Every so often in my life I decide to do something new.
Sometimes this can be achieved with a very basic action. Changing my pants, for example.
Sometimes it can involve a whole load more upheaval. I’m moving to Spain in just over 2 weeks from today. But that’s OK, because I speak Spanish, I know their culture, and how to ask where the nearest toilets are.
Sometimes however, my desires for new and exciting things take me to strange, new worlds. Like a real life Captain Kirk.
For those of you who actually believe Captain Kirk really is real, watch “Galaxy Quest” with Alan Rickman, then Join the Queue behind my Mum at the ‘Broken Fantasies’ refund desk. (Star Trek is before the Pixies and Fairies office, next to the American Democracy Desk. If you get lost, ask Al Gore. But keep your words shorter than 3 syllables each please. And proof of true faith is necessary. Klingon hats are not.)
This time, my quest for new and exciting things took me out of Terminal One at Manchester Airport, onto a Lufthansa Airbus, leather seats et al, An hour and 35 minutes later and I’m plonked into the sprawling structure that is Frankfurt Airport.
Allow me to point out at this point that when I landed for my 6 day visit, I spoke no German. Not a jot. I do English. I do Spanish. I even do Profanities. I don’t do German.
This is not a problem in the airport. Everything is easy to follow with lovely pictures and smatterings of English under the German signs. I knew where I wanted to be, and I got there with the efficiency of, well, a German.

Not paying appears to be developing into a new hobby of mine. I’m not a criminal; I’m a confused foreigner.
One morning Guide and I went into Mannheim for breakfast. Guide sat down whilst I went up to the buffet bar, picked out 2 scrumptious looking Croissants, some jam, some Nutella, some fruit salad, and a slightly below scrumptious Grapefruit Juice, which I thought was a slightly above scrumptious Strawberry drink. I then walked nonchalantly back to our table, Guide took her turn to get breakfast and mentioned on her return how they’d charged her individually for the items on her plate, when it was supposed to be a one-price-for-all-you-can-manage buffet.
How odd. How odd that she’d managed to spot the cash till (I still don’t know where it was) and how odd that I wasn’t arrested and charged with theft of a healthy start to the day. It was a nice breakfast, made nicer because it was free.

On my first morning in Mannheim, I set off on a Mission to infiltrate the local supermarket.
However, I was foolishly allowed to wander the streets armed only with 2 detailed maps of the local area, the address of where I was staying, some Keys, some money, a Lidl Carrier bag, and my sunglasses.
Not nearly enough to stop someone like me getting hopelessly lost. After an hours aimless wandering, I asked the friendly looking albeit heavily armed American army officer if he knew where I might find aforementioned grocery store. He instructed me to “ask the peace protesters, as they’re local” and pointed over the street to an intimidating rabble. I chose to thank him for his super-polite, tax-funded time and continued on my way. Giving the shouting peace people a wide berth, for fear of being attacked.

Crossroads ahoy, the red traffic lights stopped the lady on the bicycle who gracefully informed me in perfect English that I was approximately 5 kilometres away from where I wanted to be. Which was by now, back in the safety of the flat, Operation Lidl long abandoned.
This was on day one. By day five, I was still pointing out places where I’d walked past whilst we were on the trams or buses, much to the amusement of Miss Guide.

We then hopped onto a Tram, and off to the Palatial University to look at the Catacombs.
Traditionally, Catacombs are either Labyrinths and tunnels, or a sort of underground Cemetery. Not the sort of place you would expect to find German students chilling out to Trance and House Music lounging on big sofa’s and smoking in the dimmed disco lighting. This is exactly what we did find in these particular Catacombs, so we didn’t stay too long. I was however, impressed by the outer buildings.
Imagine if Buckingham Palace didn’t have the iron gates and the freeloaders living inside it, and it was a university in the middle of town. Then put a catacombs or two in there, and that’s what we were looking at, and losing bouncy-balls in the grounds of. I can be mature, cultured and still buy €1 balls you know.

6 days in Germany isn’t enough. A year in Germany probably isn’t enough either. I’m scarred mentally by my lack of knowledge of their language, and am much happier to be heading off to sunny Ibiza.