Frankfurt

continuing to catch up....

The day after I left Weimar I regretfully said goodbye to the two friendly girls, and ventured forth from the hostel to jump on a long train to Frankfurt. I was meeting an old friend from high school there, who happened to be studying abroad in Spain this summer. He had a free four day weekend and had agreed to spend it coming to meet me, temporarily relieving my loneliness! I would have preferred to go elsewhere—a brief glance at the guidebook told me that Frankfurt was well known for its banking and not much else. Luckily I took a closer look at the guidebook later, because I discovered some wonderful wine towns located on the Rhine river only about 2 hours away, which we made a point to visit. It was a wonderful trip—I had not spoken to Brian since I had left Gainesville in January, and it was refreshing to see him again, especially in Germany. Both of us were a little stunned that we had managed to meet up in Europe, and we spent a good amount of the time comparing notes on the things we had seen while abroad. It was really fun though, and I was sad to see him leave! But I still had things to take care of in Europe anyway.

I arrived in Frankfurt in the late afternoon and had very little trouble finding the right train to take to get to the hotel—everyone I have asked for help is very willing to lead me around or point me the right way. I am consistently amazed at how helpful everyone is here. But, helpful as they try to be, the directions that I had gotten from the hotel were incredibly vague and my map was terrible, so I spent a good hour walking back and forth down this huge boulevard by the Messe in Frankfurt looking for Beethovenstrasse. I never found it. Luckily I ran into the street that came after Beethovenstrasse in my list of directions, and after a long walk down what looked like a quiet residential street I pulled up, sweating and tired, to the Pension Bruns, our housing for the night.

At the top of a long flight of stairs I finally reached the lobby, where I was greeted by a very short Asian looking woman, who checked me in at the kitchen area of what must have been an old Victorian house. But soon enough I had my room—a spacious place with high ceilings, sinks, and two comfy looking twin beds, and I threw all of my stuff on the floor and collapsed, waiting for Brian to show up. After about an hour, during which I almost fell asleep, I heard commotion on the stairwell and poked my head out to see a very lightly packed and very sweaty Brian emerging from the ground floor. I was so happy to see him! We settled his stuff inside, and he told me a similar story to the one I had experienced—wandering around Frankfurt looking for a missing street and getting completely lost. Plus, his flight was delayed, so he started off later than most. Luckily, he had asked enough people to help him find his way, and after showering we decided to take the U-bahn to see what Frankfurt had to offer.

Like I said, the impressions from my guide book gave me the thought that there might not be much to do in the banking city, but we emerged in the downtown area amidst tons of colloquial architecture—timbered walls and tiled roofs, huge cathedrals and squares with fountains spitting water, and I was pleasantly surprised. We found the river, with a cluster of new and old buildings on both banks, and we ambled along for a while, catching up and people watching. I also got information on a cruise that I thought looked interesting—a slow ride down the Rhine river to the wine country. But since we had no idea of what we were doing for the next few days, we decided not to get tickets immediately but just to look around. It was a nice area, and the sun was out, and we had a lot to talk about, so we let Frankfurt slide by as we discussed everything that we had missed for the past 6 months.

Eventually we both realized that we were really hungry, so we stopped in at a local place in one of the older parts of town, right next to a huge red brick cathedral. It was outdoor dining, and a stout, matter of fact looking woman gave us an English language menu with a number of different sausage dishes. We were in Frankfurt, after all. So we did as Germans do, and ordered huge bratwurts, potatoes, and topped off the whole meal with a big pitcher of beer. It was all actually surprisingly tasty, in a brawny sort of way. Definitely not my usual fare but I had head that the sausages in the area were very good, so I figured why not? And we spent the better part of the afternoon in that small table underneath a striped umbrella, talking and talking as the bratwurst and beer slowly disappeaered from our plates. When we were finished, we resumed our walk again.

We were looking for something to do that evening, and we spotted one of the many signs in the city downtown that showed the locations of the notable cultural attractions. I spotted a sign for an English Theater, and we both decided that it would be a great way to finish the evening. Map in hand, we ventured forth, making some wrong turns here and there but eventually emerging in a huge square with a big statue of the euro sign surrounded by stars and another modern block like building with well dressed people filtering in and out. I saw a sign on the side of the building—“Frankfurt Oper.” Ditching our plans for the Engilsh Theater, we thought an opera would be much cooler. Neither of us had been to one, we walked inside and up to the cashier. We asked the woman there when the next show was, and she told us that there was one starting in about 10 minutes. It was now or never. We knew nothing about the show, but realizing that the opportunities to go to an opera in Germany are few and far between, we bit the bullet and paid the discounted student tickets, and ventured inside.

