Today started off rainy and cool, but I decided to walk to work nonetheless as it's the only exercise I get. It started to rain in earnest as I got there, and I was just thinking myself lucky when I slid on the grating in front of the sliding doors - thankfully they didn't close until I got up again. Nobody going in in front of me (including one of my colleagues) noticed, but I had to stop and assess the condition of my left knee for a few minutes. Ow.
P, our resident lover of facts and knower of all internal quirks, issued a new arbitrary decision about how to treat certain kinds of text, complete with a Newspeak reference, so I spent far too long (not very long, but I had other things to do) reading up on 1984. Toyed with the idea of trying to teach myself Newspeak (I think it would be wonderful if the entire UK English team walked around speaking it) but forced myself to go back to work.
My fun and delightful foray into translation has now stopped and gone to be validated, so it's back to logging bugs for now. At least I escaped at 5:30 as I had far better things to do - namely meeting my brother, who finally came over on a business trip!
I met him at the Frankfurter Hof hotel - which looks amazing - near Goetheplatz. After gawking at his room, we headed out to walk down to Hauptwache, then to the main square and the bridge, back again and down Zeil and ending up at Iwase, which has got to be my favourite restaurant in Frankfurt, even though this is only the second time I've been there. Must go more often. We had a delicious meal - mixed sushi, deep-fried aubergine, and a tempura set for him and sashimi set for me. Chatted a bit with the waitress. I was very happy that I had got a reservation - I called 20 minutes after they opened for lunch and got seats at the counter - and ecstatic that they remembered me and one of the guys behind the counter called me Arline-chan!
After much talking about work and Japan and friends and so on, we headed out again and walked up to Eschenheimer Tor and back down towards the Deutsche Bank towers, which are not floodlit and so a bit difficult to find in Frankfurt's night skyline. It was when we got there that things got odd.
There seems to be no way in. There is a hoarding all the way around the building, with something that looks like a works entrance at the front. Brother will have to call and find out how to get in tomorrow.
As we went back to walk around the side of the building (by the Ivory Club 'Contemporary Colonial Cuisine' restaurant, with massive tusks in front of the door), we saw flashing police lights and bikes rode in to block the junction, followed by a police car. Followed by a few rollerbladers. Followed by lots of rollerbladers. Brother estimated about 250. After all that was over, we crossed the road to walk back to the hotel.
And then - rabbits. We were crossing the old city wall, which has grass and trees planted in it, and brother noticed something moving. There were about ten rabbits, just grazing away in the grass, really not that bothered by the people walking past, getting as close as they could or even taking photos.
And Frankfurt normally seems so boring.
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