Frankfurters in Frankfurt

It was an extremely early start to the day, as we had to be up at 5:45am to get to the train station in time for our 7am train to Frankfurt. The streets of Amsterdam were completely deserted apart from a few fellow backpackers, and (typically, after the rain-filled days we had endured) the sun was blaring down on the city-it was so pretty and peaceful, I was feeling quite upset about having to leave! But I've desperately wanted to visit Germany for years (not surprising really, when you consider the endless hours I've spent studying the place!) so just kept thinking of that as the express train pulled out of Amsterdam station. There was a group of Spanish teenagers on the train for the first couple of hours who all really, really reminded me of random people that I've known in the past, so that kind of freaked me out a bit-I have to admit, I was very glad when they got off, cos they were people I really didn't want reminding of! Other than that though it was a pretty comfortable journey, if absolutely freezing (damn the air-conditioning on these fancy machines!) and the four hours went quite quickly as I whiled the time away with my ipod and Phantom Hourglass on the DS.

We got into Frankfurt at 11am and went straight to the hotel which was just a couple of minutes from the station. We weren't able to check in straightaway without paying 20 Euros for an upgrade so we dumped our bags there and headed out to find some food and see some of the city. The area we were staying in was quite clearly the Red Light District which kept us distracted for a while as we wandered around picking out rather obvious-looking prostitutes on the street and laughing at the porn shops. Because it was still quite a big shopping street (and kids were walking past with their parents) it felt a lot more innocent somehow than its Amsterdam counterpart, and so it was with a state of bemusement that we walked around rather than the total freaked-out-ness that we felt there! Anyway, we got bored of that fairly quickly, and were also absolutely starving, so we wandered up towards the Zeil to find somewhere to eat. I was in a fussy mood (and also feeling a bit incredulous after finding out that German Pizza Hut Express only sells by the slice rather than the awesome individual pizzas we get in the UK) so John ended up practically forcing me into a Subway in order to stop himself slapping me lol...I can get rather annoying when I'm in one of those indecisive moods! The weather was boiling hot, so we sat out in the sun and ate our sandwiches while getting harrassed by a crazy tramp with a wooden leg and staring out a Manchester United fan who, judging by the looks he himself was giving us, seemed to find John's NUFC shirt offensive for some reason. Hmmmm.

In our general wanderings in search of food, we'd ended up close to the Romersberg so we headed over there after lunch for a quick look around the square (being distracted for a while by some cool street performers) before going back to the Zeil. I'd read that you could go up to the terrace in the Zeil shopping centre for free views of the city, so that's what we decided to do...however, the guidebook clearly wasn't all that helpful, because it failed to mention that there was an awesome food court up there with all sorts of delicious food, including fresh strawberries and cream! Soooooooooooo much nicer than Subway *sigh* Still, the views of the city were really, really good-John couldn't quite believe that they were free and kept wondering if he should buy a bottle of water just so it looked like we were paying customers and were therefore entitled to the view lol. After staying up there for a while and making sure we'd seen every available angle, we walked to the Bourse stock exchange building and then down the exceedingly fancy Goethe-strasse, which is sort of like Frankfurt's answer to Rodeo Drive except more lavish and snobby! Honestly, John and I felt like we totally letting the side down amongst all the designer clothes and McDreamy-alikes walking down the street (especially when you bear in mind that we'd been up since five, travelled to another country and still hadn't had a shower or change of clothes at this point!)! It was a lovely street though...I'll be heading back there when we get rich! We finally ended up at the beautiful Alte Oper and had a break sitting next to the fountain (leading to an excellent moment when the wind changed and John ran away squealing as the fountain water splashed him a little bit!) before walking through the financial district (very big and dramatic looking) back to the hotel.

After spending an hour or so at the hotel freshening up and watching MTV (some show about an irritating Italian guy looking for 'true love'-I guess it was this quest of true love which made him score with every girl in sight), we went back to the train station with the plan to catch the S-Bahn to the nearby town of Hocht. However, the Frankfurt S-Bahn machines may be the most confusing things in existence and we just could not figure out how to buy our tickets...there were two Hocht stations on the list, and tickets to one cost 2 Euros while the other was 9 Euros, and we just didn't have a clue which one we wanted, why there was such a difference in price or why there were two Hochts in the first bloody place! So, not wishing to get into an argument with a German ticket inspector, when we inevitably flashed the wrong ticket, we gave up and headed back into Frankfurt city centre. With the extra time we'd gained, we decided to do a boat tour of the River Main...and what a bad idea that turned out to be. Now admittedly, before we bought the tour tickets, we wondered how it would possibly be worth it when we really couldn't see a whole lot that might be worth seeing on the riverside. But we figured that there must be SOMETHING to see for the tour to exist, and it was probably just a bit further down from the city centre. Twenty minutes later, when we were touring a building site and having big piles of sand (seriously) described to us over the speakers, we realised our first instinct had been correct. It was shockingly bad lol, but we did at least get a few good shots of the city skyline on the way back so it wasn't a total waste!

When we got off the boat, the day just seemed to get worse. We walked over the bridge to Sachsenhausen on the hunt for a good ebbelwei tavern where John could get his hands on frankfurters for tea (my boy loves his sausages!) but ended up getting hopelessly lost and completely off the beaten track. On spotting the golden arches of Maccy D's, we thought we were saved (it's a tried and tested rule that in every major city, where there is McDonalds, you will find tourists) but even that didn't work, as they were at a random train station (sadly for us, the exception to that rule is the McDonalds that can often be found at transport hubs) that I couldn't find on my map. We ended up walking around random neighbourhoods for about an hour until we eventually found ourselves on one of the main streets...and wouldn't you just know it, we couldn't find anywhere good to eat! Grrrr. We looked around for a bit (passing by a lot of stylish looking bars interspersed with old-fashioned hat shops and hairdressers, which was a bit strange) and then eventually decided to head back over the river to see if we could find anything around the Romersberg. And on the way back, it started to rain and an evil kid punched me in the boob (for no reason-we were just walking past him, and he gave me an evil look and then punched me). It's fair to say, Frankfurt was not proving to be our favourite city of the trip at this point.

Things did pick up though when we returned to the Romersberg (which is a very pretty area) and ended up at a touristy place which served huge glasses of Ebbelwei AND frankfurters for John. Hoorah! I ended up trying sauerkraut, which I didn't enjoy at all and ended up palming off into John who enjoyed it immensely until I explained to him that he was eating pickled cabbage lol. Considering I never drink, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the giant glass of wine only made me very slightly tipsy although as I was still feeling quite distressed at the boob-punching incident, getting drunk might not have been a bad idea at that point lol. We really wanted some apple strudel for dessert but had the absolute worst waiter in the world who was insanely slow and to be honest, didn't seem to like us all that much, so in the end we gave up and just got some delicious chocolate and strawberry ice cream from a little stall instead :o) Darkness was starting to fall by now, so we decided it was time to head back to the hotel ready for another early train the next morning.

Frankfurt wasn't our favourite city of the holiday-that's not to say it wasn't a nice place, but it just didn't have anything that really held our interest. It was a decent city with a lot of shops and the occasional pretty building but we weren't particularly upset that we only had one day there and we felt we'd seen everything we really wanted to see by the time we went to bed that night. I wouldn't say no to going back again at some point though...as long as I don't see that stupid punch-happy kid again!

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