We did not get what we expected. I thought that seeing an Opera in a foreign language would be OK—because 1. I was not likely to understand the words even if they were in English due to the flowery singing, and 2. A good deal of understanding anything comes from the gestural side anyway. But the curtain rose and we were greeted with what looked like life size puppets—people with their bottom halves hidden behind a wall and stuffed legs attached to their torsos that they draped over the wall to act as their lower halves. It all looked very strange—the people had princely looking costumes with absurdely short stunted legs, and because they had to keep these false legs behind the platform the entire time their movements could only be back and forth, right next to the wall. They looked in many respects like animated playing cards. There was a king, with a completely false looking beard and a white painted face with huge rings around the eyes, a Queen with long locks of yarn-like hair, and the same white face with bright red lips. And the rogue, what I later perceived to be the Bad Guy of the Opera was dressed entirely in black with a pointed beard.

But, because this was in a foreign language, and the movements of the actors so necessarily restricted by their costumes and the set, I had little to no idea of what was actually going on. All of the movements were slow and deliberate, and the puppetry masked much of the body language that I could have used to figure things out. I looked over at Brian, who was sitting next to me, and I could see he was just as clueless as I was. And knowing how long operas last did not make me optimistic, so I was glad when he leaned over at one of the breaks in the singing and told me that he was totally clueless and more than a little weirded out by the strange performance. He told me he would not mind leaving early, and I agreed. At the first intermission we ducked out, emerging, laughing into the streets. Next time I go to see an opera, I will check to see if it uses puppets. Never again.

But Brian was fading fast, what with a long walk to try to find the hotel and a very early plane ride, he said that he needed to get back to the hotel and sleep, or eat, because it was well past dinner time. So we returned to Pension Bruns and tried to brainstorm about what to do next. We asked the woman who worked there for the nearest restaurant, but finding it closed, we kept wandering about the quiet streets until we found an island of noise, where we found crisp white table cloths and umbrellas lighting up what looked like a rather nice Italian place. Seeing nothing close by, we headed in, and enjoyed a very nice dinner, at a rather inexpensive price. Brian and I always have a lot to talk about, so my Greek salad and his pasta was long gone before we finally decided to get up and head back to the hotel. Brian and I fell asleep almost immediately, exhausted from the day of travel.

We had decided some point earlier that day after looking at the ferry schedule to spend one more day in Frankfurt, where we could see a bit more of the city and make plans for our excursion to the wine country. We woke up late and lazed around a bit in the hotel, thumbing through my guide book and checking the internet for different things to see and do both in Frankfrut and along the Rhine river. We decided to go ahead and take the ferry after all, to Lorelei-St. Goar, a small town about 2 hours away where there was a reputed amazing castle ruin and a “scrambling 1 ¼ hour hike” up to anther castle, from which we could overlook the whole of the Rhine valley, cliffs and all. It looked promising. So we headed back into the older part of Frankfurt, where we made provisions for the journey—asked about ferry tickets, made a train reservation for the way back to Frankfurt, from which Brian’s flight would be departing, and to recharge the minutes on my cell phone, which had decided to run out right when I would need to make important reservations. The day was bright and sunny, and we meandered a bit as we took care of these mundane tasks, stopping at one point to get some fresh strawberries at a fruit stand. Places like this seem to just pop up all over Germany, and the fruit is always good, and fresh. I wish that more stuff like this existed in the United States.

Then, we did some real sitghtseeing. We went to the Dom, one of the few relics of Frankfurt’s medieval past, a massive intricately faced gothic cathedral. It was quite impressive, and stood out in stark contrst from the other sleek buildings that surrounded it. Walking inside, we entered the quiet peace and tranquility that is the hallmark of these places, and sat for a while, taking in the beautiful stained glass windows, and the paintings, one of which was by a fairly well known northern artist (Van Dyk, I think, or Hans Holbern… not having studied or seen many northern works I have a hard time keeping the names straight. ) We also visited the museum attached, which had intricate relics from the church’s past—cloth of gold gowns and elaborately embroidered crowns, jewel boxes carved in miniature, and jewels and wealth everywhere. Brian told me that he had seen works of a similar nature in the churches in Spain—where the Catholic church was notably wealthy and powerful. I could not believe how much material wealth these churches had, and the amount of time and labor that must have gone into the production of such a side variety of things.

