be on Friday (figuring out which tense to write this in is proving tricky without a satisfactorily busy digestive system) at Cafe Metrolpol - a decidedly German affair, which could be identified by its lack of any kind of 20th centry point of sale system. This was to be later reinforced by items the fresh tasting menu, the ingredients of which I'm sure were freshly procured from their stable and abbatoir out the back. I had an inclination to ensure that they knew about the problems with lead in their water pipes.

As I walked in, I cast a furtive glance around the cafe and found the group occupying several tables in a cozy corner off to one side of the establishment. They weren't hard to miss since earlier I'm told that just a pair of the girls amongst the group had been told to keep their "happiness" down barely a couple of minutes after getting on the bus in to town. Life is short over here - you need complete serious concentration. The group was enjoying their evening with boystrous gusto as evidenced by the frequent glances from the envious neighbouring tables in our direction.

The group slowly disbanded over time until a faithful few were left and we headed to a house bar next to Cafe Celona. It was a nice touch being able to drink with the illusion that you're actually outside despite cowering next to red-hot gas heaters under a tarp. The gas fires gave everyone's faces a errily red-faced glow as though we were basking on the face of Mars. The undertones filtering around the gang gave an idication to a desire to head to O'Rileys, which is the local Irish bar in Frankfurt (mentioned earlier in the blog). Unfortunately it had already come to my attention that like all Irish bars on this planet that you can never get a drink from these places on the weekend, Karaoke burbles from some wretched corner. This was no exception, and to add to the mix were American armed forces lads all wanting a piece of whatever meat was on display.

The conversation throughout the evening was friendly and jovial, ranging from topics such as free will in life, to gossipy shop talk. Since both my parents have been school teachers all their life, I had a gut feeling that this wasn't a usual Friday evening for the life of a teacher though. Most of the ones I've met in the past have usually been too tired from the day to venture out in to a foreign town and let the hair down, however to give them credit, they were out to close around three.

So, for the first time in a while, I've got a quiet sunday that I can catch up with some programming what not, and a bit of writing.

Next weekend is another mission to Austria. Rekon it'll be a good one.