Frankfurt with a Side Order of Heidelberg and a bit of Rhine

I decided to pop over to Frankfurt, Germany, for a week right after I finished volunteering at the World Junior Hockey tournament in early January to visit Marie (my wife) and to see what Frankfurt is like.

Winter travel is always challenging with bulky coats, boots and other paraphernalia that one has to wear, but these inconveniences pale to the power of Mother Nature. The weather is the biggest factor in Canada and other northern countries subject to snow, blizzards and freezing rain. So of course the night before I was to leave, the Weather Network was displaying a red severe snow and winter storm warning for eastern Ontario with up to 15 centimetres of snow forecast for Ottawa on my departure date. But as weather forecasting is usually only 60% accurate, I hoped for better conditions on the day I was to leave.

I woke up the morning of my flight and rechecked the forecast before even getting out of bed. I was right, the forecast the evening before was wrong. The snowfall warning had changed - to 30 centimetres of snow, heavy at times for Ottawa, with snow and freezing rain for Toronto which I had to go through. So I immediately called the airline and changed my flight to Toronto from 6 p.m. to 1 p.m., figuring that if I could get there, I would have no problem getting the flight to Frankfurt scheduled for 10 p.m. I could always sit in the lounge in Toronto and drink Air Canada’s booze and eat their food while I waited, rather than be stranded in Ottawa.
Now it was time to finish packing, eat a leisurely breakfast and do last minute chores before leaving for the airport. Imagine my surprise (no, not really, as sometimes I think my last name changes to Murphy when I travel) when the thermostat indicated 16 degrees inside the house. I checked to see if the furnace was working – and of course it was not. It is a new furnace, just three months old. I reset it, and it started up so I went to cook a hearty breakfast. I checked the thermostat a few minutes later, and it had dropped a degree. The furnace was off again. It would not restart so now the panic set in as I was supposed to leave in a couple of hours, it was snowing heavily and my furnace was dead.

Just then, my daughter Kerri called to ask me if I knew a different route from Stittsville for her sister to take to get Kerri to work on time. With the transit strike and the deteriorating weather, they were stuck on the Queensway. I suggested Hunt Club Road, and mentioned my furnace problems. Heather immediately volunteered to come to over and wait for the furnace repair man who had said he could be there between noon and 5 p.m. I turned on the space heater in the TV room in the basement so she would be warm as the temperature was still falling in the rest of the house. She arrived with her kids at 10 a.m. and I left the house in her hands at 10:45 a.m.

The normal 25 minute drive to the airport took almost an hour. I checked in and was assured the 1 p.m. flight to Toronto was on time, so I went to the lounge to relax. We boarded the aircraft at 1:30 p.m. as it was late arriving from somewhere because of the storm, then went through de-icing and finally took off for Toronto at 2:30 p.m. Not bad, considering the circumstances. After arriving in Toronto (the storm had passed the Big Smoke by now), I went to the lounge to wait the 5 hours before the Frankfurt flight. Heather called to let me know that the furnace repair man found something loose in the furnace and the house was now a balmy 22 degrees. When it came time to go to the gate, I heard my name called and realized I had lucked-in to an upgrade to business class, probably because other people had been weather delayed, so things were finally looking up. Or so I thought.

We waited at the gate and the departure time came and went. Finally, the gate attendant announced that the crew had been delayed on their way from Montreal (I guess Toronto crews do not know how to fly to Frankfurt) because of the storm, but that they would be boarding momentarily. Thirty minutes (momentarily in airline speak) later, we boarded. The captain announced that he was sorry they were late, but that we would be underway in about 15 minutes. Twenty minutes later, he came back on to announce that all the baggage had not yet been loaded (surprising since the aircraft had been sitting there for a few hours and no other people had boarded), but that they were now loading it and we would be leaving in ten minutes. And in ten minutes we did, right over to the de-icing area where we lined up. An hour later, we were de-iced and finally on our way.

Business Class sure has got better in one respect – the large seats now form lay flat beds at the push of a button. This makes up for the food that has unfortunately gotten worse since I last flew business class on Air Canada a couple of years ago. It was around 2 a.m. Toronto time that I finally pushed the lay flat button and tried to get some sleep. The crossing over the Atlantic was rough as the pilot tried to make up time and flew through storms instead of around them, but I managed to get 3 hours sleep. We arrived in Frankfurt only an hour and one half late, and as I was the second one off the plane, I quickly made my way through passport control to the baggage area to get my bags. We waited about forty minutes before the carrousel started up and bags started to come out. All four of them. All of them carry-on sized. Twenty minutes later an announcement was made in German and I could see by the faces of the German speakers who were on the flight that the news was not good. Five minutes later, an English announcement by a different person had the rest of us looking like our German colleagues. Apparently the baggage door on the aircraft had frozen shut and could not be opened I have never heard of that before - airliners routinely fly at altitude where the temperatures are minus 50. So we would have to wait. Which we did. For two hours. So now, being almost four hours late, I decided to grab a cab to the hotel Marie was booked into instead of taking the subway since it was now close to the late afternoon rush hour.

