Nikola (A friend of mine I got to know on ICC) from Serbia and Marcus from Switzerland (See the article about my first Couchsurfing experiences below) both visited me in Marburg on the weekend from May 4th until May 6th.
Nikola actually wanted to arrive in the early evening on May 4th, but due to some other appointments, he arrived by Flixbus at midnight.
Since we already planned to meet in Marburg earlier in March during the week where I additionally had to work, Nikola got in touch with the Couchsurfing community in Marburg to ask if anybody was able to show him the city and hang out for the time I would have been at work. It didn’t work out, but therefore, he was still in touch with Damien, who fortunately was able to pick him up from the long-distance bus station because it is not the most convenient way for a blind person. There are actually no big problems getting around in Marburg on my own, but a lot of people advised me not to find my way to this particular bus station on my own because it might be a little dangerous to find the right spot to cross the streets.
Anyway, thanks to Damien, I only had to stand by near the train station and wait for them to arrive there. We stopped at a fries-shop for a midnight snack and a talk before we splitted up to get home.
Arrived at my group, Moritz and I made Nikola familiar with the most important places in our group and went to sleep very quickly.
The next morning at 10:30, Marcus arrived by car and we had breakfast at a café nearby.
After that, we went to the upper city and met Jack, who is part of the English meetings in Marburg, for a short talk.
Later on, we ended up at a tactile model of the market square and buildings nearby. We translated the description written in German (Print and Braille) for Nikola and decided to take the bus to get to the castle.
After a short roller-coaster ride, we arrived at the square in front of the castle, where we could find another tactile model with a description in German and English.
We entered the castle, nowadays functioning as a cultural museum and after negotiating a little, we were allowed to enter for free, because there were only a few things to touch; the rest was hidden behind glass. However, Marcus did a great job describing the objects and reading the information in a nice and interesting way. For me, some topics and places in the castle were also new to me, because I never checked the entire castle and most likely only visited the places around the castle.
The way down to the market square probably was way easier than the way up to the castle on foot; in any case, it was a piece of cake to get back down to the upper city, where we took the elevator down to Pilgrimstein, had some ice-cream at a café close by and met Sophie and Johannes, with whom we toured the places around the Elisabeth church. They additionally provided us with a few further information about the places we came across.
Marcus suggested to prepare something for dinner, so when we were back at home, we took a break and discussed what to prepare for dinner. We came up with Spaghetti Bolognese and went to the supermarket to get all the necessary ingredients and a few drinks.
I can conclude that Marcus is an awesome cook and, although we thought the spaghetti will last longer than one evening, we ate up the entire pod, so yay!
On Sunday, we went out for breakfast and met Alejandra and Damien, who joined us later on for a while and we had a nice talk about this and that.
Unfortunately, as always, nice reunions pass by very quickly. Marcus and I drove Nikola to the bus station and helped him boarding the bus and negotiating with the bus driver concerning where to drop him off in Frankfurt to wait for his bus to Saarbrücken where he is currently attending an Erasmus program. After a longer coffee break, Marcus dropped me off at my group and left as well, back to Switzerland.
It was a pleasure to meet Nikola and Marcus again, and it was a great plus that Marcus was with us. This way, Marcus concentrated on guiding us, whereas I concentrated on the way and the directions we have to go in order to reach certain places of our desire. In addition, with a car it was easier to collect the ingredients for our meal on Saturday evening, and he furthermore had more space to bring some groceries from Switzerland. Good lord, we should now have enough Swiss chocolate for the time being! 🙂
Also, a special thanks goes to all the locals from the English Meet-Up Group, the Couchsurfing community or elsewhere, whom we met during the weekend for a short hangout or for touring the city with us, making us familiar with places even I didn’t entirely know yet and providing us with some extra information and suggestions.
The way to my personal independence 