Frankfurt am Main

Hey y’all,

Clearly, I miss Texas, or in particular, saying y’all and tacos. When I arrive back to Austin on August 22nd, please have tacos waiting for me, or I will seriously question our friendship.

Moving on. I know I was supposed to update my blog before Berlin. I know I didn’t update my blog before Berlin. I’m not even going to try and apologize for my lack of updates. Instead, I’m going to mass post to make up for them.

Two weekends ago, Alex and I took a trip to Frankfurt. When people told me that Frankfurt was the Manhattan of Germany, they were not lying. It was oddly comforting to be back in a city where most of the signs are in English. I have a habit of reading everything – road signs, billboards, the ingredient list on chocolate bars, etc. Not being able to understand what I’m reading really bothers me, so seeing signs in a language I understood was probably my favorite part about Frankfurt.

The first thing on our agenda was going on top of the Main Tower, which is a 56-story, 200 meter skyscraper making it the 4th tallest building in Frankfurt. The top of the high-rise building gave a perfect 360 view of the city.

We spent some time wandering around the city for a bit, seeing the famous Opera House, Goethe House, and a beautiful cathedral. Wandering around any city (or in my case, getting lost) has become my favorite way to really experience any place.  Being the ridiculously organized individual I am, I always go with a long list of everything I want to see, but wandering around the city and stumbling upon certain things is surprisingly more enjoyable.

We then made our way to The Zeil, which is the “most profitable shopping street” in the city center of Frankfurt. Anytime I told someone I was going to Frankfurt, their first question was, “to shop?!” My lab-mates and every single Google search recommended going to The Zeil, so we went there. Being someone who doesn’t particularly like malls and/or shopping, I didn’t expect to spend more than five minutes there, but even if it was only for its architecture, the mall left me speechless. We decided that it was probably the size of Rhode Island. If there were more malls like this in Texas, I would be willing to go more.

It’s always hard to go to museums in a day trip, but after hearing and reading such wonderful things about the Frankfurt Museum für Moderne Kunsta, I decided that it was a museum that I had to see, despite the time-crunch. I go to art museums/exhibits very frequently, and I have seen various incredible art exhibits, but The Divine Comedy art exhibit at Frankfurt’s MoMA made it fairly high up my list of “art exhibits that everyone should see.” In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I think I’m going to do a separate post on the art exhibit with some pretty great commentary by Numa.

Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven

After spending entirely too much time at MoMA and realizing that the Farmer’s Market was closed, we headed to the Old Town and the New Town. We ended our day by visiting Eiserner Steg (the Iron Bridge) and the Cider Taverns, making it back to Würzburg just in time to catch the last ten minutes of the Germany v. Ghana game.

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Translation of German words:
a. Museum of Modern Art