We woke up and met up with the Germans at around 10 to hope on a train to Bielefeld which is known by the locals as a town that doesn’t exist. I am still not sure why. This was definitely a bigger city than Paderborn and felt more urban. We walked the streets and window shopped while on our way to see the Sparrenburg Castle. This OLD (800+ year old) castle stands overlooking 3 towns, a valley, countless landmarks, and more than a dozen windmills (I love seeing them all over the place). I learned that it had been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times, was owned by a Russian aristocrat a couple times, had “self-healing” defensive walls, and shattered the Geneva convention several times over on multiple occasions. We got a German tour of the whole castle which was so kindly translated by Volker and even got to climb to the top of the highest tower and see over 90km. When we finished our tour we got to do more urban walking and stopped to get ICE CREAM FOR DINNER. But it was no ordinary ice cream. The restaurant put it through a pasta maker and made SPAGHETTI ICE CREAM. It looked so fancy and was super filling. After that ice cream feast, we stopped by a grocery store to stock up for the national holiday the next day and called it a day.
Category: Food!
Sam’s Send-off
On Saturday I finally got the chance to Really sleep in. My flight wouldn’t board until around 4pm, so I had time to snooze, eat breakfast, and figure out how to get to the airport. I kinda wanted to see one last sight before taking off, but lately my efforts exploring would turn up nothing. Anyway, I had some paperwork to handle on my laptop.
Patrick and I took the train to the airport and arrived with a few hours to spare. I had my final German meal right outside of my gate: a pork knuckle with Mezzo Mix. Tasted just like any other piece of ham I’m sad to say, but it was quite the sight on the plate. I also thought it was funny that all the German-themed stuff in the airport was Bavarian, which is to say from a different part of the country.
There really isn’t all that much to recount. We got in our seats and just took right off. I had my last legal Warsteiner on the plane for free and watched Captain Marvel and Germany faded out of view.
I think I’m quite satisfied with my time there, and I’m especially happy with the range of towns I visited. I’ll hopefully be back soon, but I want to visit all the big places I missed, like Munich and Berlin. For a first trip though, I got a lot more than I expected. I also got a lot fewer souvenirs than I expected. I’m not sad about this by any means, but I think its funny that most of the stuff I brought back was literally rocks.
Until next time, auf wiedersehen!
It’s Friday I’m in… Frankfurt
On Friday we said a lot of farewells. Our friends from Paderborn were scheduled to leave in the early afternoon, and there was nothing else on the schedule until “goodbye ice cream” in the evening. I decided to stroll on down to the Goethe House in the morning on my own.
For those not in the loop, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a pretty famous German author. He’s not talked about nearly enough in American public schools, but you might know him as “The Faust Guy.” Anyway, his childhood home in Frankfurt was converted into a museum, and my host from Cologne recommended I check it out.
Now the unfortunate part here is that the house was actually destroyed by bombs during World War II. Luckily all of its furniture and other accessories were saved in storage though, so at some point it was rebuilt and restored to look how it did in the past. This is the kind of museum where it really just is a house, but there are written guides explaining the significance of every item in every room . Without an actual tour guide, the whole experience was over pretty quick.
One more note on Goethe though: The whole time I was there I never actually saw the exterior of the house. It was surrounded completely by tall modern buildings under construction, and the entrance was through a separate smaller building. Even the courtyard was blocked by temporary wooden walls. Otherwise I’d have pictures.
Next up I strolled on down to SKYLINE PLAZA with Michael. We didn’t really find any shopping of interest, but we got a good workout and some ice cream to cancel it out.
And speaking of ice cream, the whole class of us got even more at night! It was a bittersweet ice cream social if I’ve ever seen one. We exchanged stories of our day before separating for one final time. Of course, we would continue to awkwardly run into each other until taking flight, but I guess that just shows that nothing is ever final.
Do You Like Worms?
