Thursday, April 17

Frankfurt am Main Part 1

I haven't been traveling in the last few months so I decided to write a post about Frankfurt. We live quite near this city, about 15 mins with the train or with the car. It is quite convenient because Germany's biggest airport is in Frankfurt so whenever we fly we just take the S Bahn (train, metro or subway for some which is actually not underground though in some stations only). This is the Römer, one of the famous tourist attractions in the old city in Frankfurt - . It was built in the 14th century. The picture above is the city hall and where the footballers wave to their fans after they have won (and even if only second place) in the World Cup.
A lot of the buildings were damaged during WWII but was rebuilt to its original form.

Frankfurt is famous for a lot of things- Like Goethe, the famous german poet, writer who was born in this city.

Frankfurt is along the Main River which continues to Rhine River , one of the most important rivers in Europe. Back long, long time ago, Frankfurt emerged as a merchant city due to it's location. Folks from all over came here to do their shopping and traders came through the boat/ship selling and buying stuff from all over. Well from then on money still does flow in this city- Frankfurt is the financial capital of Germany and of course a financial centre in Europe. The European Central back is stationed here, the Central Bank of Germany, the Stock Exchange and so many other banks wanting to get their share of the pie too. Some people call the city even Mainhattan - well they hope to be like Manhattan some time later. Well this is an issue - some politicians want Frankfurt to be modern with all that skyscrapers sort of thing. But some are quite against it so whenever you go around here you will see places with Skyscrapers, modern buildings and suddenly you are back in 17th, 18th or 19th century. If you have bad luck then you're back in the 1970's or post WWII buildings. Some are quite an eyesore due to lack of fantasy of the builders.

Here's one of the nice fountains in the old town. And one picture of the old opera house where you can watch concerts, ballets etc. but never an opera. Normal operas are held at the new opera house. This is the only one I got at the moment with my in laws on it.


Well I thought I have a lot of pictures of Frankfurt so I can show you more of it, but it turned out - I don't have any more . I think I took it for granted because I just live here. I shall continue this post next tme so you can see more of Frankuft.


2 comments:

Gattina said...

very interesting for me ! I was born in Frankfurt but in 1943 it was already completely in ruins and I was born in a bunker. I know from my parents that there was almost nothing left of the city. There appartment disappeared too under the bombs. Later I was once at the Römer maybe when I was 10 years old but then too most of the city was still in ruins. Ever since I haven't been there. I only know the city from "Ein Fall für zwei" lol !
Don't forget to tell the Lifecruiser members about your post !!

GingGoy said...

how about frankfurters? european tour, something i wish i could do. quite pricey for me