The most non-German, German city: Frankfurt...Sat. 20. Mai

I traveled to Frankfurt with two of my friends, Renate (Latvia) and Lauren (Boston) via train on Saturday. It was 4 hours by train, but would have been only 3 with the faster train.

Why Frankfurt? Well, we thought, why not? We had nothing planned and thought we should take some time to explore the city that is a crossroads for traveling in Europe and also suppose to be quite a metropolis. My friend Renate was most excited to see the skyline. (She studies in Riga, Latvia, which is the capital, but still only has a couple ‘tall’ buildings.)

I only spent a day there, well really an afternoon, but I came to the conclusion that Frankfurt is the city (so far in my travels) that is most unlike every other city here in Germany. It actually reminded more of an American city than a German one with its skyline, wider streets, and not so friendly walking area. For the first time since I have been in Europe, I actually felt like pedestrians didn’t have the right of way.

With about six hours to kill before we had to catch our train, we walked from the main train station into the main city area with shops, cafes, etc. That was a nice thing…it was really easy to find our way around the main attractions, which was impressive for its large size.

We first went to the top of the largest building not only in Frankfurt, but also in Europe. For only 3 euros, we could all of Frankfurt and we probably would have seen more if the weather would not have been so horrible. We were literally being pushed around by the heavy wind gusts and pouring rain.

After our ‘top of the world’ experience, we walked around the city a bit and looked for a doner restaurant. (Doner is really popular in Germany…it is a type of food from Turkey that is normally with lamb meat, but I have mine with lots of yummy veggies. The bread looks like a clam and the rest inside. It is a bit hard to eat, but very good…)

Following lunch, we crossed a bridge over the Main river and headed to a museum. We found it was difficult to decide which one to go to because there are so many here! The film and photography museum was our choice…after a tour of Wicke’s photographs, we had fun with all of the stuff in Film museum because it focused more on the history of film and the inventions made to get to the point that movies are at now.

We braved the weather (lightning, thunder, and all) to go back to the train station. We actually took the U-bahn for a small portion of the way because the weather was so bad.

I was pleased with the visit and could see myself going back for another afternoon to at least see the Museum of Communication (I was so excited when I saw that…what could be more perfect for my two majors—a museum about communication, which will more than likely be all in German) and I would also like to see Goethe’s house because he was born here….other than that and possibly the dom/cathedral, I think I might have had my fill of Frankfurt. A pleasant place to visit for a day or two.