Thursday and Friday were the final two days in Germany. Because of how short Friday turned out to be, I decided to include it in this blog post as I primarily used it as a resting to day to prepare for the journey back to the United States.
Thursday began as an earlier than usual day, as I had to wake up early to prepare myself for the journey to the town called Worms. We went to the train station to catch the first of two trains required to get to the town. The two train rides were not particularly long, though I did spend some time on the first train napping to try and get as much sleep as possible.
Once we got through both trains and arrived in the two, we began the day by walking around the town and seeing some monuments as we made our way to visit Kalypso Media.
At Kalypso Media, we were given a presentation about how the company is structured and the various locations and roles within the company and its various other studios/offices, as well as some sandwiches and soda to snack on (Tropico themed soda at that). From then on we were given a tour of the office in Worms and shown the various departments and given a rundown of what the responsibilities of the different roles were. After the presentation and office tour, we were then let out to go explore the town of Worms. Some in the group opted to visit an old Jewish cemetery within the town, while others opted to go out exploring on their own.
I personally opted to go exploring on my own with Amanda, and spent a large portion of the time in Worms visiting various shops looking for souvenirs and neat things to buy to bring back home and give to family. We also stopped to get Ice cream along the way (a running theme for this trip) and saw many different areas of the town.
After shopping for a bit around Worms, we met back up with the group at the train station, and departed back to Frankfurt. Once we got back to Frankfurt, we decided to get dinner at a restaurant that was what seemed like a half hour walk away, give or take some time. I was told while walking to this restaurant that it was incredibly “German Themed”, and this got me excited as I really wanted to have more traditional German food. These claims did not fall short, this restaurant was incredibly “German Themed” with plenty of wooden carvings and beer to go around. I decided to order a dish called, if memory serves, the “Frankfurter” which was set to be a bit of everything in regards to some of the more traditional German food. It was quite delicious, and something I would definitely eat again. In addition to that meal, I also tried some of the restaurants Apple Wine, which was also quite tasty.
After dinner we decided to head back to the hotel, and some of us decided to go to the “O’Reilly’s” pub one last time as a sort of farewell dinner for the German students as they would be leaving before us early on Friday.
After the pub, I went back to the hotel to call it a night for Thursday, and rest up for the final day in Germany on Friday.
On Friday, we were given a free day to explore the city and finish up and business or shopping we needed to do. As such, I decided to go to a place called Skyline Mall, as I had been recommended to go there by a friend who had been to Frankfurt in the past, and I still had some shopping I needed to do. Before going there, however, I got the chance to say goodbye to the German students before they left to return to Paderborn, and it was quite the sad farewell as I was and am unsure if I will ever get to see them again.
After wandering around the mall for a bit and doing some light shopping (and getting ice cream), I returned to the hotel to spend some time sleeping as I began very tired while walking around the three different shopping floors within the mall (and I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before). After a quick power nap, I met up with Alex and Amanda to go get noodles for dinner at an “Authentic Japanese Restaurant” that was a several blocks away. The noodles at this restaurant were fairly good, however they were not as good as a noodle restaurant that we had gone to as a full group with both German and American students a few nights before. After finishing up at the restaurant, we began heading back towards the hotel as we were told the farewell ice cream meetup was going to be starting soon. Once we got back to the hotel, we met up with the other students, and proceeded to an ice cream shop that was only a few blocks down, where we had our farewell ice cream dinner then headed back to the hotel, officially ending the trip.