A weekend in Germany

First off, this post is really really late. Last month, I really needed to get out of the office and the weather for the weekend looked good, so I convinced my officemate to come along to Germany for the weekend. The first stop was Mainz, a really nice small city and home to the Gutenberg bible, which was the point of the visit. The next stop was an old monastery not far away.

As we neared it, there were lots and lots of cars parked along the side of the road, which seemed very odd for the far end of a dead end country road. As we got up to the driveway for the monastery, the fire department was there directing traffic (in german). They asked if we were going to the Ostereiermarkt (literally, Easter egg market), and I said, no, to the convent. So, instead of directing us off into the field with everyone else, they directed us into the parking lot for the monastery where we got a space right up close. After walking around and taking pictures a bit, we realised that the Easter egg market was taking place at the monastery, and that we'd just managed to talk ourselves into a really good parking spot. So naturally, having stumbled on to a popular-looking something with a name as curious as Easter egg market, we of course stopped in to check it out. I remember having been to something like this before in Germany, so I was excited to run into one again. Inside, it was about 100 stands each with intricately decorated eggs. Some had patterns and some had very detailed paintings of different types. Many had extremely high price tags. There were also different kinds of crafts at some of the stands, but the focus was definitely on eggs. I got a couple of the cheap 7eur ones as gifts.

The next stop was the hotel. Instead of staying in a big town, I wanted to be out in the country. So, I looked at the map and spotted a big green (i.e. park) area not far from my planned route and searched the internet for hotels there. I found one on the edge of a small town for 35eur/night (ridiculously cheap). So cheap, in fact, that I wasn't sure what to think. But, my rule is that if you go to any little hotel in a little town in Germany, you will get a good room and a good meal, so I made the booking. When we got there, I tried to say in my best (lousy) german that I had a reservation, but before I could, the lady handed me my key and asked what time I wanted breakfast. I just assumed we were the last guests to check in and didn't need to ask our names. At dinner, the diningroom was completely setup, but the whole evening we were the only ones there. We realised that we weren't just guests, we were the guests. And then I noticed a sign saying breakfast from 0830, so not only were we the only guests, we had just asked them to get up half an hour earlier than normal for breakfast in the morning. Still, the room was very nice, the meal was very good, the people friendly, and the breakfast buffet in the morning perfectly good. Not bad for 35eur!

The Sunday was spent doing some various siteseeing and driving back.

The pictures can be found here.