As I emerged from the baggage area in a rather foul mood, another surprise awaited me. Someone grabbed my hand from behind and when I turned round to tell them something not too polite, there stood Marie who had been waiting at the airport for me. What a great welcome to Germany. She drove us back to the hotel, I got cleaned up, we went out and had a typical German meal of schnitzel, potatoes, and beer, and then I packed it in, tired but finally in Frankfurt.

On Friday the day after arriving, we moved hotels to one downtown. We checked in and Marie left for work. I set out on my first foray into central Frankfurt. But I did not go far. It was really cold, about ten degrees below normal. Compared to Canada, minus 10 is not too cold for January, but it is too cold to have a digital camera exposed to the elements for any length of time. And it is not a great temperature to be touring unless one is using a dog sled. I did manage to go by the Dom (the cathedral) but not in since it was closed and to the area called Römer (so named because it is the site of a Roman settlement when Rome was in its imperial glory). I stopped at a small grocery store on the way back and bought six half litre bottles of beer (for about $3 Cnd – gotta love the Germans for keeping beer prices low). I spent the afternoon napping to get over the jet lag (and I also had to sample some of the beer).

One thing about Frankfurt; because it is the financial capital of Germany, many foreign businesspeople visit the city and all restaurants have English menus and most service people speak English in case your Deutsch is not up to snuff. And the variety of cuisines is also extensive. We ate Thai, Indian, Russian, Italian, Chinese and of course German food during the week I visited.

A note on what you see in the photos of the city of Frankfurt. Almost every building in Frankfurt was completely destroyed during the Second World War. Original plans were used to reconstruct many of the “old” buildings to make them look old, but for the most part, most apartments and houses in the centre of the city are 1950s and 1960s designs. Modern skyscrapers are concentrated in the financial area.

Saturday, my third day in Frankfurt, was a beautiful winter day, albeit still cold for Germany. We decided to take a drive up and down the middle Rhine. The Rhine is about a thirty minute drive from downtown Frankfurt (which is on the Main River – thus Frankfurt am Main). We turned off the autobahn at the town of Bingen and headed down river on the left bank of the Rhine through the area called the Rhine Gorge. In the 50 kilometres between Bingen and Koblenz, and then the 50 kilometres on the right bank back to Wiesbaden, we passed no less than 40 restored medieval castles. Several more ruins of castles also exist on this stretch of the river. This is probably the highest concentration of castles in the world. This part of the river is also a World UNESCO designated area because of the number of castles, a couple of medieval walled towns and the odd monastery.

Marie, who was driving, stopped several times so I could take pictures of the castles. After travelling with me for over 35 years, she senses when I want to take a picture. The castles were spectacular, but the famous river, the seemingly endless line of ships going up and down the river, and the trains passing by on each side of the river every ten minutes or so, was equally photogenic.

This area also has lots of vineyards. Some are open even in the winter, but of course the best time to taste the wine is in the early fall. I recall my first ever trip to Europe in 1973. I learned to like wine as we travelled up the Rhine River through Germany and stopped in several towns for the Wine Festivals.

Several of the castles had fallen into disrepair; however, many of them had been restored and in the summer, are open to the public. Only one on our tour was open in the winter, but we did not have enough time to visit and according to the literature I read about it, the tour was only given in German. This picture is of that castle, called the Mouse (der Maus) because it was across a small stream from another castle that is much bigger, called what else but the Katz (cat).

If you ever are in this area and want to see the castles and towns, I suspect it would take three days minimum to do it justice. Unless it is cold and most of the castles and museums are closed as they were on the day we were there.

On Sunday, we decided to drive the hour south to Heidelberg. The autobahns in Germany have no speed limit for the most part, although around major built up areas, the speed is usually 110 kph. Germans do not drive as fast as Italians. Germans tend to keep it under 150 kph. And Germans do pay attention to the rules of the road, so driving there is not as harrowing as in Italy.

Heidelberg is a university city. This was the second time I had been there, the first going back to my 1973 Europe trip. Back then, the guy we were travelling with almost ran over a couple and their baby carriage as we entered town. When I got out of the car to apologize (being the only one who could speak a few words of German), I noted that the baby had on a Montreal Canadiens sweater. We found out that the couple were medical professors who had taught at McGill. When they learned we were Canadians, they invited us to their house for dinner and spent two days showing us around Heidelberg.

