Well, as many of you know, I am back in Singapore this summer. However, I am not teaching, so I got to take my time getting here. This included a 3 day stopover to visit Sage in NYC, and a 1 day stopover in Frankfurt Germany. This helped break up the 30 hour travel time into much more reasonable 8 hour and 13 hour legs.
Also this is my crazy summer of travel, so stay tuned. I will try to post about all the places I am going, which include Hong Kong, the Philippines, Brussels, Amsterdam, and London.
So, first things first...here are some pics from Frankfurt.
I had a 12 hour layover, and I did a layover tour (http://www.frankfurtonfoot.com/),which I thought was a brilliant idea. They picked me up from the airport, helped me store my luggage, and made sure I could get back to the airport. Jo was my tour guide, and is from the US. She was great and had lots of interesting facts about the sites we see. I would recommend her tours to anyone visiting Frankfurt. Anyways, Frankfurt was pretty easy, there is a train that goes right to the city (takes about 10 minutes).
Okay, some sites:
This is the town square. Many of these buildings are replicas of the originals that were destroyed during the bombings WWII. Amazingly, they are still rebuilding in some places.
For some reason, this is the only picture I snapped outside this beautiful church that survived the bombings relatively intact. It is St Bartholomew, or the Kaiserdom, where coronations for the Holy Roman Empire took place. By the way the story of St. Bartholomew, like many saints, is quite horrific. Apparently he was skinned alive. That is a statue of him holding his skin.
A very beautiful Opera house, Alte Oper, that was almost destroyed during the war, but the citizens paid to restore it.
This is the Holocaust Memorial Wall. It honors the 12,000 Frankfurt Jewish people who lost their lives during the Holocaust. The last picture is the stone memorializing Anne Frank who was originally from Frankfurt. My pictures do not do it justice. It was very moving, and put the shear numbers of people who died somewhat into perspective.
This is the Karmeliter Kloster where rich people would pay to have these wall paintings made to absolve their sins. Gotta love the old Catholic Church. The paintings depict the life of Jesus. This one is of the circumcision.
Random street art with wild flowers. This is my attempt at an "artsy" picture. I like the juxtaposition of natural beauty with the more profane street art (you guys - I might have missed my calling as an art critic - haha!).
They were having a food and drink festival. Lots of bratwursts. They cooked meat on this crazy circular grill (you can just make it out in the background). You know I didn't have any meat, but it was still interesting to see how they grilled it. There were also plenty of veggie options.
The main train station in Frankfurt. It is really quite beautiful.
The Eisener Steg is a pedestrian bridge where lovers place a lock on the bridge and throw the key in the river to symbolize that their love is forever.
This was called "green sauce." Here's a link to the recipe. It was really tasty, and is a Frankfurt special. It was something along the lines of a yogurt sauce with 4 or 5 different herbs mixed in that you eat with boiled potatoes and hard boiled eggs.
This is Apfelwein, or apple wine. It is somewhat like apple cider, but it is not too sweet. I really like it. This one has strawberries in it. Good thirst quencher.
Okay, I've got to work on a research paper now - but I will try to keep up with the blog. If you are hungry for some more Asian adventurers, try my friend Stephanie's blog. It's her first time over here, and she's pretty hilarious (http://stephanieseitz.wordpress.com/).
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