Finding my feet in Frankfurt, in a little Taunus Town: Spring Birthdays and Road Trips

Usually we celebrated our birthdays in autumn, having lived in the Southern hemisphere of course. But this year saw spring birthdays for both of us. It felt really good to have a fresh new start with all the green springing up and blossoms blooming. We began the celebrations at home for Arne’s birthday at the end of March, and for mine we took a beautiful road trip to a medieval town called Rothenburg ob der Tauber (see part 2).

Hmmm, schnapps!

Celebrating in style...we saved this fancy Champagne for the two fo us

Das Wetter – I thought it appropriate to mention the weather at this point. In my mind spring should have begun according, to the calendar (and my body clock wishing winter would be over) in March. And when the sun came out and blue skies abounded around the third week of March, with temperatures reaching 25°C, I celebrated and took out my running shoes to enjoy the weather, and packed away the winter blankets. I thought “horray, winter is over and I survived”. Well, it was short-lived. From the end of March up until the beginning of May it has been rainy and cold. We even had snow in April!

Snow in April

Most days have seen temperatures of around 9 to 12°C and have been very wet. So it seems that Spring temperatures that I am accustomed to really only begin at the start of May! Yesterday was a sunny 24°C, and although it’s rainy today, it’s feels more like “spring rain” than horrible cold, grey days.

Easter was somewhere in between all the birthday fun, and in Germany Easter decorations are all around people’s gardens, just like Christmas but this time with colourful eggs in trees; almost every house in our road did something in their garden.

(Above)My attempt at Easter decorations German-style (this is kind of how they do the indoor ones)

In Rothenburg

In Rothenburg - Real eggs!

On Easter Sunday we took a drive to a little town called Cochem along the Mosel River. Cochem is about 130km west of where we live, and a lovely drive. When we got there we took a steep walk up a hill where the Cochem chair lift is, then admired views of the Mosel river and Reichsburg Cochem, had coffee and cake (as Germans do) and took the chair lift down. The little town is very quaint, and the area along the river was dotted with beds of tulips – so pretty.

Finally at the top

Reichsburg Cochem

Well-deserved coffee and cake

Loving the tulips

Mosel River

The hill we climbed

The blossoms have been blooming and for the first time I am seeing the life-cycle of a cherry tree in my own garden. It’s amazing to see how the buds suddenly appear one morning, then the blossoms, and then after a couple of weeks they fall off, and like magic the tree is filled with bright green leaves.