03 Aug 2012:
Frankfurters
Brussels, Brussels-Capital, Belgium/Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany
H: 23/27 L: 13/16 Weather: Partly Cloudy/Clear
Karel, the dude at the Stayhere hostel in Belgium, is the nicest guy ever. Have I mentioned that? He was actually off for a vacation in Italy with his family, starting on the morning of August 3rd. But, before he left, he made sure I knew how to get to the Brussels train station and set me on my way. Hooray for Stayhere!
I made it fine to the train station, in the end. The German train experience absolutely lived up to the hype. The train was clean, spacious, and almost rumble-free. Each seat came equipped with an in-flight magazine, like those on planes, except for being like five times bigger. I couldn't decipher any of it, of course, so it wasn't at all useful to me, but I was still shocked at the size. The worst thing about it was the fact that there were no plugs on the train, which was pretty much the number one way that the British trains were better than their Continental equivalents. If you're going to be as awesome as the German trains were, you should really have places for customers to plug in their electronics!
When I arrived in Frankfurt, I had a place picked right out for lunch. But I decided to be lazy. Rather than, you know, walking to the place, and ordering food, I decided to get lunch from one of the many restaurants scattered around Frankfurt's truly massive train station. And, trying to stick to local delicacies, I decided to get some schnitzel. Oh goodness. This was a good plan. I didn't care that it was clearly crappy generic mystery meat, the German equivalent of getting a McDonald's hamburger. It was still absolutely delicious!
Almost immediately after stepping outside the train station, I nearly had a heart attack. Of joy.
STREET SIGNS.
 |
| I MISSED YOU SO MUCH |
STREET SIGNS STREET SIGNS STREET SIGNS
Gone were the days of roads changing every five seconds without any warning at all. Gone were the days of signs being in tiny font on the top of a single corner on the block without any other hint to where they were. Instead, real, actual, street signs adorned almost every corner. Or, if they weren't right on the corner, they were actually in places where real, actual humans would think to look for the name(s) of the street(s) that one would want to walk down. It felt good.
Empowered by the ability to actually navigate around a city, I made my way to my hostel, which ended up having weird, multicolored, color-changing LED lights all over the lobby. To make matters weirder, even though I had signed up for a four-bed dorm room, said room was only separated by a partial wall from a 10-bed room just next door. Well, nice way to false advertise, hostel. After dumping off my clothes and such at the hostel, I decided to see the city.
Frankfurt isn't a city that has many attractions in it. It's basically a city made for commerce, not for museums or interesting historical sights. That said, I had read online that the German Film Museum was a wonderful museum. I crossed the Main to get there and wandered inside. It turned out that they infamous "they" had not been lying in this case. Artifacts were found all around: old school projectors from the very beginning of cinema, these weird optical illusion things that displayed imagines only when put around pyramidal mirrors. There was even a little theater that showed films from the oldest days of silent movies.
But then, as I was watching one of said movies, I unfortunately noticed a small stream of adults leaving the museum in an apparently orderly manner. It was about 16:00, and I knew the museum closed at an even-numbered time. (Does anyone else have that problem? Whenever I am trying to remember a number, I frequently remember whether it's even or odd but easily mix up near-contiguous numbers that are either even or odd; say, 2/4, or 7/9) Rather than, say, looking at the documentation I had in my hands, or asking someone, I immediately assumed the museum was closing and walked calmly out of the museum. Naturally, on the door outside, I saw the place closed at 18:00. Whoopsies.
Well, so much for that. I wandered up to the "historical section" of town, such as it were. The problem with basically the entirety of Germany is that the historical sections are lies, because the Allies bombed basically everywhere in Germany during World War II. Instead, more precisely, they're models of the original structures that existed in each location. Frankfurt's was kind of charming, I suppose, but it was no Bruges. I did, however, go to the best tourist shop that I saw on the trip (called Kulturothek) that had things with the name of the city I visited but that real people would actually wear. I got my dad a shirt, which led the store owner to unleash a stream of German on me, as, just like everyone on this trip, she assumed I was German by my appearance. As I left, she tried to tell me that I should bring it back if it doesn't fit my dad, then realized she was talking to an American. We just kind of shrugged at each other.
After shopping, I stayed around the trippily-lit hostel a bit to catch up on emails. After a short bit, in walked my friend Martin, also from the political forum I've been a member of since forever. We had decided to meet up for dinner, and so off we went. Martin is an old-school leftist, and much of our ~4km walk to Bornheim was filled with entertaining anecdotes about the rise of gentrification in the city (and, in his eyes, the sad demise of the old working-class neighborhoods of the city). By the time we were at Bornheim, I had worked up quite an appetite. In line with my desires to have local food, I had some sort of pork (I think?) with a green sauce Martin claimed was the local specialty, along with some apfelwein.