Thursday’s studio visit was in Worms! I’m told this is a particularly old and historical city. Dragon slaying and the Protestant reformation are the biggest motifs, as well as some historical Jewish sites. The cold weather on this day through everyone for a loop after so much sun earlier in the week.
Calypso welcomed us after a short walk from the station. They’re the company behind the Tropico series, and this office handles marketing for this neck of Europe. We were given a detailed presentation about the company’s structure, followed by a tour of the office and some Q and A. I learned that they have an office in my native New Jersey. Apparently only three people work there for minor distribution business, but I might check it out some day.
Our hosts at Calypso were very nice and provided us “Presidente” branded sodas and some food. The office seemed pretty cozy, though I knew there was no development going on there.
Our only other planned stop in Worms was a walk through the old Jewish Cemetery. Headstones pointed in different angles among tall, wild grass. Moss lined cracked surfaces and extented from graves to the stones left on top by visitors from the past.
We didn’t have much time left until our train, but I really wanted to explore the old town. I ran in circles for a while and found nothing but newer shops. It’s possible I was in the wrong area, but there wasn’t time to move very far. After taking a few pictures, I joined the rest of the group for ice cream. On the train ride back to Frankfurt, I asked Volker questions about Germany and his travels to Canada.
That night we had our goodbye dinner with our friends from Paderborn. They found a traditional German place with Schnitzel, so I could finally check it off my list. After some good food and conversation, some of us moved back to the Irish Pub and had a final drink before hitting the sack. Goodbyes would have to wait for Friday.
Dawn of the Final Days – 48 Hours Remain
Despite what the title says, the Germans thought we were leaving Friday evening, not the day after, and so were preparing to leave already; the “final” day was basically the day before. The confusion was cleared up long ago, and so, we were to switch rooms for one night before we went. The whole day was up to us, so naturally, I spent it showering, watching YouTube, and planning to do more souvenir shopping and then not doing so. It didn’t help that the service on my SIM card ran out and now ran at “reduced speed,” i.e., too slow to feasibly do anything (including using Google Maps) except text on Apple Messages and nothing else.
I did discover a really neat item at Starbucks while searching for a very late mini-brunch, a chocolate cheesecake muffin.
Stephen then treated us to ice-cream, citing the fact he wasn’t allowed to buy us drinks. I intended to get some non-desert food into me at the train station McDonalds, thinking it’d be an easy grab and go deal, but I was SORELY mistaken. I had more trouble ordering there than I ever had anywhere else throughout the entirety of my trip. (To be fair, there were really hard to understand people the Germans took care of in other places.)
Frankly, though, I’m glad, because it compelled me to get a slightly less anticlimactic last dinner, a very long, thin stick of bread sandwiching salami and butter.
After my last night of rest in Germany, it was time to get a quick breakfast and prepare to leave. There were no complications. I stopped by the train station after breakfast to compare prices with Sam’s help. I didn’t quite know how to access the subway tickets as opposed to the ICE tickets, so I left Sam to it and headed back to my room to finalize my packing.
At 11:50ish, I headed down to the lobby and checked out, and then me and Sam headed out to the subway, got some cheap tickets to the airport, and were off. The airport was unintimidating; whether that’s because Germany’s airports are less crowded or because I’m just that much more optimistic after the inflight’s smooth sailing, I’m not sure. Regardless, checking our bags and going through security was just as easy as the vibes suggested, and made the ominous warnings I got via email seem vastly overblown.
Since everything went so smoothly, we were sat down next to our gate and ready to go at 1:35PM-ish…and our flight was set to board at 4:25PM according to my boarding pass, and leave at 5:10PM according to the email confirmation. We had a lot of time to kill.
There’s always someone or a group of people camping the outlets at the airport, and since me and Sam were so early, we got to be those people. I spent a lot of my time playing games worry-free because of the outlet, but after a while went out to do a little more shopping, since Sam had pointed me toward the stores.
On my way there, I noticed an oddity; a place to play various games for free, in the airport. Nothing in their selection particularly interested me, but it was very neat.
