11/7/2006 - Frankfurt Hotel (City West)

The hotel is in an unusual district. The building across the
road is empty on all floors except the ground which has a
few entertainment places. Most of the ground floor
establishments in this block are taken up with bars or
“video centers” which seem to boast 300 different
videos, but I noticed they don’t seem to have the latest
Hollywood movies. There are also quite a few places which
appear to have ladies gymnastics clubs, although I
couldn’t read the signs. It appears that chaps, if they
want to, are allowed to go in and watch, but. I couldn’t
work out why the ladies wear so little. Probably because it
is summer and very hot, I suppose. There is usually a very
friendly guy at the door of these places, I suppose to keep
fellows with low morals out. They are so friendly that I was
almost pushed into the gymnasiums to see the show (on three
separate occasions). The nice man even said that I
wouldn’t have to pay the cover charge. Whatever that is.
Next door to the empty building there is also a place which
has lovely red curtains. At night time they are lit up which
gives the whole front of the building a lovely pink glow.
But it’s a little odd. It is called the “Sex Inn”, I
think that’s German for number 6 and there might be
another five somewhere else. But only blokes seem to go in
there. Probably tired after a days work and need a quick
rest I should think. Even during the middle of the day too.
The fellows seem to walk along in a determined straight line
then at the last minute duck into the doorway. Probably only
deciding they need a rest as they see the door and taking
the opportunity at the last moment. I haven’t seen any
ladies go in though. They probably aren’t allowed, it
would most likely lead to too much boisterousness.
The photo shows my hotel (my room is 5th floor. The leftmost
window at the top). You can also see “Babalu Bar” and
“Star Star”, one of those movie places. Also on the
corner next to “Star Star” is one of those gymnasium
thingies, but it is hard to see in the picture.
I am told by my friend Sabine, that this area is one of the
safest in the whole of Frankfurt due to the high
concentration of police. Isn’t that nice of them to patrol
this area specially :-)

11/7/2006 - Frankfurt Tuesday

Today was a little less hectic. I finally went to the Art museum and saw the display "Die Eroberung Der Strasse" (The Taming of the Street) covering the development of the urban landscape over the last 200 years or so in Paris and Berlin. I found it particularly fascinating as the Paris parts were quite familiar from last year. The displays were a combination of painting by various artists (including Monet) and technical town planning documents.

I later met up with Sabine again as she had promised to take me to the FF university Observatory. Strangely I hadn’t seen it, but walked within 30 metres of it when I visited the natural history museum yesterday. Sabine had choir practice at 1900 so we went swimming at the Brentano Schwimmbads in the afternoon. This is basically a huge open air pool. Maybe 50m wide and 200 long. The shallow end is fenced off for the non swimmers and a sign is mounted on the fence to warn non swimmers not to go any further. However, it was round the wrong way, so it couldn’t be read unless you were on the deep side of the fence, and I would have thought most non swimmers were probably too young to read as well! It was not as crowded as I thought it might be, and that might be due to Germans not normally learning to swim as early as Australians do.

As we left to go to the rehearsal, the clouds were building up after 2 days of clear skies. I am not usually a listener to classical music, but I stopped in at a final rehearsal of the FF Uni Orchestra. On Wednesday (tomorrow night) they are supposed to be performing Mendelssohn’s Symphony 10 (Elisia?) and this was the first time the full choir and instruments had been together. Over the weekend they had been practicing, but as separate groups. Sabine thought it would take 1-2 hours, but in the event it took more than 2 1/2 . Especially toward the end, the conductor was getting quite aggravated with the soloists, the strings and as it ran so long a lot or the choristers would sit down while not required and then pop up again, just to sing! The conductor, a beefy bloke in a black tank top and trousers was very particular about what he wanted. Me being tone deaf couldn’t tell what was wrong.
One of the lady choral soloists who was singing just in front of me was made to go over a part of her piece a number of times and when the conductor was finally satisfied she gave me a look that said she didn’t know either. I think she half expected to be called back as she walked away. As the practice was drawing to a close, there was a bit of lightening anf thunder. I could tell the storm was getting closer. Just when we wanted to go to the cars, the rain came down. There wouldn’t be much hope of astronomy tonight.

