Frankfurt, Germany – August 12

cool bubbles busker - kids loved it

27 degrees, sunny with a breeze, not humid

Every city we visit seem to have free walking tours, and Frankfurt is no different. What was different is that they weren’t promoting any other pay tours. Of course they always explain that you can decide at the end of the trip how much you think the tour was worth and tip what you would like. Apparently, some people on today’s tour thought it wasn’t

spiderman

worth anything – brutal. Some people figure a 2.5 hour tour isn’t worth a penny – again…brutal.

This tour was described as the ‘alternative’ Frankfurt walking tour. Most of the tour was what we would expect of a typical tour…history, monuments, stories, buildings, but this tour also focused some on drugs and prostitution. This focus took us through the seedy part of Frankfurt, through the red light district, past Crazy Sexy (Frankfurt’s largest of its 20 or so brothels), past a safe

book burning memorial

injection site across the street from 3 people using drugs – these 3 people didn’t seem to care that a group of 30 tourists was streaming past them. We were asked not to take pictures. It was very interesting, basically a block away from the regular, everyday Frankfurt.

The rest of the tour was pretty tame in comparison, but interesting and fun nonetheless.

handkase

The guide showed us 2 of the 7 Spiderman statues distributed all over the city. Kind of quirky and odd – apparently Frankfurt is referred to by locals as Main-hattan, so an artist decided to add Spiderman’s to the skyscrapers.

What is very interesting about Frankfurt is that it was almost completely destroyed in the war. It doesn’t look like it though because the city decided to rebuild

pre-music

itself to look like it did pre-war, so there are old looking buildings that aren’t so old. 

 – this isn’t unique to Frankfurt, we saw this in Munich also. What is unique to Frankfurt is its monopoly on German skyscrapers, it has 13 of the tallest 15 in Germany.

Although we did see a memorial to the Nazi book burning which was very interesting, we heard very little about the Nazi and the war. That omission in itself was interesting.

After the tour we thought we better have some German food and

beer. I had Handkäse, a speciality of the Frankfurt area – the name comes from the traditional way it used to be made…with you own hands. Apparently, it can also be called Handkäse mit Musik (hand cheese with music) the music is played by your body subsequent to eating the cheese and especially the raw onions served with it – German comedy…hilarious. It was just OK, not particularly delicious, but fine.  Chris had a sausage sampler…finally had us some sauerkraut – not my favourite.

tribute on city hall to the apple wine