I took a while shopping, getting guidance from my parents about what they’d like, and then looked for a place to spend my last full euro. I stopped at a McCafe, where I bought a rainbow donut for €1.75.
Despite being a typically shaped donut, it had little pockets of jelly filling all around it!
Shortly after that, it was time to get on the plane.
The seats were like the ones on the plane we flew in on; the outlets were slightly different, but still worked. I never tested the ethernet ports to see if they actually worked, because I spent the whole flight playing games, and getting mad at Smash Ultimate’s CPUs and their stupid immaculate reaction time garbage.
A little ways into takeoff 
Breaching the sea of clouds
I still have yet to really see why airline food is demonized like it is, because the food on this flight was even better than last time. (The only bad food I’ve ever had on an airline was really, REALLY bad, though. Maybe I’ve just always been on the right lines.) All it was described as was “beef,” with the only elaboration I could get being “it has rice with it,” so I can’t place a name on it, but it was good.
Eating was a bit of a challenge, though, because my table was the only table out of all the tables in the row and the row behind us that was broken, as shown in the video below; As soon as I got the food, it almost slipped right off then and there.
Regardless, the ride was anything but excruciating, and going through customs was a breeze. I didn’t quite understand what “commercial merchandise” meant specifically, so I said I did have some (the candy I’d bought at the Frankfurt Airport), but judging from what the man I talked to said (“I appreciate the honesty,” after explaining what I was declaring), that was unnecessary.
Grabbing my checked bag was super easy, too. There were LOADS of bags already there, and within seconds, I spotted mine, and grabbed it off with no issue.
It bears noting that I’d accidentally left my old SIM card at In Via, where it was likely trashed on accident or broken on accident, so I had no service to communicate with my parents, and the WiFi wasn’t cooperating either. But we immediately found each other with remarkable ease, and after buying a quick second dinner of sorts, I was on my way home.
This trip was great! I really appreciated having a schedule, because I tend to be a very sedentary and content person, and more of my days would have likely turned into nothing days like the final day if I didn’t have my travel-mates and the germans to spur me on. Thanks for everything, everyone!
Worms
My goal for the day was to get a free copy of Tropico 6 and I didn’t succeed.
Kalypso had a chill environment and everyone was very friendly. The presentation was long since they went over every procedure for publishing and every department, lol, they even had a chart for all employees in the office. Kalypso is a young private publisher for video games. The company has two game studios in Munich and Hamburg, developing Tropico series and some mobile games. As a fan of strategy games, I’m pretty familiar with their IPs like Tropico, Rise of Industry, Railway Empire, Shadow Tactics, etc. We got a full tour of their company and I really liked some of the offices where I wasn’t allowed to take pictures. Almost every department had a person introducing their roles and responsibilities to us, I felt welcomed. Excited for their E3 release!
The hosts indicated two interesting facts in the presentation that I feel like sharing here:
- Americans show much less interest in strategy games than Europeans. The biggest gaming market in the US is action games.
- Most players for time-consuming strategy games like Tropico are old people. (Betsy and Mark, are you reading??) Which makes sense because they are the people with money and time (the game is 60 bucks).
In the afternoon, we stopped at a Jewish cemetery first. As a person who’s not that into history, I cannot speak that much about the graveyard or the culture. Then, Sam and I took off first for a little walk in the town. Due to the history and title of the town, there are dragon figures every a few blocks. Those are not like the traditional European statues, instead, they are artistic figures decorated by newspapers, plastics, etc. We met up with the group at Vannini ice cream shop where they had many unique flavors including lasagne ice cream. It got colder while we were sitting there and started to rain a bit so we decided to walk towards the train station.
We neutrally decided on a traditional schnitzel place as our last dinner with the German counterpart. The restaurant was old, traditional and cozy but the waiters didn’t really speak English. My German friend ordered a schnitzel with mushrooms for me and I also tried other’s with herb green sauce; it was mild. Schnitzel is a traditional German food that meat is pounded thinly and then deep fried. It tasted a lot like country fried steak which reminded me of Cracker Barrel for some reason.
