Day 6 - Frankfurt am Main

 Another busy day! We got up and took the train from Mainz to Frankfurt (about 30 mins). My mom got up earlier and got us a bag of pastries to share for breakfast. :) We dropped our luggage off and walked along the Main River. Frankfurt's full name is "Frankfurt am Main" (lots of German towns add the river they're on to their name). It's a little bit of big-city shock after being on the quiet Rhine valley for a few days. Mainz was a bigger city, but Frankfurt is huge. So it's louder and dirtier, and not as scenic. We walked along the river, through Alt Sachsenhausen, and then took a bus to this bookstore my mom wanted to visit. Then we went to the main square of town, with the Römer, the city hall, and the half-timbered houses. We sat on a bench on the main square for a while, and watched a wedding celebration outside of city hall.

Frankfurt was badly destroyed during the war, so whatever looks old was rebuilt to look old, and a lot of it is modern, or post-WWII modern (ie not that beautiful). We met a friend of mine for lunch, who took us to a place with some Frankfurt specialities. Mom and mormor had Schupfnudeln and Michael and I had Grie Soß with eggs and fried potatoes (picture below). We kept chatting for a while and mom and mormor went through an art exhibit of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. In the evening we went to the Opera to see the Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute).

 On this one bridge across the Main River there were all these padlocks, a tradition of "love locks", couples have their names inscribed on padlocks and put them on bridges. I don't really know anything about the tradition, but I've seen it in Berlin, too, but not like in Frankfurt!

Frankfurt am Main is sometimes called "Main-hattan" because of its skyscrapers

Alt Sachsenhausen

taking the tram

children's bookstore we went to

Grie Soß, or "grüne Soße", a Frankfurt specialty, fresh herb sauce with eggs, potatoes

The Occupy movement in Frankfurt, still camped out in front of the banking district

For our last night, we went to the Frankfurt Opera to see Mozart's Zauberflöte, in the original German... I think we all really enjoyed the performance, and it was a nice relaxing thing to do at the end of a busy week!

Oper Frankfurt