Museumsuferfest in Frankfurt

Yesterday, we had another Fulbright group excursion. Nora organized a trip to Frankfurt for us. It included a two-hour walking tour of Frankfurt and then a free afternoon to visit museums, walk around the city, or just sit and drink on the banks of the Main River.

The trip to Frankfurt from Marburg takes about an hour and a half by train or by bus. Aside from the flight changes I've made in Frankfurt's international airport, the last (and first) time I was actually in Frankfurt was in September 2007 with my dad. Since we had walked around and explored the city already, I wasn't entirely enthusiastic about going on a city tour, but it's always nice to refresh on a few facts here and there.

This weekend also happened to be Museumsuferfest in Frankfurt, which basically means you pay 4€ for a museum button, and you can get into any of the dozen or so participating museums with no extra charge. Pretty dang good deal, but I'm not a huge museum person. Normally, I blaze through a museum and take pictures of the pieces of art I recognize from AP Art History. I figured I'd just go see a museum or two after the tour and then go perch myself on a bench to enjoy some good German beer and bratwursts.

Our tour started off in Römerberg, which means “Roman Mountain,” but it's really just an incline. The tour guide called it a hill, but that seemed a bit too exaggerated to me. The spot was important in earlier centuries though because it was close to the river for trading, etc., but also high enough that flooding wouldn't reach it.

We didn't really walk all that far from the square during our two-hour tour. One of the main attractions is the Church of St. Bartholomew.

After two hours, the tour was finally over, and James, Dylan, Nick, and I decided to go explore the Goethe House, where Goethe was born.

I should mention too that the majority of the buildings in Frankfurt were destroyed by fire after heavy bombing during World War II. Almost all of them had been built with wood, so fire spread quickly. People were able to escape mainly because there was a secret cellar passage way/network that led to a house close to the Main River. The Goethe House was likewise destroyed, except for the first four steps of the staircase, a water pump in the kitchen, and a puppet theatre in one of the bedrooms. Everything else was reconstructed based on the original details of the house.

The house had four stories and a garden. Connected to the house is the Goethe Museum, but it's closed until the end of the year. The rooms were all filled with old furniture and what seemed like replicas of famous paintings. I recognized a number from AP Art History, but I blanked on all the artists' names.

The rooms were all elegant looking and made you feel like they were getting ready for tea or something.

There were also a number of mirrors in the room. We messed around with pictures in the mirror.

I think the room I was most excited about was the one with all the old books. I felt like a kid in a candy shop being around all those books, so naturally I had to take a picture.

Here's that puppet theatre too. It was a bit plainer than I had though. But then again, it was the mid-18th century.

There's actually a new German movie coming out called “Goethe.” I was thinking about going to see it, but this silhouette on the door just seemed cool.

On our way out of the Goethe House, I saw a series of sketches of buildings that looked really familiar. I thought I knew what they featured, and sure enough, after reading the title of each drawing, I realized I was right. Want to take a guess where they were from? I think the other two would be dead giveaways, so this one's a bit more challenging.

I would've blogged about them in 2008, but apparently I didn't. So here are two pictures I took in 2008 of the real places in the sketches (although the second one was taken from a different angle than what's portrayed in the sketch at Goethe's House).

Anyway, on our way out of the Goethe House, I stopped to take a picture of the four real steps. Imagine a little Goethe running up and down these steps…well, just these first four.

Our next stop after the Goethe House was the Historiches Museum, which is being partly renovated. Since our Museumsuferfest Button got us in without extra charge, it was fine checking out the photo exhibition. But if I would've had to pay for that, I would have been sorely disappointed.

We only spent about 35-40 minutes in the Historiches Museum before heading toward the film museum. By this time though, the rain started to pour, so we had to walk across the pedestrian bridge through a crowd of puddles, mud, and wet umbrellas.

The south side of the river though was also filled with plenty of food tents. It smelled and felt like a giant carnival. Kettle corn, cotton candy, bratwursts and beer, and a smattering of German being spoken left and right. 'Twas pretty cool. Look at that pot!

Definitely crowded…and wet.

We were saddened to see that the film museum was being renovated, so it was fully closed. So was the architecture museum next door. So instead we headed east along the river and went to the Iconic Museum, which housed a whole bunch of old religious icons. Again, interesting to see, but I wouldn't have paid to go see it on another day.

By this time, my legs were very tired, my ankles sore, and my back starting to ache. Plus my shoes were wet. So we headed back toward Römerberg for dinner and drinks. After scouting out a number of places, we decided on an Italian restaurant. Definitely got ripped off though since we were in the touristy part of town. But my pizza and Coke were delicious.

After dinner, we still had another hour, so we walked back toward the river and joined some of the other Fulbrighters for a beer by the riverside. Perfect end to the day. The sun even came out at that point.

Today is nice though that I can just relax and stay home. Stores are closed on Sundays in Germany, so there's not a whole lot to do. There is a Middle Ages fair going on by the castle, but you have to pay 5€ to get in, and the weather's been fairly gray and overcast. Plus I just don't feel like going out today.

One final note: on Friday, we watched a movie in culture class called Solino. It was pretty good. Not as disturbing as Napola, which we watched last week (it's about a Nazi boxing school during WWII). Solino though was a more heartwarming movie. It was directed by Fatih Akin, who also directed movies such as Im Juli and Gegen die Wand. I mainly liked it though 'cause I thought the guy's Italian lady friend was quite attractive. :P

I actually found the movie fairly easy to understand though; I got about 75% of the dialogue and really only missed certain parts where there was a lot of dialogue really fast. Hard to keep up when you have to pay close attention.

Anyway, time to do more transcriptions of my interviews from Greece. Haven't been able to make as much progress as I'd hoped, but I'm hoping to get a lot of these done today and next weekend. We have this Friday through Monday off so we can go to our host cities to get things all set up. Since I have just about everything set up in Berlin already, I didn't think paying 100€ would be worth going, so I'm staying in Marburg and maybe traveling to Stuttgart for a day or two. Some folks are going as far as Amsterdam or Brussels for the weekend. Regardless, it'll be nice to have a few days off.

Toodles,

Sam