The walk back home was beautiful with sun setting. We passed a bridge which was popular for couple’s to hang love locks… I was kinda sad at the bar realizing our trip has come to an end and the Germans were leaving. Hopefully I’ll see them again.
An Excursion to Eltville
So Tuesday might’ve been the highlight of this trip, for me anyway. We started the day exploring the nicer part of the city, in and around the old town. As you might expect, there’s a big cathedral there! We had a look around inside at all its fancy artwork before moving along. Other important stops include a German Five Guys and a cool (but creepy) antique shop. While our friends from Paderborn enjoyed tasting Five Guys for the the first time, I tried out Mezzo Mix. It’s a popular soda here that claims to be no more than coke and fanta in one cup. It was alright. We walked back to the hotel along the river and soaked in the skyline.
Of course the main event wasn’t in Frankfurt, but Eltville. Eltville is a beautiful little town right on the water, and we were somehow all invited to meet the mayor there. I didn’t find any exciting shopping, but I enjoyed some ice cream and some lahmacun in town before heading down to the shore. The shore was very nice.
To be a bit more specific: the shore was amazing. It was lined by trees leading up to gardens leading up to a castle. I excitedly climbed down to the water and collected pebbles and seaglass while enjoying a cool, nautical breeze. Before exploring the gardens, we enjoyed some long wine (a regional specialty) at an outdoor bar overlooking the river.
After posing for lots of pictures among the roses, the mayor appeared and showed us around the castle. In one of the rooms of its tower, there was a small exhibit about Johannes Gutenberg. From the top, you could see the whole town as well as the neighboring that is supposedly owned by one man.
The rest of the time in Eltville was spent sipping champagne in the garden with the mayor. The temperature was just perfect, and the sun set slowly over the evening. We ate pretzels and cream cheese and talked until it was time to head back.
Worming through Worms
Thursday was the day we were to head to Kalypso, a studio I’ve never really heard of that’s famous for a game series I’ve never really heard of, Tropico. More specifically, Kalypso is an entirely private publisher that is actually kind of a big deal, especially due to being private. They were very nice people, and despite the small size of their space, still managed to seem important simply by handing us all Fritz-Kola with El Presidente, the main figure of Tropico, emblazoned on them, and not after the fact, either; this was a bona fide brand deal. They also had catering, which I didn’t touch, because I don’t eat lunch. Germany sure does feed itself well.
The only picture I got from the trip was the Kola. We were allowed to take pictures (except for one slide which spoiled something; we didn’t sign an NDA, but I’m not going to go any further out of courtesy) but I just didn’t.
After that, we headed to the graveyard. It was gloomy and gray, and it was actually almost cold now, in stark contrast to all the days before. It wasn’t much more than a normal graveyard, to me, but I did take some pictures of some odd and interesting graves.
The graveyard from near the entrance. 
Yes, all of that is stone. 
The temperature turning toward the cooler end didn’t stop us from going out to get ice cream afterward; we were told by the people of Kalypso that there was a really good ice cream place in Worms. They weren’t wrong!
The ice cream at this place had numerous odd flavors I didn’t understand because I don’t speak German. The germans told me that the flavors mimicked common candies. I hesitated trying any of them out of fear of nuts. I got Oreo and “Raffaello.”
Oreo wasn’t just vanilla with Oreo cookie chunks in it like you’d expect from usual ice cream. It was actually Oreo flavored, and the cookie chunks weren’t directly from Oreos, but rather, like Oreo cookie flavored chunks specially made for the flavor. I don’t know what they were, exactly, but they were good.
Raffaello was a very, VERY profoundly dark chocolate flavor. My mom loves dark chocolate and even she would have to do a double take, it was so dark. It was very good, just pretty startling, especially from an ice cream. If only more ice cream places were this good.
After that, we took a quick shopping break, and headed back. I bought some candy, and while I was, I spotted weed gum. I felt obligated to take a picture, because that sounds like a terrible idea. Whatever works, I suppose.
