Frankfurt am Main

The plan was simple enough: arrive at Frankfurt international at approximately 7am German time, take the train directly from the airport to downtown, step outside, find the Frankfurt Cathedral, reboard the the train and be back to terminal one with plenty of time to spare before my 1:45pm flight to Delhi.



After taking nearly thirty minutes just to find my way out of the terminal, I felt a wave of doubt. I had never roamed an international airport let alone a foreign city, and there were not as many English-translated signs as I had imagined. With constant self assurance that six hours was time enough to at least venture outside, I managed to convince myself that the nearly two hours it took to find and properly board the train system was only a minor hiccup and that I would surely not miss my flight.

An impatient line of business Germans formed behind me as I struggled to buy my tickets from the only partially-in-English ticket machine. I do not know Deutsch. I do not even know what sort of German words are location/city words. I then stood at the airport (Flughafen?) platform, trying to decode the massive Frankfurt train system map. It was a task I would only master by day's end and at 8:30am I was in no position to wait for a eureka; I hopped on the first train that came and prayed it was going into the city.




It was not going into the city. Realizing my train was heading into lands that more and more began to resemble the Sound of Music, I quickly departed and waited for a train back to the airport. The good thing about trains is that if you know the rail direction that is the wrong way, finding the right becomes very easy.



In the train and throughout my eventual three hour hike through the city, I asked about a dozen or so random people for directions; all but one spoke easily understood english. The city and surrounding areas (I went to a small town four train stops from the airport, tried to order lunch in German, and ended up paying 4 euros for a box of french fries covered in spicy ketchup and mayonaise) is very diverse in terms of both demographics and commerce. I saw many stereotypical looking Europeans (ex: Franz-Ferdinand-reject looking fellow listening to loud techno chipmunk music on big headphones) and a considerably large number of middle eastern immigrants (including the guys that sold me the French fries). Downtown Frankfurt is a dense mixture of fine clothing and jewelry stores, Mercedes offices, finance buildings (ex: the German central bank), strip clubs and street access peep show booths, McDonalds, Vodophone, and all kinds of bizarre retail and dining outlets (ex: an Australien shop- complete with stuffed koalas and wooden boomerangs for sale).




After aimlessly walking through the downtown for about two hours, I had decided to give up and return to the subway station- happy enough that I’d made it to am Maim alive, let alone learned to navigate train system in, around, and out of the city with ease. As I walked back, a single spire caught my eye. At least a half mile away, it was too tall to be just another spired apartment/retail building (there are many in Frankfurt) and I knew I had to give it a chance.

Saint Bartholomeus' Cathedral, Frankfurt, is beautiful.








Last Picture:
One of the many street side neons advertising for Frankfurt's finest occupies the foreground, while the German Central Bank (one of the first such institutions in the modern world, an economic and financial wunder monument) can be seen behind.