Our train pass garnered us some reserved seats on the ICE from Munich and jettisoned us in comfort and style all the way through to Frankfurt with a couple of train and platform changes before depositing us at a suitably grand and cavernous station that we negotiated with aplomb. Arriving street-side to have a quick look at the sat-nav we started trundling the route to our hotel a few blocks away through some tatty streets and ragged station locals!
Frankfurt and immediate surrounds proved to be a revelation and some of the day trips into the Rhine valley and other hinterlands piqued our interest and stunned our senses. The city itself is an international banking hub and the city's skyscrapers are a unique backdrop to the old town heart. Gleaming and architecturally diverse glass and steel juts skyward like an iron Japanese fan, backdropping the cobblestones and giant, red stones that make up the town squares, churches and city halls in the older heart of town. The Main River slices the city neatly in half dividing the old centre and financial machine from the museum quarter with the restaurants and beer halls at their back, before eventually junctioning with the mighty Rhine some 500 km away.
Despite the fact that this blog becomes a pseudo food blog at times, have you noticed I haven't breathed a word about food yet, despite being in the middle of Europe for the last two weeks? Things are about to change! We ate loads of traditional fare, so much so at the end that we needed to take a break and seek out some different cuisine. This wasn't a chore as Germany is a melting pot of nations and the melting pots of those nations were on open display and fine in quality. We sampled the famous dishes of all the regions we visited including frankfurters, potatoes, schnitzel, sauerkraut on multiple occasions but also had our fill of other heavy meats and sausages (well at least I did!). Cass got the green-sauced potatoes in Frankfurt (a local specialty) and even tried a delicious schnitzel at one stage as well. I tried every local beer I could lay my hands on and had a good time tasting various weisbbeers and pilseners, while Cass sampled a range of Rieslings.
We broke away from the traditional beer halle fare at intervals to punctuate our dining with visits to steak houses, Italian, Turkish, Iranian and French restaurants because, well....they were there! I don't think we got a dud meal at all, in fact, quiet ironically, Cassy voted a little restaurant in Munich Station as her favourite of the lot. In between we had bountiful, gourmet breakfasts in the hotel restaurants and were satiated to the point that we could sustain a whole day walking, visiting and admiring, miss lunch and just have a dinner in the evening. Considering the amount and variety of food we were enjoying, this minimal effort at food control was probably a very good thing!
We visited a range of museums and galleries in Frankfurt as we strolled around and got used to the layout of the city. We criss-crossed the road and pedestrian bridges across the Main, walked riverside and conversed with the ducks and stalked the museum quarter in search of tiny or non-existent queues in front of sought after sites. A surprise was the German Film Museum, in which we spent many hours: as both students of film and teachers of film in our language instruction in high school, we were keen visitors and reveled in the techniques on display and some of the special film artifacts. An Oscar, the Alien and the real red drum were just some of the golden highlights!
We succumbed eventually and joined the line for the Making Van Gogh Exhibition at the Staedel. The crowd waiting patiently in the line outside slowly froze as it inched inside only to be met with a press of humanity rare in an art gallery and only matched in our experience by a crush of people in the side rooms at the Musee D'Orsay, again stuffed with iconic Van Goghs: he's a popular guy now! It was a feast for the eyes but a bit too much for my delicate claustrophobic tendencies!
We took a series of trains, each more quaint, as the countryside grew more bucolic all the way to the charming Rothenburg ob de Tauber. The day trip was planned in scant and it seemed quite miraculous that we made the changes required and eventually disembarked at the requisite town! It's just so easy traveling in Europe compared to Asia...nearly everyone everywhere speaks at least a little English! A perfectly preserved pearl of medieval architecture greeted us after a short stroll from the station and we spent the rest of the day exploring the streets and the inevitable tourist boutiques as well as the more hardy city walls where we circumnavigated the town dodging turrets and treading uneven flagstones. It was a blast and reminded us of a mini version of our beloved Carcassone!
We did a similar trip to the castles of the Rhine, preceded by a local lunch and some wine tasting. Usually eschewing the delights of an organized and guided tour, we relented in the cold and miserable weather to be ushered around in a luxurious mini bus by the mercurial Misha. We were whisked to the tops of mountains to view giant statues, hosted for lunch, taught about local wines and feted on our own Rhine cruiser. The crumbling edifices clinging to the clifftops and more substantial piles renovated into luxury hotels were beautiful to view from the river. The company and the intimate quarters were all a little too much however, confirming our decision to avoid these trips as much as humanly possible and rely on our own auspices!
Ignoring our own better judgement we went on yet another guided trip later in the week, this one just a half-dayer and it was spoiled a little by by failing spirits brought on by a slight fever and some bone chilling, seeping, sapping cold! We went to Heidelburg to check out their famous castle, 14th century university, and various incarnations and add-ons that have survived the centuries. It was suitably grand and majestic, the viewing deck overlooking the river and town most spacious and impressive with precipitous drops to the valley below. A funicular purred and poured itself down the mountain to the impossibly long main street and the hotel of the knights, supposedly the oldest in the world. We were picked up after an interminable stint in the bone sapping conditions: we were that desperate we even took shelter in a church at one point to escape the conditions! It was fun, but we were pleased to be back under our own controls after being deposited back in the city.
Sapped by cold, then zapped by jet lag we enjoyed being back in positive temperatures again despite having to face the whirlwind of work 24 hours after we returned. Our Germanic experience was delightful, varied and eye-opening and we were pleased with our travel choices. Next time, considering how awesomely efficient the train system was, we might elect to do a bit more city hopping... we're just so lucky to have these experiences we know...spoiled and very lucky!
here's the album.