We emerged back into the sunlight and did some more wandering again before coming to another old site, the seat of the congress or some other governing body in Frankfurt. We walked in small gate into an old courtyard, the gothic pointed arches creating long colonnades on all four sides. We saw a tight spiraling staircase that took us spiraling up into a great hall lined with dark wood and with an incredibly high ceiling. It looked like something that would belong in an old movie—the sheen of richly polished wood and the grandeur of the high ceiling would have indeed have made a stately place for political gatherings. And then we turned up another broader flight to enter another room. This one was entirely covered in portraits of kings, ranging from ones in the 700s to ones in th 1700s complete with suits of armor and weapons, others followed by flights of angels and carrying the scepter of the church, others astride horses, and other with important documents held in their hands. They all had names like “Heinrich” or “Wilhelm,” appropriately German, and one or two of the names struck a bell in the far off memories of my 10th grade European History class, but none of them stuck. We all admired the portraits, and I at least watched as the fashions in the clothing changed from the heavily plated armor, to short bloomers, to what looked like swashbuckling brigand attire, to at the latest dress that looked like it would have been in perfect keeping with the French revolution—short grey wigs, long coats, and trousers. It was really interesting, but I wish I had known more about the kings themselves so that the insignia that they chose to place with their portraits actually meant something. Too bad.

By that point, it was nearing a late lunch time, and wanting to avoid yet another costly meal out, I suggested that we try to find a grocery store and make some kind of picnic lunch for ourselves. We could even grab extra for dinner. Consulting my Let’s Go Germany, I found something even better—a listing for a huge three story indoor food market, located very near by to where we were by the Dom. I looked at Brian, and he looked at me, and I could tell by the expression on his face that we had hit something good. Jackpot. We followed the map and turned up a few side streets before reaching what looked like a big warehouse.

But inside, it was anything but—booths after booth of different vendors selling many different varieties of food. There were the sausage vendors, of course, with ropes of different colored meats hanging from the ceiling, and trays and trays of meats in all stages of processing. There were fruit stands, with all varieties of fruit, much better and fresher than any grocery store. There were also little bakery shops, with turnovers, and meusli bars. There were Turkish food stores, which I especially welcomed—trays of honey-and-nut goodies, and of course Baklava. There were also places that sold wine, places that sold huge varieties of olives and Mediterranean specialties, and fish markets. Brian, who is an absolute slave to his insatiable appetite, was absolutely enthralled, and I who had fond memories of shopping in the Spice Bazaar and in Florence was truly happy to enter the panopoly of sounds and smells. We could not decide what to eat first! But we saw along one wall a bratwurst stand, selling cooked brats and bread and we started there. For only a few Euro, the woman who worked there sliced off a bit of pork sausage, with garlic or without, peeled the skin off and served it with a hunk of bread and some mustard. There was a huge line of people and scores more eating as they stood, with a little paper tray in one hand and the food in the other. Brian and I each got some, and it was delicious! We found a small counter and ate away. Then for more food we went to a fruit stand, and after that to a Turkish food stand, where I got a ball of nuts and dried fruit and honey. Delicious!

We both decided that we would come back to this place to shop for dinner, and would eat it, CSA style, as a picnic in our hotel room. Going out all of the time was getting expensive, even though we were trying to be as frugal as possible. I was getting tired, and Brian too—I had developed the beginnings of a head cold when I was in Weimar, and in typical Nicole fashion had decided to ignore it, thinking that by doing whatever I was going to do anyway that it would decide to leave me alone. Unfortunately for me, it had only gotten worse. Luckily, Brian acted as a check on my sanity that day, and convinced me to actually acknowledge the cold long enough to retreat to the hotel for a nap. He wanted to go running and rest for a bit. So, we headed back, where I blogged for a bit and slept. He came back from his run and showered just in time for us to return to the market, where we stocked up on goods for a salad, finishing it off with some shrimp in olive oil.

That night, I had what was probably one of the best picnics of my life—all of the veggies were delicious, and we bought a lemon to use as salad dressing, a suggestion that Brian had thought was really strange until he tried it and then liked so much that he actually started cutting up bits of lemon and mixing them with his salad greens, to “enhance the flavor.” The shrimp that we had bought at the market was delicious, as was the Turkish delight that we had for dessert—leftovers of the pack that I had bought while in Berlin. And, to make the entire picnic seem a little bit more civilized, we had borrowed plates and extra forks from the hotel and were not just eating out of my scuffed plastic bowl. It was a good night. We talked just about the whole time, but even with my rest in the day my cold was catching up with me, and knowing that venturing into the city would require yet another metro ride and more money to spend, I suggested that we just take the night easy and watch a movie.

Casino Royale was duly inserted into my laptop, and before long we were both engrossed. I fell asleep before the end, but Brian told me the next day that he had gotten restless and eaten some of the leftover food, and ended up watching the whole movie, staying up very late. We were catching the ferry to Lorelei the next day, and he woke up completely regretting his sleepless night. I was more recovered, and looking forward to a lazy day on the river. At least when I was stuck on a boat for four hours I could not possibly run myself down. There was nowhere to go.

....to be continued......