Hoping to repeat this episode, I kept looking for another couple and a baby carriage, but to no avail, so we drove into the Alte Stadt and parked near the castle. We walked up the 325 steps (all numbered to let you know how far you are away from the top as you gasp for air) to the castle for magnificent views of the city and river below. The castle itself may not be worth visiting; I vaguely recall there was not much to the inside the last time I was there, and Marie had no interest in visiting another ‘pile of stones’ so we just walked around the grounds before we took a path back down to the old part of the city below. Despite the cold, several people were milling about in the pedestrian friendly streets around the church and Rathaus (city hall) and square. We stopped at a Gasthaus (tavern-inn) and had a typical German lunch of bratwurst (sausages), sempf (mustard), boiled kartoffeln (potatoes) and sauerkraut (sauerkraut). Oh, and of course, bier (beer). It warmed us up and we went back outside to wander down by the Neckar river and the Alte Brucke (old bridge). This bridge used to be the way into town from the road that wandered along the opposite shore. Modern Heidelberg, including the industrial area, is now mostly found on the “opposite shore” further down river.

The next day, Marie drove off to work (we passed Darmstadt, the town where HerbalLife is located, on the way to and from Heidelberg) and I headed out to see a bit more of Frankfurt. It was still pretty cold and it was interesting to see the Frankfurtians (Frankfurters?!) all wearing toques. Looked like Canada twenty years ago. I even looked for one to buy, but to no avail since the people of Frankfurt had obviously cornered the market. I walked by the Alte Oper (‘old’ Opera House, only 100 years old and rebuilt extensively after the war). I wonder what the good people of Frankfurt one hundred years ago would have thought of the opera playing there today - would it be "beautiful and good" as the message over the front reads? I cut through the old square where the most exclusive shopping is to be had, then looked up Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s house (he was not home). Goethe was quite a guy and wore many hats (not sure about a toque though); he was a poet, a dramatist (Faust), a scientist, a philosopher and a politician.

The next day was my birthday so before going to work, Marie presented me with a talking card and a Mr. Potato Head dressed as an Ottawa Senator (appropriate for this year’s team). Today was warmer, so I did a birthday type thing and walked over to the Frankfurt Zoo. The zoo, while small in area, is pretty good with several species of animals, insects, birds and fish. The Nocturnal displays are particularly good in my view. There was enough English on the signs describing what one was looking at, as well as the Latin name and of course, the German name. I spent much of the day there with my animal buddies. We capped the day off with an excellent Italian dinner. The restaurant had the biggest wheel of parmesan cheese I had ever seen. It was semi hollowed out and much of the pasta was dumped into it to be coated (a layer was taken out each time to keep it clean) before it was served.

On the last full day in Frankfurt, I did as much touring as I could. The weather was a mix of rain and snow so not the greatest for photography, but one has to adapt to the environment when travelling and time is a limiting factor. I toured the Dom (Cathedral) that partly survived the war and was rebuilt. Although not that large, it was the major ‘seat’ of power during the Holy Roman Empire, with Emperors being elected there starting in the 14 century.

I walked across the River Main into the old neighbourhood called Saschenhausen which partly survived the war. Many of Frankfurt’s museums are located here as well as a pedestrian district that equates to the Byward Market in Ottawa replete with pubs and restaurants. The pubs and restaurants do not open until late afternoon, but stay open until 4 or 5 in the morning. Apparently Frankenstein has visited according to the street I was on; maybe he looks like he does after a night of binging.

Upon crossing the river back into Frankfurt proper, I noted that some of the streets were barricaded and there appeared to be an inordinate number of police cars about. But everything was quiet, so I walked down to the financial district, passing a couple of old churches and buildings along the way. The Headquarters for the European Central Bank is in Frankfurt, and I think it is poetic justice in this significant market recession that the Bank appeared to be having a fire sale while I was there.

I walked through the Markthalle (like the Byward Market, but covered) on the way back, marvelling at all the cheeses, sausages, and other German products that we do not see in Canada. This only made me hungry, so I waited with a growling stomach for Marie to return from work. She had said she would be late tonight – around 7:30 p.m. Was she ever wrong! Around 6 p.m. I started to hear lots of police sirens and noticed out the window that caravans of police cars and vans were cruising to and fro on the streets across the park from the hotel. At around 8 p.m., the police started to go by the front of the hotel (Marie still had not arrived back), so I went down to the lobby to see what was going on. I arrived just in time to see several armed police walking along the sidewalks, shortly followed by hundreds of protesters (no idea what they were protesting – they were not carrying many signs). The protesters in turn were followed by at least 30 police cars and vans. The whole parade was moving very slowly, and since they were going down the only route Marie could take to get back to the hotel, I figured she was stuck somewhere. Which indeed was the case. I went back upstairs and made myself a sandwich and waited for her to arrive, which she did close to 10 p.m. after begging a police man to drive her car the 100 metres from where the street in front of the hotel had been closed.

So ended my trip to Frankfurt. To be frank (sorry about that), I would not recommend Frankfurt on a tourist itinerary since there is very little to see there. My advice would be to get out of the airport and head for the Rhine where there are many more things to do, see and enjoy. If however you are there because of the fact that it is the financial capital of Germany, then perhaps you might want to visit the Dom, some of the museums, go over to Saschenhausen for dinner and drinks, or maybe even join a protest.