It has been about a month since we arrived back in Germany with the goal of actually settling down here. While we still need to figure out the whole 

situation, we decided to take some day trips to cities near Darmstadt / Frankfurt (where we are staying) for me to get to know other German cities beyond the ones we have already been in.

So that's how we ended up visiting Mainz, a city just west of Frankfurt and part of the Rhine-Main area, which is the second-largest metro area in Germany. 

We took the train from Darmstadt to Mainz, and got off at Römisches Theater which is a train stop that is immediately next to the ruins of the what was the largest Roman theatre north of the Alps.

The ruins themselves are not in the greatest shape, but there are informational signs about the site that show the staggering size that it was - it could fit roughy 10,000 people at a time. 

Mainz as a whole was founded around 1 BC by the Romans, as a stronghold of the general (and stepson of Augustus) Drusus. I've been binging the podcast The History of Rome for the past few months, so this initial site was pretty cool to see, even though there was a bunch of construction happening. Still strange seeing a metro next to Roman ruins. Not really something you see in the States.

The Mainz Citadel  was only a five minute's walk away. This fortress was built way later, in the 1600s, but honestly while my Roman history has improved significantly recently, my German history in those centuries is still shoddy. That being said I don't have to recall that much to know the amount of wars and conflicts that were happening, so building a giant fortress seems like it was a pretty darn good idea.

The walls of the Citadel are still standing strong and are quite impressive with the green around them.

Since the Citadel is on the hill, the view of the city is nice. Interestingly, just across the Rhine is Wiesbaden (a different city). Unlike other cities like Budapest or Frankfurt that "swallowed" or joined the towns on the opposite side of the riverbank, both Wiesbaden and Mainz are actually capitals of their respective German regions and thus remained separate cities with a fierce rivalry. I read that citizens of each region claim that the other side of the river is definitely "the wrong side of the river to live in".

We then walked down from the Citadel down to the the center of the city, which was much larger than I expected. There were many classic wood timbered houses, and much of the inner Aldstadt is a cobblestone pedestrian area. Since we went on a weekend, people were out and about shopping, drinking coffee, and as soon as the afternoon hit, hanging out with wine and beer.

It was very lively - much different than the center of Darmstadt, which I found a bit strange since the population of Darmstadt isn't that much smaller than Mainz, but the center of the towns feel vastly different.

We also arrived at the tail-end of a large farmers market that had taken over a good amount of the area. Unfortunately, since it was ending there were quite a few trucks in the area packing up their produce and goods, but it looked pretty awesome.

There was also this beautiful flower garden that was surrounded by people enjoying the outdoors, always with wine or beer in hand.

We also stopped at the Cathedral, which was the most imposing building in the area. This 1,000 year old Cathedral has a ton of history.... but alas we were hungry and kept getting jealous of seeing everyone with their drinks so we took a look around, got some mediocre photos, and went off to get some noms.

After walking in circles for a while, we found a nice place and ordered a Riesling schorle from the area and two dishes: a Mainz-style handkäse, and spundekäs - a dip from the area that reminded me of the Bavarian obatzda. The handkäse was excellent - so much so that it worried Joana as she would never be able to even suggest that a city in 

make handkäse that's as good as in Hessen. The spundekäse, on the other hand, was just alright - I much prefer the flavour and texture of obatzda.

Feeling the food and drinks, we did make one last stop at the Gutenberg Museum. Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz around the year 1400, and then invented the printing press around the year 1439. Unfortunately, most of the museum's information was only in German and while my German is rapidly getting better.... let's just say the content wasn't beginner-friendly. That being said, the museum didn't just focus on Gutenberg himself, but the entire history and progress of books and the process of creating books. 

The highlight was their super-dark and super-guarded room with their most precious books - obviously including a couple original Gutenberg bibles (of which only about 49 remain in the world). The room did not allow photos and I definitely wasn't going to get yelled at by a German-book-guard-in-a-museum-literally-for-Gutenberg so no photos of that room, definitely.

After the museum we felt pretty tired, so walked back through the Altstadt, said goodbye to the Roman Theatre, and went home. The sun had come out, so it was quite the beautiful walk.

Exploring Mainz