Cycling Bad Frankfurt

Frankfurt contains its own saga for us: renting bikes. When we asked the tourist information ladies where we could rent bikes, they shut us down. "What, you need a German cell phone? No companies besides the Deutsche Bahn will rent us bikes? What kind of bike-friendly city is this?!" However, we soon learned that that is crap.

Not only was there a bike store a few blocks from our hostel that rented bikes, but there were other companies who offer a service where you call to rent a bike, and not so strict as the Deutsche Bahn. However, we wanted to show that tourists can have the same privileges as citizens; thus began our search for a cell phone.

Only 2 hours and 20 Euros later, we had a pay-as-you-go German cell phone with 5 Euros of free minutes on it (bless you, EU). Another 2 hours later, it was charged enough to use.

Unfortunately, those 5 Euros only got me half way through the registration process on the phone, where the operator and I painstakingly attempted to understand each other's accents. So we went out and bought a card for the phone, to put money on it.

By this point, it was 3 pm, and we had been working on this 'project' since 10am. It's a good thing Colin is insane and cannot let a project fail (proof by example: compilers). We finally got going at around 4 pm, and decided that it was too late to go out to Bad Homburg, so we biked around the city for the evening.





Finally, I get to the good part of the post. The next morning, we hopped on the bikes that we had rented and then locked to a lamppost, and headed in a general Northerly direction. The bike ride was not all easy, and not particularly efficient, but it was lots of fun. We went through the city (where Colin wouldn't let me lead, because I don't always follow traffic laws), the countryside (accidentally going into a farmer's stableyard), and the small towns that lead to Bad Homburg.

The park in Bad Homburg where the baths used to be (now occupied by several spas, a Chinese temple, a casino, a tennis club, a golf club, and a monocled man mumbling about his millions) is beautiful. We had lunch at a cafe where they play music in the afternoon and elderly couples come to dance (average age, 60; we brought it down by a very small amount). Yet another old lady told Colin that he should learn how to dance (I agreed heartily).




Despite the rain that continued to trick us by starting and stopping at random, we had a great bike ride. My spinning classes paid off a little, but this reminds me not to skip them for a month ever again (yes, my bum hurt quite a lot).