Let me start the description of our feelings about Frankfurt by telling you one of the first things Alicia told me when we arrived, "Brett, where have you taken me?" I don't think either of us ever wants to come back to Frankfurt. Alicia says it is like Gothem in the Batman movies. Think the run down areas of New York and the near South side of Chicago. We arrived in early afternoon, but determined to get some dinner and head back to what passed as a hotel before dark in case things came out and devoured people (like in Will Smith's "I am Legend" movie).
This all could have been avoided if either of us had read our travel book's entry on Frankfurt. Since we were both having great exploratory journeys without any problem, we hadn't bothered reading about places until we arrived. Let me give you some examples of what we should have read:
Frankfurt, while low on Old World charm...
For years, Frankfurt was a city to avoid...but today, it's energy makes it worth a look.
This sightseeing walk...shows you both the new Frankfurt and the old - starting at it's train station, taking you past junkies and brothels...
Warning: This walk now goes into a neighborhood of hard-drug users and prostitutes. It can be creepy any time of day. If you use common sense, it's not dangerous, but it unnerves many...the aggressive women at the strip shows can be unsetteling.
Wow. I am glad our hotel wasn't near this area. But it wasn't a nice hotel by any stretch of the imagination. Crazy hot and only cooled at night with a rain storm and the windows open, a disturbing painting over the bed and the cheapest accommodations we have seen yet.
After scouring the guide for any other surprises, I found there was an area that might be more our style and we headed out for dinner. The Hauptwache and Romerberg are Frankfurt's old town and a market square. But even this was only marginally better and had a small circumference of normality.
We did find some things for the kids, dinner, and a grocery store. We are always finding grocery stores because instead of spending $3-5 for a glass of soda or a liter of water, we van get a liter of milk, liter and a half of water, and some treats for dessert. We eat dinner without drinks and then drink and have dessert later.
Dinner was the high point for me. In a city where one-third of its residents hold foreign passports, Frankfurt, even more than Berlin, has little "German" food (wurst, schnitzel, spaetzel, etc.). As we were moving out of the town square, we found a Chinese food placed loaded with Chinese and were just about to move back to it when Alicia said, "Wait, let's look at this place."
It was a Greek place with gyros, pitas and that yummy gyro sauce to dip the pitas in, and what looked like a vegetable casserole. We were starving and it looked great, so I ordered one of each of those things, thinking we could share the gyro and pita/sauce ad our main course with some of the vegetable casserole on the side.
When the food arrived, it was a plate of the vegetable casserole. Since I was the one who really thought the casserole looked good, I picked that to start and Alicia began with the gyro. All of the food was great. The gyro had thinner sliced meat than I was used to and it wasn't my favorite, but it was still good. The pita and sauce was fantastic.
But the vegetable casserole stole the show for me, and Alicia thankfully let me have most of it. It was large florets of cauliflower and broccoli along with sliced red bell peppers in a cheese-type sauce. I liked it so much, I asked the waiter to write down the name of it so we could look for a recipe. I want to have that for my birthday dinner. It is called überbachengümüse (try saying that five times really fast).
Very full from dinner, we hurried back to the hotel in the failing light. Once there, we prepped for tomorrow and went to bed early, knowing we could get up at first light and move out of Frankfurt toward a much better place.
No comments:
Post a Comment