Lately my blog entries were mostly about foreign countries and my experiences there. Thanks to a visit from Ash, a kayaking friend from Oxford, I finally came around to visiting a German city – a city I’ve never seen the inner city of. So far the only thing I’ve seen from „Frankfurt am Main“ is the airport and the main train station – time for that to change!
So till now for me Frankfurt mainly consisted of these two big infrastructures. Other than that I only knew that Frankfurt had a lot of skyscrapers and a big financial center. What I didn’t know is that Frankfurt does have quite a nice city centre! Of course one has to keep in mind that most of the nice and old looking buildings were rebuilt after they had been bombed at the end of WWII but they did a wonderful job! And even if the buildings at the Römer Platz )central place with the city council etc.) wouldn’t have been impressive in themselves there also was a little show going on: the German women’s national soccer team won the European Championship just yesterday and today they were welcomed back to Germany in Frankfurt on the Römer. There was a lot of party going on and I wrapped a scarf in German colors around Ash to „disguise“ him although I think us speaking English gave us away anyway…
  
Somehow Germany thought it had to compete with England, in particular concerning the weather. I guess it did quite a good job: it was raining cats and dogs – time for a hot drink in a café! Later we went up onto the roof of a shopping center and had quite a good view over the city.
After visiting the birth place of Goethe…
  
  
… the day ended with German beer and Sauerkraut (not for me!) in a „Wirtshaus“. Thanks Ash for a great day!
Still unbelievable that I need people from England to visit me to finally have a look at one of the cities not too far away from home 🙂