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Our trip this weekend was to Frankfurt. People here asked "Why Frankfurt?", my reply, why not.

We went via the ICE train, which is the Inter City Express. It traveled at approximately 300km/hr, which is about 186 mph through the countryside so it doesn’t take long to cover a couple hundred miles or so which puts you into an entirely different part of the country. We passed some lovely forests and farmland between Dusseldorf and Frankfurt.

Frankfurt is a city of about 600,00 people with about 500,000 jobs. During the week approximately 300,000 or more come in daily to work so they have to have a very efficient rail system. Their "Hauptbanhof: (main train station) handles one of the largest numbers of passengers of any station in Europe and they have a beautiful airport; the Rhine-Main which is continental Europe’s most important air travel intersection. The city is also the point where major European trunk roads intersect, which makes Frankfurt an ideal place for the head offices of numerous multinational companies and banks for international trade fairs.

The city itself has a unique mixture of historic buildings and skyscrapers in the Manhattan style. Their street, which is the equivalent of our Rodeo Drive in LA, is the Zeil. This street has the highest sales turnover in the whole of Germany. Jim was very glad that we didn’t have time to stop and shop on Saturday because the stores are all closed on Sunday when we went back. Poor planning on my part.

Enough history:

We arrived at around 11:00AM, which gave us plenty of time to hit the streets before our 2:30 City tour. So off we go with map in hand and backpacks with our clean underwear on our backs. We headed for the old part of town, the "Altdstadt or Romer" section as they call it. We walk across the Main River, not the Rhine here via a pedestrian bridge to their Museum section. The city has been the recipient of some gorgeous villas there were willed to the city as long as the city chose to use them as museums so the architecture of the buildings is almost as marvelous as what is inside. As we get to the top of the bridge we see a mass of humanity along the river. They are having our equivalent of a Flea Market on Saturday morning. Streets are closed off to cars, only foot traffic.

We decided to take a walk along and see what’s for sale. Mistake…. Big Mistake. They have tables set up in 3 rows that run probably for ½ mile or better. Once you drop down off the bridge and get into the masses, you have really no option but to flow along with them. If you have ever been in San Francisco during the Chinese New Year parades, this is just like that. Masses of bodies everywhere, so you are jostled along. I tell you, I saw more used VCR’s and TV’s than a new / used department store would have. I can only imagine where they all came from. Shoes, couldn’t get close enough to know if they were new or used in every other booth. We finally found a break between booths and got out of there.

We stopped at the Museum fur Kommunikation. It was an overview of how communication has progressed in Germany/Frankfurt since the times of the kings. Quite interesting. Out front they have a :Pre-Bell-Man" which is made using objects from the telecommunications technology collection. Jim took some pictures, which will be out on the web site. For example: They had what looked like a group of sheep from the distance but when you got up close, their bodies were made out of telephone cables, heads were the unit (both rotary and push button), their feet were the handset. They started out with the period of the Kings understanding the need for efficient communication within their kingdoms and how it had progressed from there. I met this young girl in the museum who was an exchange student from Germany to an American family in Tucson. She said that had been 10 years ago and she stays in close contact with her exchange sisters and exchange parents. The exchange parents are coming over for her wedding in the spring.

Saturday afternoon we took the city tour. We walked through the Romer, which is the historic city center. The oldest historic traces of settlements in Frankfurt are here. This is where the original trade faires were held and the merchants conducted most of their trade. When you first enter the area you think you are looking at very old German homes/businesses. As it turns out, this area was almost totally destroyed during the Allied Air Raids. They have rebuilt the entire area as authentically as possible using pictures and old plans. Their major event in this area occurs during the Advent period with its traditional Christmas Market. They have a lovely Museum of History here with a large statue of Charlemagne out in front.

We went by St. Paul’s Church where a piece of German history was written. Here was where the first German National Assembly was inaugurated. This was that brief period when the German people thought there was hope for a unified Germany.

We saw Goethhaus. Home of Goethe who is considered to be one of the greatest writers in the German language. His house was also destroyed during the war and the city has rebuilt the house as an identical copy of the original. The city said they rebuilt it so us tourists could see a fine example of how wealthy citizens lived in the 18^th century.

Frankfurt has become the home of the German central bank, the Federal Court of audit and more than 400 commercial banks make it the financial capital of Germany. They have two new identical banks built recently which the locals call the "Debit" and "Credit" banks. Then a larger one was built close by and they refer to that one as the "Balance" bank. There are lots of buildings where construction was started pre-2000 but since the economy has been faltering there is no desire to continue building on them to finish them so they are just there - partly constructed.

Jim took a tour up to the 56 plus floor on one of their newer buildings and took pictures of the area. I passed on that one but did enjoy looking at the pictures.

A local favorite this time of the year is Apfel Wein. I tried a glass just to be able to say I did. Let me tell you, until you acquire a taste for it, you won’t ask for a second glass. Jim ordered an Oktoberfest beer. It was a liter of beer in a glass. Good thing we were back at the hotel and he didn’t have far to go to get to the room. If we had to navigate the map at that point, we would have still been in Frankfurt.

All in all, a small pretty city with a strong mix of the old and new. You can see the old cathedrals standing alongside the skyscrapers.

That’s it for now.