Once we’d gotten back into Frankfurt, we made our way to a schnitzel place that was a snug fit for our large group. It was a very cozy place, even though the waiters were hard to understand even for the germans and seemed both tired and vaguely disgruntled. The schnitzel was even better than it was at Salzkammer, too; it’s hard to describe its flavor, but it was a unique kind of taste that I can’t recall ever having, and it was really nice. I’m definitely going back if I ever return to Germany.
A picture from the area we were all seated at. 
Germans seem to do thick fries far better than America does. Maybe I’ve just not been to the right places in America, or maybe America’s just better at thin fries.
We all paid for Volker’s meal as a token of our appreciation for herding us all to the right places, showing us a good time, and keeping any of us from missing any trains or getting lost around any corners.
The Big Boy Studio Tours
To start out our Wednesday, we departed for Nintendo of Germany. Nintendo of Germany doesn’t handle any development, but they do handle localization, which occasionally involves some game tweaking. Regardless, it was really neat to be there.
First, we had a substantially lengthy meeting briefly going over some of Nintendo’s history and past directors, as well as their mission statements, and then going into what Nintendo of Germany specifically does.
The rooms were named after my favorite Nintendo games; Mario 1, Mario 2, Mario 3, and Toad. True classics. 
The view out of the meeting room window.
When the meeting was done, and after everyone’s questions had trickled out, we went back downstairs to the ground floor to have lunch. Since me and my family generally don’t eat lunch, I wasn’t hungry. I did, however, get a chocolate chip muffin. I also saw a magnetic pin of Mario smoking a blunt in an official Nintendo office. I can’t tell if that’s beautiful or perverse.
Notice how the wrapper has a very easy to peel rim around it, unlike what I’m used to in America. 
We were then shown to what I think was the break room, but it doesn’t really matter what room it was, all that matters is that it was jam packed with neat Nintendo stuff absolutely everywhere.
There was even a gift shop on the floor that I didn’t take a picture of. Reportedly, there were hard to find Amiibos there for cheap, but we had very little time, so my general lack of interest in Amiibos kept me from realizing until it was too late. Me and Sam did, however, buy things, with the help of the woman who was giving us the tour. I got a “Kirby’s Dream Blanket” which I think I’m gonna hang like a poster, and some Legend of Zelda decals for gadgets such as phones, tablets, and laptops. There were some lame, stock image decals in the pack, but also some really nice ones.
After that, we went to visit Crytek. Like Nintendo, we had to sign an NDA, despite the fact we weren’t told anything that wasn’t publicly known in both. Crytek, however, was a little more strict and didn’t want any pictures taken of the studio, which was alright, since there wasn’t much in there that inspired me to take a pic to begin with. It’s hard to compete with Nintendo’s star power, especially when your audience consists of a decent number of Nintendo fanboys.
A lot of the presentation was similar to Nintendo, but unlike Nintendo of Germany, Crytek has developers. We didn’t see too much development going on; in fact, the offices felt particularly empty. I think we arrived at lunch break, and it was also hot today as well, so that may have been a factor.
Our hosts spent a substantial amount of time selling us CryEngine, and for good reason; they want to rival Unity and Unreal with their engine as a large side project. I’m mostly unimpressed, because all the technicality goes over my baby freshman head, and a lot of the neat things shown were repurposed components and work-arounds, which honestly doesn’t really rub me the right way. It’s no doubt a “high performance realistic 3D” game engine, and I think that’s just far too narrow a scope to rival Unity or Unreal. Not to mention they’re still working on the documentation. All that said, it’s got a lot of potential, and I’m at least interested to see if they can rise to match their goals.
With nothing left on the agenda, we headed back to Frankfurt, and after some deliberation, decided on getting ramen for dinner. I was concerned we wouldn’t have enough space for everyone and it’d be a shoddy stall restaurant, but I was more than satisfied with what we ended up at. It was a very nice restaurant, and the food I ordered—shio ramen with three gyoza as an appetizer—was great. I think a hint of spiciness in the ramen really makes it that much better, though. Oh, and I also sort of used chopsticks for the first time. I don’t think I could eat solid food with them, but they’re not bad for eating noodles.
