frankfurt: a recap

Everyone treats Frankfurt as a layover. Fly in, fly out, maybe see the inside of the airport pretzel stand. I actually stayed, and I'm here to tell you the airport-city slander is lazy.

$ cat skyline.log

They call it Mainhattan, which is corny but accurate. Frankfurt has the only real skyline in Germany: actual towers, glass and steel clustered along the Main river like somebody spawned a financial district in the middle of Europe and just left it running. Cranes everywhere, and the whole thing lights up at night like a motherboard.

Coming from New York, I did not expect to be impressed by a skyline. I was impressed. Best seat in the house: the Eiserner Steg, an iron pedestrian bridge covered in love locks, towers on one side, old town on the other. Go at golden hour. Thank me later.

$ grep apfelwein food.txt

Apfelwein (ebbelwoi, if you're local) is Frankfurt's official personality: a sour, flat apple wine served in a ribbed glass out of a grey stoneware jug called a bembel. First sip: suspicious. Second sip: okay. Third glass: I get it now, and I will fight anyone who calls it apple juice.

The move is a tavern in Sachsenhausen, just across the river: wooden tables, food that does not care about your arteries. Get the grüne Soße (green sauce: seven herbs, sour cream, eggs; Frankfurt was putting it on everything long before green sauce was trendy) and, if you're brave, Handkäse mit Musik: a sour cheese with onions, "with music" because of what happens later. They named a cheese after that. Incredible.

$ ls -la /old-town

Here's the part nobody expects: Frankfurt's old town is gorgeous, and almost entirely new. The Römerberg got flattened in the war, and instead of leaving a parking lot, the city rebuilt it, timber-framed houses and all, finishing the project just a few years ago. It should feel fake. It doesn't. It feels like a city that refused to let its history stay rubble.

That's the Frankfurt trick: a medieval square, a gothic cathedral, and twenty-first-century banking towers all in the same camera frame. Most cities pick one era. Frankfurt runs them in parallel.

$ echo "verdict"

Frankfurt is underrated because it's honest. It's not selling you Berlin's nightlife or Munich's charm offensive. It's a working city with the best skyline in the country, a river through the middle, and a sour drink it will absolutely make you love. And underrated is a feature: no crowds, no lines, no performance.

Four stars. Would transit through again, on purpose this time.