Frankfurt, Germany

In late June and early July, 2005, my family and I (I'm Glenn, by the way) took a trip to Europe. It had been a long time since we had taken a proper family trip together since my wife and I got vacations at different times and the kids were in different schools with different vacation schedules. Finally, everything came together, and we decided to splurge and take a trip to Europe together. We had been wanting to take a trip to Prague for fifteen years, even had it planned one time in the early 90's, but this time we decided it was really going to happen.

The best deal we found was on Asiana Airlines, but that meant we had to spend a night in Korea and then another in Frankfurt before finally going on to Prague. This is a page of pictures we took while walking around Frankfurt for a day or two before taking a night train to Prague.

My family met me at the airport in Seoul's new international airport at Inchon, and a hotel limo took us to the Winner's Hotel. The Winner's Hotel is so named because the government has this tract of rice paddies slated for casino development, and, although the casinos have yet to be built, the Winner's Hotel has. Since there's nothing around to attract guests other than this row of seafood restaurants facing the Yellow Sea, they're willing to deal (pun intended).

If soft-shelled crabs in red pepper sauce á la Coreana sounds appealing, they're waiting for you near the Winner's Hotel in Inchon, Korea.

Finding our way from the airport to the city center by train wasn't all that easy for us, although we're accustomed to taking trains everywhere here in Tokyo. An elderly German lady took us under her wing and helped us get change and decipher the ticket machine.

Before we left the station, we first booked a night train to Prague the following night. Then The "Comfort Hotel" we'd booked was anything but that, we found, as summer temperatures were soaring in Germany at the time we arrived and there was no air conditioning in our room - just an oscillating fan. Still, we were in Europe!

It was Sunday afternoon when we arrived. Gihong and the kids lay down and succumbed to jet lag while Daddy walked down the street to a little place where a man, who looked to be Turkish, served me some wurst and a cold beer. I sat down and watched a little foosball with the rest of the patrons.

If you tend to think of Frankfurt as the banking and financial center of Germany and a less-than-ideal place for sightseeing, you're are correct. This shot will kind of attest to the fact that it is an odd combination of towering mirror-glass skyscrapers and squat traditional architecture. However, we enjoyed our time in Frankfurt and found a few things of interest.

Our first morning, our jet lag helped us to get a super early start on the day. We were walking around town, cameras dangling from our wrists, as the office workers were getting their morning coffee and starting another workweek.

We bumbled into this pretty little square, the name of which escapes me now, while it was still deserted. It got our hopes up that Frankfurt had not been firebombed into oblivion and that there were indeed buildings more than 60 years old in Frankfurt. As it turned out, though, this was the only such square we found.

We wanted to get an overview of the city, so we went up to the roof of one of its chrome and glass skyscrapers for a look see. It was a beautiful sunny day, so the view was great. We were able to pick out the square that we'd just come from, the one above. I've highlighted it in the picture at left. Apart from the two nearby churches, you can tell that the surrounding buildings are less interesting architecturally.

You may well be an expert on German philosophy, but taking a decidedly middle class guy like me to the Goethe Haus is definitely casting pearls before swine. However, now safely back in Tokyo, a quick Google search tells me that Goethe was a "German poet, novelist, playwright, courtier, and natural philosopher, one of the greatest figures in Western literature. In literature Goethe gained early fame with The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), but his most famous work is the poetic drama in two parts, FAUST" (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/goethe.htm).

We enjoyed the tour of his house and the insights it lent into life in 18th century Germany.

It also gave us a chance to have a little fun...

One of the landmarks you'll run into while walking around Frankfurt is the Eschenheimer Turm. Aviewoncities has this to say about it: It's "a 47 meter high gothic tower, was once part of Frankfurt's medieval city fortifications. In 1400, the carpenter Klaus Mengos built the rectangular base of the tower, replacing a smaller gated tower built in 1346. In 1426 master builder Madern Gerthener, architect of the Kaiserdom, took over and completed the circular tower in 1428.

The tower was once just one of about 60 towers encircling the city. Most were demolished between 1806 and 1812 when the old city walls were torn down. The Eschenheimer turm was only saved from demolition thanks to the intervention of French ambassador Graf d'Hédouville. Today it is one of Frankfurt's main landmarks."

Another structure that you can't miss, and I do remember what it is, thank you, is the Opera House. On this occasion, oddly enough, I just happened to find the members of my family sitting in front of it.

While here taking pictures, we found a poster stapled to a utility pole. It said that there would be a salsa band playing a free concert that night. Being a lover of salsa music, I made it a point to come back that evening.

I thought of putting the full-sized picture next, but maybe I'll just put it as an inset instead. That evening it was still unusually hot in Frankfurt, but this band was also muy caliente. I got some great video footage of German people, some still in business attire but with glasses of beer in hand, shaking their money makers to the salsa beat.

This being Europe, there were lots of sidewalk eateries and yummy dishes beckoning from the shop windows. Me, I had a taste for sauerkraut, figuring "when in Rome." So we went into a food court that we ran into and I asked if they had any sauerkraut, and they told me that the weather was too hot for sauerkraut! Funny, I never thought of sauerkraut being a hot or cold weather dish, but apparently they do.

Looking down the street from our hotel, I could see this tower. Funny thing, every time I set out to walk down the street to see it, though, it wasn't there. I can't really explain it, but I called it "the disappearing tower." Sooner or later, with perseverance, I was able to locate it.

For you, it will just be another pretty area of Frankfurt.

As we continued our walking tour of Frankfurt, we saw this scene in a little park. Under the white canvas tent roofs were people serving wine, there was a stage visible beyond, and the loudspeakers were broadcasting what turned out to be a fast-moving live comedy. We couldn't understand a word, of course, but it was obviously very entertaining.

It showed us once again that that our preconceived idea of Frankfurt as a staid bankers' capital was not all work and no play. Pun unintended this time.

By mid-afternoon we started getting pretty tired of walking around the city and noticed a big park on our tourist map. Very nice open space, with a few people enjoying the sun and its warmth on this summer day.

Feeling refreshed, we naturally gravitated back to the old-town section of Frankfurt for some post cards and German-style refreshment. The shadows were starting to get long and it would be getting on time to head to the station for our night train to Prague.

We found our way back to the station and our sleeper car. It was still hot and sticky, and we had to leave the windows open to get some breeze in the car. Unfortunately, that also let a lot of noise and light into the car and made it difficult to get a night's sleep. Of course we did finally fall asleep, and when I woke up I looked out on the cool, green fields of the Czech Republik.

OK, it should be clear to you that, different from the other pages on this site, that this is not to document a vacation per se but rather to serve as a prologue for our trip to Prague. I don't imagine too many people plan trips to Frankfurt itself, but rather fly into it and then go on to their final destinations, as we did. If this describes what you'll be doing, then I hope I've given you a little idea of what awaits you if you decide to spend a day there.

BTW, my wife made a contact sheet of all her pictures of Frankfurt if you want to see more.