Frankfurt's Altstadt & Christmas Village

After a quick stop at the hotel, I walked north and east through the posh West End, to the old opera house (second picture below). Continuing along Grosse Bockenheimerstrasse, nicknamed Fressgass - Pig-out Alley for all its food shops, (third picture below) I grabbed a quick dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, one of my weaknesses wherever I travel (fourth picture below with the diner from the Doors "Morrison Hotel" album cover as a backdrop). I spent most of the evening, pen in hand, in a noisy beer garden by the hotel writing the end of my first short story.

I began my second day walking south across the Main River to Alt Sachsenhausen, with its old style houses and Apfelwein restaurants. I tried hard to like apple wine on this trip - cold, hot, spiced - nothing helped. There was a large flea market going on by the river bank, but from my perspective it was just a bunch of junk like flea markets in the US. The south bank of the Main River is home to many of the best museums in Frankfurt. I began at the west end with the Liebighaus (ancient sculpture) Museum and its impressive collection (building, first picture below and "Athena" by Myron second picture). Heading east one block was the Stadel Museum with a strong collection bridging seven centuries of art. They had a fascinating modern art exhibit by Thomas Bayrle using a style of multiple objects put together to make a different image (cover your eyes, kids - third picture below - Ohne Titel at top, Canon meets Sharaku lower right and Canon meets Utamaro lower left). A few more blocks east was the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst (applied arts), which included pottery and furnishings (fourth picture below - "One from the Heart" lamp by Ingo Maurer).

After crossing the Main River on the Eiserner Steg walk bridge, I took a slight detour west down Kaiserstrasse to pick up tickets for a play at the English Theater that evening. Passing back through the Altstadt, I arrived at Goethe's house and museum (first picture below). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) was a genius poet, writer and politician, best known for his poetic works Faust I and II. The house where he was born and lived is filled with the many influences on him, having grown up in privilege (astronomical clock - second picture below). The attached museum displays a lot of the art that influenced him (third picture below - Fussli's "The Nightmare") and stores thousands of his manuscripts. This was a very good combination museum, which was well laid out with a unique "off-beat" interesting twist throughout. I grabbed a snack along Pig-out Alley on my way back the hotel and then headed out for the evening play at the English Theater. "They're Playing Our Song" is a minor Neil Simon play based loosely on the love and lives of Marvin Hamlisch and Carol Bayer Sager. I had always liked the score to this play although I had never before seen it performed live. Songs like "Falling", "I Still Believe In Love" and "Fill In The Words" had influenced my own songs back around 1980.  Very enjoyable, and a welcome respite from two days of struggling to understand German.

It's not easy to get to Rothenburg from Frankfurt on trains. It requires two connections (not one as the guidebooks say), the first in Wurzburg and the other in Steinach. Total trip time if everything works right is just under 3 hours and costs 90 Euros round trip in first class. I arrived around noon and headed for the town square (first two pictures below). St. George's fountain, in the large picture at the left near the top of this page, is on the square. The long metal gutters protruding from the fountain were used to fill villagers' buckets. The city streets were filled to capacity, which I hadn't expected because of the cold weather. These are hardy folks and they came to Christmas shop. I ate a Schneeballen (snowball) for lunch, which is a round sweet dough concoction covered in powdered sugar. I gave spiced hot apfelwein one last try as well - the Schneeballen was okay, the apfelwein again bad. St. Jacobs Lutheran church is just behind the town square, shown from above in the third picture below. Its highlight is the intricate wood sculpture "Alter of the Holy Blood" by Tilman Riemenschneider (fourth picture above). This masterpiece is hidden in the balcony behind the pipe organ. If I hadn't read the tour books, I would have missed it myself. The much touted Kriminal Museum was a bust - trying to be edgy but was instead uninteresting and poorly laid out.

Having accomplished my vacation's goal of writing, reading and generally returning to my own vague definition of sanity, I flew back home to Los Angeles the next morning. I returned to Frankfurt in August of 2003 in connection with a trip to Spain.