Drinking apfelwein in the bierhaus gave me a weird feeling, a sort of odd kinship with the people around me. (...this feeling may or may not have been influenced by the apfelwein) Here I was in Frankfurt, drinking the traditional drink of Frankfurt, eating the traditional food of Frankfurt, while the people all around me were speaking in German. And some of my ancestors—my Y chromosome, even, a thing that helped (just helped, mind! gender isn't genes!) make me a Christopher and not a Christina—came from a town not too far from Frankfurt, a place close enough that for all I knew some of my cousins were sitting somewhere in the restaurant with me, enjoying their evening and drinking their apfelwein and eating their food. It was odd. But kind of great.
Martin was a lot of fun to talk to. We ended up staying fairly late, and tried to take the subway back, but, oops! We were there past when the subway shut down. Instead, we walked the 4km back to my hostel, and I went to sleep. I guess I had forgotten to ask for sheets or something, so I just slept under my comforter.
Empowered by the ability to actually navigate around a city, I made my way to my hostel, which ended up having weird, multicolored, color-changing LED lights all over the lobby. To make matters weirder, even though I had signed up for a four-bed dorm room, said room was only separated by a partial wall from a 10-bed room just next door. Well, nice way to false advertise, hostel. After dumping off my clothes and such at the hostel, I decided to see the city.
Frankfurt isn't a city that has many attractions in it. It's basically a city made for commerce, not for museums or interesting historical sights. That said, I had read online that the German Film Museum was a wonderful museum. I crossed the Main to get there and wandered inside. It turned out that they infamous "they" had not been lying in this case. Artifacts were found all around: old school projectors from the very beginning of cinema, these weird optical illusion things that displayed imagines only when put around pyramidal mirrors. There was even a little theater that showed films from the oldest days of silent movies.
But then, as I was watching one of said movies, I unfortunately noticed a small stream of adults leaving the museum in an apparently orderly manner. It was about 16:00, and I knew the museum closed at an even-numbered time. (Does anyone else have that problem? Whenever I am trying to remember a number, I frequently remember whether it's even or odd but easily mix up near-contiguous numbers that are either even or odd; say, 2/4, or 7/9) Rather than, say, looking at the documentation I had in my hands, or asking someone, I immediately assumed the museum was closing and walked calmly out of the museum. Naturally, on the door outside, I saw the place closed at 18:00. Whoopsies.
Well, so much for that. I wandered up to the "historical section" of town, such as it were. The problem with basically the entirety of Germany is that the historical sections are lies, because the Allies bombed basically everywhere in Germany during World War II. Instead, more precisely, they're models of the original structures that existed in each location. Frankfurt's was kind of charming, I suppose, but it was no Bruges. I did, however, go to the best tourist shop that I saw on the trip (called Kulturothek) that had things with the name of the city I visited but that real people would actually wear. I got my dad a shirt, which led the store owner to unleash a stream of German on me, as, just like everyone on this trip, she assumed I was German by my appearance. As I left, she tried to tell me that I should bring it back if it doesn't fit my dad, then realized she was talking to an American. We just kind of shrugged at each other.
After shopping, I stayed around the trippily-lit hostel a bit to catch up on emails. After a short bit, in walked my friend Martin, also from the political forum I've been a member of since forever. We had decided to meet up for dinner, and so off we went. Martin is an old-school leftist, and much of our ~4km walk to Bornheim was filled with entertaining anecdotes about the rise of gentrification in the city (and, in his eyes, the sad demise of the old working-class neighborhoods of the city). By the time we were at Bornheim, I had worked up quite an appetite. In line with my desires to have local food, I had some sort of pork (I think?) with a green sauce Martin claimed was the local specialty, along with some apfelwein.
Drinking apfelwein in the bierhaus gave me a weird feeling, a sort of odd kinship with the people around me. (...this feeling may or may not have been influenced by the apfelwein) Here I was in Frankfurt, drinking the traditional drink of Frankfurt, eating the traditional food of Frankfurt, while the people all around me were speaking in German. And some of my ancestors—my Y chromosome, even, a thing that helped (just helped, mind! gender isn't genes!) make me a Christopher and not a Christina—came from a town not too far from Frankfurt, a place close enough that for all I knew some of my cousins were sitting somewhere in the restaurant with me, enjoying their evening and drinking their apfelwein and eating their food. It was odd. But kind of great.
Martin was a lot of fun to talk to. We ended up staying fairly late, and tried to take the subway back, but, oops! We were there past when the subway shut down. Instead, we walked the 4km back to my hostel, and I went to sleep. I guess I had forgotten to ask for sheets or something, so I just slept under my comforter.
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