Weekend Travels in Frankfurt

8/4-6/4

Friday morning, I rode to the Maastricht train station and boarded a train headed to the Liege station, where I caught a train to Frankfurt. Viv, Nolan, and I were going to do a little reunion in Frankfurt, as it is halfway between Maastricht and Munich (where Nolan is interning). I met up with Nolan and we walked to meet and get the key from Ludwig, a university student who was had kindly agreed to host the three of us on Couchsurfing. Frankfurt (pictured below) is the financial capital of Germany, which made the city look similar to large US cities—skyscrapers, large hotels, and wide streets. 

As Nolan and I walked to the cafe where Ludwig worked, we caught up about school and life, and chatted about whether spending time at museums to look at art that is not accompanied by an explanation of how it is relevant to today’s society is an activities that has a positive impact on society. Most people have not been taught to think critically about art, I am not really an exception, meaning they will have difficulty extracting meaning that matches up with the art’s cultural and historical relevance. Even if some people do have the tools to think critically about art, they may lack the ability to conceive how the art they are considering applies to their life and their society. This is why, as I argued a few posts ago, museum exhibits should discuss both the historical and contemporary relevance, as this would seemingly make the museums more interesting and beneficial for the average person. 

We got to the cafe, which had a great modern, minimalist atmosphere, and I found Ludwig and introduced myself. He insisted on making us coffee and recommended that I try the nitro-coffee (coffee pictured below). While I have had nitro-mate before, this was my first experience with nitro-coffee and I found it to be light, refreshing, and tasty. 

After getting the key, we headed back to the train station to meet up with Viv. Once we all met up, we walked to Ludwig’s apartment to drop some of our belongings off. Then, we ventured into the city. We tried to go to the Palmengarten, a botanical garden that I thought was free, but it needed up costing money, so we decided to come back the next day as we would have only been able to spend 1.5 hrs there. We walked to a beautiful park nearby, found a beautiful tree to sit under, and chatted about school, life, and travels. A few hours later, we walked to find a restaurant and we ended up eating at an Italian food chain, called Vapino’s, which surpassed my low expectations. I guess pasta is pretty difficult to mess up. 

After dinner, I led the way to a great brewery called BrauStil, which had four beers on tap that they brew themselves. It was 3.50 euros for a .3L glass and 4.50 euros for a .7L bottle, so Viv and I got the bottle and we headed back to the same park. The beer was a tasty blonde beer and if I was in Frankfurt a few more days I would have loved to check out the rest of their beers. We chatted in the park for a while and then we headed back to Ludwig’s place. 

In the morning, we headed to the Bauernmarket Konstablerwache, a farmers market that I had scoped out the week before. This was the best famers market I have been to on my trip and quite possibly the best one I have ever attended. The market was full of fresh, fruit, vegetables, bread, pastries, food, apple wine, beer, and wine. I was particularly impressed with the mushrooms and berry selections (a few vendors and the market pictured below), but did not buy any because we were going to be out all day. 

At the market, I had a tasty glass of apple wine, a Frankfurt specialty, for 1.50 euros, an amazing plumb pastry for 1.8 euros, a scrumptious meal of picked veggies and fried potato pancakes topped with ratatouille, apple sauce, and carrots for 4.5 euros, and a cup of amazing elderflower apple wine for 1.50 euros (food and drink pictured below). 

Then, we headed to the Palmengarten and spent the next three hours wandering through the different parts of the large botanical garden (pictures below). 

Afterwards, we walked down to the waterfront and spent some time walking and siting by the “main” canal (views from the canal pictured below). 

We walked to a less touristy part of the city for dinner, and Viv and I ate falafel for dinner and Nolan went somewhere else to eat pasta (lol). I find it impossible to conceive what it would be like to be a picky eater. While I certainly like some foods more than others, there is no reasonable vegan food I can think of that I would refuse to eat. If any reader of this blog (basically my mom and sister) would like to challenge my lack of pickiness, please provide me with something that I should cook or buy and I will make a post about the experience. After we all ate, we strolled along a cool street and then we walked to a kiosk where Viv and I bought apple wine. We sat in a park and chatted some more. As it got dark, people started gathering in the park and a DJ began to play some great deep house music. I found it amazing that people can party in a public park without the police shutting the whole thing down in a few minutes. Viv and I wanted to go dance, but Nolan, who has never danced before (poor guy), was against the idea. We sat there a while longer and then headed back to the apartment. 

In the morning, Nolan and I (Viv already left) went to Zeit fur Brot, a bakery that I thought would be tasty. I had a "schoko-dinkel stange,” which was a chocolate bread/pastry twist (pictured below) and quite possibly the best bread/pasty I have ever had. It was the perfect amount of sweet, sour, oily, and chewy. I had the pumpkin seed loaf for dinner and it was also quite tasty. 

Then, I headed back to Maastricht. 

All in all, a good weekend.