FROM THE BANK - Day 11

FROM THE BANK - Frankfurt - Tuesday December 28th 2010

somewhere between Berlin and Frankfurt

Unable to find my beloved Merino wool socks, but hoping they were in the bottom of my bag, I left bright and early for Frankfurt.

Turned out my train was an hour late to leave, and had numerous unplanned stops, but I finally got to my hostel at around 3pm. I still was not able to check into a room until after 4pm.

i was missing snow so much!!
:)

To kill time, I promptly contacted Marcel and we made a plan for the evening, kind of. The plan was “Ok, come meet me at the hostel now and we’ll go from there.”

Unsurprisingly it was an excellent plan.

First thing first, I was hungry. I desperately needed a snack, so I ventured outside into Frankfurt. When I first arrived, in the daylight, my area seemed normal enough; just a busy downtown. It was now night. Not overly dark though, no, the many red and blue fluorescent lights that seem to be popular for the businesses of many varieties (from “cocktail-beer-bar”s to casinos, and whatever you want to shake in between) gave off a more than decent red glow. My hostel was right in the middle of the Red Light District of Frankfurt.

theres a cross on top of that hill

Frankfurt is tall. The meaning of skyscraper is quite literal here. Reaching up to the sky, there are towering office buildings everywhere. Being night time, they were all wonderfully light up. It was like a cliché scene of someone’s first time in the Big Apple or should I say Big Frankfurter? Naw, doesn’t have the same ring to it.

You’d think that once you’ve seen one Red Light area, you’ve seen them all. Amsterdam and Frankfurt are complete opposites. In Amsterdam that majority of the people out and about are fellow tourists and probably just as (secretly) scaredof you as you are of them. In Frankfurt, these are real people. Down for business people.

you have to admit, there is skill here

So I found a grocery store lickity split, bought my cookies and speed-walk/sprinted (without losing a cookie) to my hostel and quite literally into the arms of Marcel, who found my little ordeal amusing.

We headed to the less Red part of downtown. We walked through Rothschild park and by the Opera House to a very bustling part of town. There was a street just for eating. As in it had solely restaurants. And of course an area that had more than enough sops for clothing and other knickknacks. Inside a huge and fairly recently redone mall, we found a grocery store where Marcel found a frankfurter for me. It was ok. Pretty much just a skinny wiener. I would have liked a spot of mustard on it.

After an insanely good pasta supper where they make your personal dish right infront of you, we went to a nice night café called Shooting Star. It had a very nice ambiance. Not very busy, but hey, it was a Tuesday. The owner had a wall with photos of all his regulars. I that so, cool. Someday my photo will be on a wall… somewhere other than at my house.

I for sure spotted the Commercebank tower and the Main Tower, as well as some other tower that Marcel told me that everyone says looks like a pen. Sadly, my camera was not in the depths of my purse as I had thought, but in the depths of my backpack… at the hostel… (I might throw in some from tomorrow if I have ‘too many’).

graffiti

Also on the topic of the City, the weather is really nice. That night it went up from -1C to 2C just while we had our pasta. There was a bit of snow, but as you can imagine not much. Oddly enough, it was not too slushy. A fairly agreeable city if I do say so myself. It may have something to do with how it has a moderately continental climate.

Still having a good chunk of the evening left, we headed onto the S-Bahn to go to Marcel’s. He doesn’t actually live in Frankfurt, but in a town close enough that about 20 minutes from the city center and a couple of towns later we were there. A nice town, but it was dark so I don’t have much to report.

His mom was really nice. The same with what I saw of his brother. We just hung around, catching up (it had been a good two and a half years) while watching How I Met Your Mother.

A couple of hours later I snuck into my hostel room, being as quiet as I could be as to not wake up whomever was there. Turns out the very friendly and just as crazy Mexicans I was to be rooming with were not back. Yet.