Frankfurt

(ed. note: I wrote this few days ago but I have not been able to get blogger to work for the last couple days. I had a crappy internet connection in Milan.)

From Paris, I headed to a friendly face and a great city. I headed to Frankfurt, Germany to stay with Tomas Herzberger. You might remember him from such places as the Digital Storytelling program in fall semester. Tomas showed me around his truly wonderful city.

I must say going in I was picturing Germany, especially Frankfurt, as very grey and bland. Really solid, functional architecture and just a very plain city. What I found was a relatively new city with an interesting mix of both exciting, progressive architecture and old city feel. Frankfurt is obviously much newer than most European cities. Most of it was destroyed during the war.

Anyway, Tomas was a fabulous tour guide. As soon as I met up with him at Frankfurt Main train station, we went out to the Frankfurt football field for the public viewing of the Germany-Italy world cup match. About 35,000 fans showed up to watch the match on big screen TV's in the center of the empty field. It was very interesting to me, an American football fan, to see just how big this is. Ohio State football has a pretty big following, but this is a whole country getting together to cheer on one team. It was great until the 118th minute when Italy scored the first of two goals in overtime to win and advance to the final. That was very disappointing.

Through out the next couple of days we did a number of very interesting things and I got to see alot of the Frankfurt area. First we walked all through downtown Frankfurt. We did everything from going up to the top of a modern skyscraper to looking at roman ruins within the city. The next day we when for a driving tour outside the city. We went through the hill country north of the city. This area was beautiful and reminded me a little bit of Shanedoah National Forest, except the hills weren't quite high enough. Coming out of the hill country we drove along the Rhine, which is the German wine country. Again just an amazing area. I really enjoyed. My last day in Frankfurt, we again went downtown. Tomas took me for a short tour of HR, Frankfurt's public television and radio facility. It was much nicer than any TV station I have seen in America, but I guess I have not seen too many stations that produced a lot of local content. Either way, it was a huge 20 building campus. My stay in Frankfurt ended with a nice homecooked meal. Tomas is more than just a tour guide. He is also a hell of a chef.

We went to breakfast in the morning and then I jumped the train to Milan, Italy, where I currently am. I will be here until tomorrow and then I head to Siena, Italy, where I will be staying for 6 nights.