Three topics combined into one post. Lucky you!
Cultural Palace Looks Open for Business
I was in Iași, Romania on my usual early-part-of-the-year business trip in February. The Cultural Palace has been under renovation for as long as I have been visiting our location(s) there. It’s coming along nicely. My local contacts tell me that it should be open for visitors by the time of my next visit — presumably this summer.
The last couple times I’ve been there I’ve visited their enormous new mall built up around the palace grounds. There’s a giant Auchan store attached to the mall, too. I bought a couple non-perishable specialities back, but not borș.
A Drippy Visit to Seligenstadt
Our travel buddy the Resident on Earth completed her farewell tour through Germany, and we met up with her in Frankfurt at an Ebblwoi ((Apfelwein auf Hessisch)) bar for dinner and brunch the next day in Seligenstadt. A tip of the hat goes to her for recommending Motel One, which might be our new favorite hotel chain in Germany. We have had good results there in Frankfurt and Munich and heard good things about the one in Nürnberg and Berlin as well.
The weather in Frankfurt that evening was terrible, but I was determined to park the car at the hotel and do the rest on foot — despite the rain. We got soaked on the way there and opted for a taxi back. The taxi driver was a chatty dude, and we thought, at first, that must be dumbing down his German for us, because it was so comprehensible. We didn’t have to ask him to repeat anything or use a non-regional expression or slow down or anything like that. Then we remembered that that’s what German can sound like outside of those deep pockets of localized dialect, like d’Obapfoiz. ((die Oberpfalz, or the Upper Palatinate)).
Brunch the next day was nice, and we took a stroll around Seligenstadt to walk it off a bit and try not to be sad about our buddy’s return to the USA.
Bridge Update March 2016
Somewhen ((I love it when Germans translate irgendwann into somewhen.)) in the last week, another big piece of the auxiliary bridge has been dismantled and moved off the scene. Sarah captured it. I took a stroll around today on my way into town for some groceries.
First thing I noticed: a coffee bar on our street is undergoing a change. Not sure if it’s just a face lift, like when the Spital Café opened up next to it where the Cat Pee Chinese ((Not its real name. We only ordered from there once. Guess why?)) joint had been. Or maybe something bigger is happening here. Assuredly they better hurry up — Café Blanket Season is already upon us.
That tent on the South Bank side has been up for … over a year now? Something must be happening in there, but at this point, there’s more visible activity on our side. Spring is very nearly upon us, with Easter and Pentecost vacation periods and the heavy influx of visitors they bring with them.
If the plan is to have the next section of auxiliary bridge — diverting traffic off the big middle section, which as far as we can tell has had little to no work done on it yet — up and serviceable before then, they better step on it. And not on these little purple guys.