Wiener schnitzel and a bong

It is always kinda cool to learn about some of the people I fly with at my US airline. There is Randy, an American who is a Frankfurt based Flight Attendant and lives in the 5th arrondissement in Paris. Heather is an American living and flying out of the London base. Yesterday, I flew with Gilles, who is French and lives outside of Paris and works out of the Frankfurt base. Leon is Dutch, lives in the Netherlands and also flies out of the Frankfurt base....and Rafat is a Palestinian who was raised in Kuwait, and is now an American citizen living in Philly, based in Washington. That is all so interesting to me!

Rafat and I hung out in Frankfurt this last trip. All the other Flight Attendants we flew with were Frankfurt based, so they went home when we arrived. Rafat and I were the only ones who went to the layover hotel. We explored the area around the hotel for about an hour once we arrived there--then I went back to my room to crash and burn! It was about 10:30 in the morning in Germany--but my body said it was 4:30 in the US...I had been awake for 20 hours and needed to s-l-e-e-p!





This is Rafat. We met downstairs in the lobby around 5 pm and went off in search of dinner--I was starving!















As we left the hotel, I saw one of these--a rickshaw or pedicab. Don't we need more of these kinds of cabs in big cities???



We found dinner at a German restaurant, and I ordered the wiener schnitzel. Deeee-lish!

After dinner--we walked past an outdoor cafe at another hotel called L'Emir and decided to stop and have an after dinner glass of wine and smoke shisha. The weather was perfect and cool, the cafe was nice and the shisha (hookah) was actually pretty relaxing. Rafat taught me all about the grades and flavors of tobacco (we smoked apple) and the importance of not having a cheap charcoal (like we did) and about turning the coal so it doesn't get too hot or burn out too quickly. Who knew??



(Face it, I'm a child of the '70's...this is a fancy bong!!)

















This is really the kind of stuff I want to do when I travel--not do the touristy stuff (occasionally, of course) but mostly to hang out and just live in the city I'm in--even if it is for a short time.





By far, the best part of my trips is coming home to Norm and hanging with him. And, he always seems to have something beautiful for me when I get home...these daisies were waiting for me yesterday. He is home today and is going to grill a couple of burgers for us tonight. Flowers and he's fixin' dinner? It just doesn't get much better than that!