Frankfurt am Main

Last Saturday TJ and I went to check out Frankfurt. It is only a 40 minute drive away, and although we have flown from there often we have not been outside of the Flughafen. We just went for the day and planned to see everything on an organized tour, but unfortunately it was all booked. They did give us a map so T and I walked the city for the afternoon and checked most things out. There are a couple of Frankfurts in Germany, so the proper name for this one is Frankfurt am Main (pronounced "mine"), which means Frankfurt on the main to distinguish it from the smaller towns of the same name. Frankfurt is the financial capital in Germany so there are many, many bank buildings all throughout downtown....as you can see...

Outside, there is a long and very large park that borders a lot of the banks and is home to our currency...the Euro. Here TJ is with a statue that marked the beginning of the Euro in the 90's.

We saw many things in this very park...like an Asian tourist on a bench with his pants off. He was hanging out in his boxers and picking at something on the pants he should have been wearing...weird. And then I saw another couple and he was wearing a Georgia ballcap...to which I said, "GO DAWGS"! There are some sites, but it is nothing like some of the other cities as Frankfurt was heavily bombed during WWII, but an old part of the city still stands with a gothic church, rathaus, and even Roman bath house ruins. Also, the famous German writer and poet Wolfgang Goethe's home is here and is preserved as a museum. Of course this is interesting to me as I spent two months of my life in language school at the Goethe Institute. Frankfurt also has a bit of charm as well with a gorgeous river walk that is very busy and well maintained. Here is a peak at that...

We crossed the river and got a great shot of the Dom in the old city. The old city is very small as there isn't much left of it.

In the old city, right outside of the Dom are the remains of an ancient Roman bath house. They apparently didn't find the ruins until the clean up effort post war. It appears that someone over time had built ove rthe top of them...

The old city is just a little bit larger than a square. You can tell which buildings are old and/or reconstructed from the German looking architecture.

Frankfurt is also known for its operas and has a very beautiful and very old Opera House. Many events take place there as well as the operas themselves. You can't see it, but the house has a very old copper roof as well.

On our way to the Opera House we found a place to lookout over the city from all directions. It was really beautiful and seemed so small from up there...and it was very breezy too!

Our experience at the top was good although we did encounter a funny. TJ overheard a Southern American woman discussing Dutch and Deutsch with another American couple...she thought it was the same thing and proceeded to tell those she was with that they were the same thing. Of course everyone else in the entire world knows that Dutch is in fact Dutch and Deutsch is the German word for German. I hoped no one else heard, because she sounded ridiculous.

Frankfurt is a nice city, but is definitely a city. You don't feel like you are in "Germany" when you are there like you do in Munich or other places (most likely due to the devastation), but it is very clean and the people are very nice as well and we enjoyed ourselves!

This weekend TJ and I are sticking around Mannheim as we have a marathon to run and TJ wants to catch the new Star Trek movie hitting the theatres. It is only two weeks until we leave for Barcelona and the Mediterranean and I CAN"T WAIT!!!!

Auf Wiedersehen!