We went off for tea in the hope that it would clear and went to the observatory, where I took some, not very good, night shots of FF skyline.

11/7/2006 - FF

I spent yesterday (Monday) trying to get around to museums and places of interest, but sadly most places are closed on Mondays.

However, I went to Goethe's house (but he wasn't in).

Soccer is dying down over here, but even yesterday morning there were people wandering the streets shouting "italia", I even got a picture of the rubbish bin men with an Italian flag on their truck.

I spent a lot of yesterday on my feet, I woke up at 0400 (still on Australian time!) and went to try to organise a car to drive to France (that will be 480 Euro, I think I might be on the train instead!)

I bought a day pass for the public transport and then went to a part of FF called the Roemerberg. I think it had something to do with government (apart from being an old restored area). The Rathaus is there and an old church which was used (I think) for a parliamentary building in the past. There are also a lot of churches there.

The church is Alte Nikolaikirche (old Nicholas' Church), I spent the rest of the day walking around looking for places that might be open and walking along the river
(Main). They had sideshows and a live broadcast of the world cup final by the river, so there was a lot of packing up of tents and stalls and stages etc going on.

Shades of Terry Pratchett Dwarves, I also found a Hammer museum! It was above a shoe shop not far from my hotel.

At 1800 Sabine met me and we went for more walks to the Alte Oper (Old Opera House) through some gardens and to a new skyscraper called the Main Tower (I don't think it is the "most important" tower, I think it is named after the river).

We went for more walks along the river then we went to FF university to see if we could use the observatory. Sabine has the keys but they was no one to ask and we didn't want to use the observatory without permission, so Sabine will ask today. So we might be able to sneak in tonight and use their telescopes!

We went to a little village part of FF called Alt Ginnheim and had tea there. Although it was a German restaurant it only seemed to serve Chekoslovakian or "international" food. So I had a meat patty thing, I can't remember the name of. Because it was so warm we sat in the garden (along with most of the patrons).

It has been 30+ here.

11/7/2006 - Frankfurt More

Weather has been quite good so far, 30-32 degrees which is warm in the sun but where ever there is a breeze it is quite cool. Have been drinking a lot, I was on my feet pretty much non stop for 14 hours yesterday. Was on top of the second tallest building in FF and the local weather man was doing his live broadcast yesterday evening.


Sabine has the keys to the FF uni observatory, hopefully we will be able to sneak in there and mess with their telescopes tonight! Full moon rises at about 2145, and the light pollution is so bad that this is probably the only thing worth viewing although some of the bigger planets may be possible.

10/7/2006 - FF Uni

  

10/7/2006 - Frankfurt Still

Got up pretty early this morning and wandered around the place looking at the rail station for the car hire place. They hadn't opened yet.
Accosted by some people shouting out 'Italia'. Apparently there was a football
match or something last night :)
Saw some fireworks from my hotel window but I was too tired to
go out, still on Australian time a bit.
I will do some museum visiting today and maybe have tea with
Sabine tonight.
Just out interest, my hotel ia a new one near the main
railway station (Hauptbahnhoff) but this whole area was/is notorious as a redlight district. I think those sorts of business are being slowly closed out as the area is getting progressively businessised!

9/7/2006 Arrive in Frankfurt

In FF at an internet cafe now. The hotel I booked because
they said they had wireless internet. Now I find it is
broken, so NBG.

It is quite warm here about 1530 local time and about
midnight Sunday in Australia. I got to the hotel and had a shower
and slept for another hour or so and I feel quite reasonable
now. I got some good sleep on the plane which helped a lot,
normally it is near impossible. The old granny next to me
was from Brisbane on her way to London for a nursing
conference, she was some sort of teacher from a Qld uni.

