Bea' birthday!!!

Day Three

Bea’s Birthday

Another fine complementary breakfast (hard boiled eggs, cheese, meats, fruit, with excellent coffee, great bread, and delicious European butter) prepared us for a crisp, sunny day. It is a 20 minute walk from the hotel to nearest train station, from which we traveled to the north of the old city…Goethe Platz. Frankfurt is a compact city…we were on new ground, but could see St. Bartholomew’s (in the old section) in the distance.

Our destination: the Goethe Haus, the home of Johann Goethe, Frankfurt’s most famous son. The three-story home is furnished with a combination of family belongings and items from the era. In 1944, just as with the Stadel museum, the valuable items were stored before the Allied bombings. The worst attacks came in March and destroyed most of the old city. The home has been carefully reconstructed and feel amazingly authentic---down to creaky, uneven floors. On one landing stands a tall and wondrous 18th century clock that belonged to a friend of the Goethe family. It is inlaid with multiple woods…multifunctional in that in tells the day, time, phases of the moon, day of the week, astrological signs…with a bear at the bottom that falls over when the clock needs to be rewound. It is easy to imagine young Johann’s fascination with it. The house also contained Goethe’s mother’s porcelain, his father’s art collection and library, an pyramid pinao forte family expense ledgers, and the puppet stage young Johann received when he was four years old. It gave us a glimpse into the life of Frankfurt’s upper class in the late 1700’s.

Time to eat again! Following the advice of Rick Steves, we walked south, crossed the river into Sachehausen (an old friend by now) to Maingau Restaurant, which he described as one of the finest in Frankfurt. The place was empty; lunch was obviously over. But the welcoming Indian maitre’d , after checking with the kitchen, seated us near a sunny window and treated us like visiting royalty. What a birthday feast: delicious tomato soup, roast duck, lamb liver with onions, white fish over a bed of sautéed spinach. With a dry Riesling…perfect!

Frankfurt has an amazing amount of green space. After our latish lunch, we walked the old city walls, now parkway with fountains, bike paths, playgrounds. It is as though the city is surrounded by a Central Park.

When we stumbled on the Old Opera House, photographers were gathering. We asked one about the event (a local film and cinema awards); he volunteered that Germans like Americans and Canadians because of the jobs and prosperity they brought to West Germany after the war. “No one says it outloud,” he admitted, “but we all wish the wall was back and twice as high. We have to pay for everything. I work night and day and never get ahead.” We had no adequate response and wished him well.

More green space, another train ride and walk back to the blog and packing for tomorrow.