At the restaurant, we decided to hold a Smash Ultimate tournament back at the hotel. I gathered my switch dock and HDMI cable (I knew they’d come in handy!) and headed to the room, and we got started. I did surprisingly well, maybe because Link’s projectiles are really hard to deal with even if the one playing him isn’t very good. I ended up getting third place, but I think that’s very respectable considering I was playing characters I’m not that great at, namely Joker. (I’m not that great at anyone, to be frank, but I’m better at some characters than others.) Sam won the tournament after losing in the very first round and clamoring up through Loser’s Bracket, and after Alex dipped out to help the games go faster and also sleep.
It also probably warrants noting I was using my usual controller, and everyone else was using joycons.
Frankfurt Sightseeing and Receptioning
Having gotten an inexplicably decent sleep, I was out and ready to stroll around Frankfurt with little difficulty, at least as far as I remember. That is, except for the fact I had to go back and get my glasses just as the others were leaving. By the time I was back, they were gone; I’d told them to go on without me, but I didn’t expect them to be so far ahead. I walked at a pace substantially quicker than my usual, and never quite caught up to them on the way. That probably wasn’t helped by a couple photo detours.
Once I’d reached their destination, Frankfurt Cathedral, however (which they graciously supplied a link to in the group chat which I could plug into Google Maps), I found them standing around. Apparently, I’d arrived just a couple minutes before the sightseeing was about to start. I’m glad I was on time, because the Cathedral was just as impressive and nice to look at on the inside as the outside.
After that, we began to simply walk around Frankfurt, as I took pictures along the way.
The protruding center part is actually another building, behind the white one. What unfortunate placement… 
I didn’t realize it as I walked across, but we went across the Eiserner Steg, a bridge famous for it’s staggering amount of love locks. I wouldn’t have recognized it was a famous bridge had a good friend of mine not noted it while I was texting her. While everyone else was getting lunch, I took a detour back down there to look at it again, appreciating it a little more this time.
This would normally be enough to wrap up a whole day for me, but we had another event in store for us; a reception with the Mayor of Eltville am Rhein himself, Patrick Kunkel. I only learned of our shared name about two-thirds of the way through said reception.
Before we attended that, however, we had to get there, and once we did, we had plenty of time to spend until the reception. Me, Mike, Stephen, and Volker stopped to get ice cream first due to the sweltering heat, and the rest of the time I spent doing nothing by the river, which beat back the heat significantly with its cool breeze. I drifted here and there, loitering and lounging until I came to settle at a drinks place where everyone else was until it was time (which I did not take any pictures of).
The castle we walked into (yes, a castle) was positively full of flowers, ones I took many, MANY pictures of, but I kept only the best ones. Here they are;
The reception involved a short tour of one of the towers of the castle, from which we had a nice view, plus a few historical exhibitions within that I was too knocked out by heat to care about. I took pictures of the view, but they were through windows and not very remarkable. It was startlingly cool inside, to the point of being downright chilly. I joked the mayor was hoarding all of the cold air for himself.
Looking up inside the top floor of the tower. 
A view of the tower from the outside.
Afterwards, a miniscule “meal” of sorts where we were served champagne and pretzels with a special cream cheese to go with them. I did, in fact, take a couple sips of the champagne, but promptly decided it didn’t taste very good and I’d much rather have a couple glasses of water to combat the ever-present heat. The trees and coming dusk helped, at least. I can, however, technically say that my first drink of alcohol was in a big flower garden castle behind closed doors with a mayor that shares my name, overlooking a pretty river.
The place we had the drinks and pretzels, and where the panorama was taken. The tables aren’t shown. 
The cream cheese we had with the pretzels. 
The champagne I quickly abandoned in favor of water.