The Jetpacker

We originally had plans to start early and explore as much of Frankfurt as we could in one day.  That didn’t happen.

Because of yesterday’s canceled flight, we didn’t even get to the hotel until the afternoon.  Okay, I can’t blame the delay entirely on the canceled flight.  Some of it was my fault too.

I told Jackie we could save money by foregoing the taxi from the airport in favor of public transportation, then taking a short taxi ride from the central train station to our hotel which was only a few blocks away.

In the end we did wind up saving money… a measly €5.

What we didn’t save was time.

We had to wait in line to buy tickets for the subway.  Then we had to wait 12 minutes for the train to arrive.  Then it took about 15 minutes to get to the central train station.  Then the escalator to the main level was broken, so we had to lug our 50-pound bags up two flights of stairs.  Then we had to trek across the train station to the taxi queue.  Then the taxi ride wound up taking longer than expected because Frankfurt is a city of one-way streets.

By the time we got to the hotel, men in suits and ties were returning to work from their lunch break.  We didn’t have time to get our bearings, we just had to go.  So we dumped our bags in our room, grabbed a map and asked the concierge for directions to Frankfurt’s historic Old Town quarter.

Things didn’t get any easier from there.

We hopped on tram 17 expecting to be transported to a time capsule of 15th century Germany in less than ten minutes.

It took us five minutes to realize we were going the wrong way.

So we got off the tram and waited for the next one going the opposite direction.  It didn’t arrive for about ten minutes.

And when it did, it was standing room only.

When the tram stopped somewhere near the central train station, everybody got off but us.  Then the tram made a U-turn and stopped.

And stayed stopped.

For a looooooong time.

The driver wasn’t stuck at a light.  He wasn’t waiting for another tram to move.  He wasn’t waiting for people to board.

He was waiting for us to get off.  We were stopped at the end of the line.

Occasionally the driver would look at us in the mirror and open the doors to give us a hint.  But we didn’t know exactly where we were; so we stayed on the tram hoping it would get moving again.

After a ten minute wait the tram began its route.  Eventually we got off at the tram station where this foray into embarrassment began.

Clearly tram 17 didn’t take us where we needed to go even though that’s what the concierge wrote on our map… or so we thought.

He wrote ELEVEN.  Not SEVENTEEN.

But seriously, it looked like 17 to us (and it still does!).   Take a look and tell me that doesn’t look like 17…

Those two numbers look completely different, don’t they?  I’ll just assume you said “yeah” so we feel less stupid.

As soon as we figured out we had to take tram 11 instead of 17, the correct tram was pulling into the station.  A few stops later, we were finally where we wanted to be.

But if you thought this was the turning point where things got easier, you’d be wrong (though we appreciate your optimism).

We got off the tram at Romerberg, the main square in Alstadt, hoping to warm up with some hot wine in the Christmas market.

It wasn’t there.

The market was being disassembled and packed into trucks.  We tried to walk through the square to see the Fountain of Justice and the Ostzeile, a row of reconstructed 15th century half-timber houses, but cranes were swinging over our heads, trucks were backing up without warning, crews were carrying planks of wood and guys were dumping water on the icy ground.  So we got out of the way pretty quickly.

Our plan was to visit the Historisches Museum, the Saint Bartholomeus Dom and the nearby Museum of Modern Art before they closed.

Problem was… they already were.

Apparently the eve of Christmas Eve is a holiday in Germany, so everything had already closed by the time we arrived in the city.

With the way things were going by that point, we thought we’d be returning to the hotel to eat chips and split a Toblerone for dinner.  Luckily, we spotted an eatery across the street that was still open.

The menu at Cafe Liebfrauenberg was hard to decipher; German and English words were used in the same sentence, so we were only able to piece together the descriptions of the dishes.  One of the only German words I recognized was “wienerschnitzel” and I know what that word means back in America: tasty heartburn.

I assumed I didn’t order a chili-cheese dog, but I expected some kind of sausage.  I got a fried piece of pork instead.  But the tasty heartburn description still fit.  Jackie got the chicken schnitzel.

To wash it down, we ordered a glass of apple wine, a drink specific to Frankfurt.  The Germans call it apfelwein or ebbelwoi, but it tastes like alcoholic apple juice to me.  Too bad they don’t make it anywhere else because it’s surprisingly enjoyable.

The thing we noticed when the bill arrived… Germans write 7′s with a cross through ‘em.  I guess that’s how they differentiate 7′s with the 1′s that look like 7′s.  We just wish we had known that before we took the wrong tram.

When we left the restaurant, we saw a group of people swarming one of the few places that actually remained open: the Kleinmarkthalle.

The market hall is a covered building featuring food stalls of all varieties: produce, candy, even sushi.  Had we not already eaten, I probably would have joined the lengthy line of people waiting for hot sausage at one of the many sausage stands.

What struck us was that the sausage was served to customers without a bun or a plate or even a fork.  It was wrapped in a napkin.  There was a condiment area featuring mustard and what looked like horseradish, but most people just ate the sausage as it was.

After drooling over fresh fruits and artisan candies — the dates rolled in honey and crusted pistachios looked especially inviting, but not for 4 euro each — the streets turned quiet and we returned to our hotel.

It’s a shame we didn’t have more time in Frankfurt.

There are a ton of museums like the world-class Stadel Museum, the German Film Museum and the sculpture museum; historical sites like Romerberg; a tram that tours the city and serves guests applewine (the Ebbelwei Express); a restaurant and viewing platform at the top of one of the city’s tallest buildings (Main Tower); a museum designed to simulate blindness (the Dialogue Museum)… the list goes on.

But we overlooked Frankfurt for the same reason that many Germans ignore Frankfurt — the city is widely regarded as the gateway to Germany, a financial center with nothing to offer tourists.

Clearly, that’s incorrect.  There’s actually a lot to see… when it’s open.