Resting for the remainder of the day and will look around FF
properly in the next few days. Then off to France, but I will
stay at a couple of places on the way. Most likely Freiberg.

8/7/2006 - Goethes House

13/8/04 Marburg to Frankfurt.

Finally we have to push on to Frankfurt where I have to catch the plane out. Sabine wants to take me to some of the museums, but time has run out. We do have a little time though so she takes me through the city itself rather than on the ring road around it. I get to see (from the car) some of the museums and galleries as well as the Max Plank Institute where Sabine studied previously. Half hearted promises are made to come back so Sabine can show me the sights properly next time.
So we drop the car off at the airport depot and find our way to the correct terminal. I say my goodbyes to Sabine who tells me she will get the bus home. I find out later that she stays and watches the aeroplanes for a while too.
I had repacked my bag so I could get my toiletries out at Tokyo for a clean up. As I go through the metal detector the nice man asks me to discard my best pair of scissors. Doh, I can’t even get them back to Sabine because I am in the secure area now. I suppose someone ended up with them.
While waiting to board I can see the television monitors and the Olympics opening ceremony has begun. I see the Australians marching round the stadium. Just as I am boarding the aircraft I see the German team enter the stadium.
Pushback is at 21:14 local time and it is getting dark because of the clouds and spots of rain. In almost exactly 11 hours I will be touching down in Tokyo.

22/7 (Frankfurt) At airport 08:00

Sabine has picked up Cathy (who just flew in) and me. We drive out of Frankfurt on our way to Poppenhausen and the Wasserkuppe. On the road to Fulda I saw the bare conical mountain that I saw when flying in last night. It looks like a mine tailings or something. Sabine is driving on the wrong side of the road. It all feels really strange.Things are familiar but different. The houses take up a smaller area but are multi stories. This is what is expected, however they aren’t brick veneer and galvanized iron! I don’t know what they are underneath but a large proportion of the house appear to be stuccoed. I saw one house with what looked like horizontal pine planks being resealed. There are lots of wooded areas, more than I had expected to see.

22/7 (Frankfurt) At hotel 05:00

I have been awake since before 04:00. Across the road is a pine forest, which I didn’t expect to see in a major German city. I am a little bit disorientated by this. I am in room 723 so am on the 7th floor. Looking across the road, I am just under the level of the tree tops. It was warm last night before bed time, but it is cool now and “nearly” raining. Although I can’t see any rain falling on the road, I can hear a hissing from the trees. It is probably rain. Maybe it is wind but there is no movement of the trees. The sun isn’t up yet but I can see the glow in the overcast sky. There have been a couple of lightning flashes too. The hotel is an L shaped building and I can see there are a few other lights on in other rooms. While I have been writing my diary notes the rain has started to drizzle.
My final image of Japan are little pink paper notes stuck all over the place. I had seen them when I was walking about in the evening, on the bus to the airport I could see they were even taped to the tallest grass stems. For a country in full summer I was surprised by how green it was with grass and weeds growing out of just about every crack and fissure in the concrete. The rain has stopped now, I can see Oeser Sr. points down to what I think is the Frankfurt CBD.

21/7 (Frankfurt) At hotel. 21:20

Today was only a 21 hour day as I flew from Tokyo to Frankfurt but I have traveled through 24 hours of daylight. When I got to Frankfurt I looked around at the places to stay. At the airport itself it is far too expensive. I finally found the telephone and shuttle bus meeting place where I booked into the Courtyard Marriott in Frankfurt (Frankfurt Messe, Oeser Strasse 180). There was a bit of confusion as I got on the phone directly after a bloke by the name of Quigley, so that’s the name my room was booked in. I rang around and found out Sabine knows there are two (other being Cathy) to pick up tomorrow at the airport.
A long day.