370 words on Travel
This is the crazy late November birthday weekend with many invitations for various dinners and parties to attend. On Saturday I went to Frankfurt for a party (even at the presumably harmless travel times that are Saturday afternoon and Sunday noon, those long-distance trains are well filled). It’s the first time I have properly been to Frankfurt – all my former visits didn’t extend beyond the airport or the railway station.
And of course, with it being owned by the sympathetic finance industry, Frankfurt isn’t too high on my list of interesting cities. They have bank branded skyscrapers and loads of cash. But it’s not that they’re trying to show that off to people arriving at their railway station. Leaving it to go to town you first have to walk past several blocks of junk and sex shops as if the city tried to stress its style and quality to you. And then they had already put their main shopping road full of christmas stalls – meaning that you could revel in the disgusting smell of the sweets and pretzels they are selling for kilometres (not a joke!).
As we had some time to spare, we also made a little detour to look at the Paulskirche, which played a role in German history and I thought it was cool to see it’s really instantly recognisable by its round shape – just as it’s on the drawings in the history books. We also looked at the surprisingly small but nicely restored city hall, which was spoiled – unsurprisingly – by another stretch of stalls selling christmas junk. And finally we had a glance at the cathedral, before heading off to pick up some butter for breakfast the next day (an odd request that came in by phone while we were on our way…) and because we weren’t close to a supermarket, we ended up getting Polish butter from a little Polish deli which looked quite nice (and which unlike Turkish, Asian or African shops I hadn’t seen before).
While I was assured that there are also nice parts of Frankfurt, the city itself didn’t do much to convince me, I must say. Now I’m on my way back home for the next birthday dinner tonight…