May 1st
The same clientele that caused me to hightail it out of the lounge the previous night turns what should be a pretty straightforward, not to mention good breakfast buffet into something akin to a lower mid-range hotel on Mallorca during peak season, with one single queue for everything, despite the fact that the buffet is spread over several physically separate areas. Trying to simply grab a coffee is met with withering stares and to be perfectly honest, I’m surprised that some of the best seats haven’t been blocked with towels yet. Accordingly, I’m out the door pretty quickly, only to find out that I’m very definitely in Germany again.
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| Whether it's St. Paul's Church, the site of the first German parliamentary assembly in 1848... |
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| ... the "Römer", Frankfurt's historic city hall,... |
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| Or the "Fressgaß", one of the city's main eatery locations, they all seem strangely quiet. |
You see, May 1st is a nationwide public holiday in Germany. And unlike in Ireland, where most stores even open on such public holidays, with reduced opening hours, these types of holidays are taken very seriously in Germany. Accordingly, pretty much everything retail-related in Frankfurt is closed. Granted, many restaurants or cafés are open, but Frankfurt still seems pretty quiet, as if they’d “folded up the sidewalks”, as the German saying goes. The situation isn’t helped by the fact that a number of tram and underground lines aren’t operating on this day, as it is also the traditional date for a massive road cycling race in Frankfurt. This combination of road closures, public transport diversions and closed businesses gives the city a weird vibe this morning.
Then, there’s the increased police presence due to the other First of May. Whether you call it International Workers Day, Labour Day, or the "International Day of the Struggle and Celebration of the Workers for Peace and Socialism”, and yes, that is what the East German Government actually called this day, it has traditionally been the day for all types of left-leaning organisations or political parties to hold their rallies and demonstrations. Accordingly, major public squares such as the Hauptwache, one of Frankfurt’s main public transport interchanges, or the Römerplatz in front of city hall have been taken over by leftist parties and communist groups of all types, with red flags in evidence everywhere. A lot of these full-time `”revolutionaries” seem to be stuck in the political paradigms of 1980s Moscow doctrine. The root of all evils is naturally the “evil’ west and the “NATO dictatorship”, with Russia being the only real bastion against fascism. Whilst these slogans have always been shallow, they ring especially hollow now that an actual war of conquest is being waged by Russia against a democratic neighbour. Socialist movements pride themselves in their solidarity and internationalism, yet for some reason, this solidarity seems to end in Eastern Europe, I wonder why? On the same note, why do the representatives of this vanguard of the working class almost always look like they’ve never seen a place of work from the inside and like they’ve subscribed to the belief that personal hygiene is a plot by the class enemy to fracture and subjugate the workers of the world? When did my political home let itself go that much?
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| Opera Square has been completely taken over by the annual Frankfurt road cycle race. |
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| The Old Opera itself is looking resplendent on this spring day. |
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| I absolutely love the look of the "Opernturm", a new-ish high rise across from the Old Opera. |
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| The Hauptwache, one of Frankfurt's main underground transport hubs, is nowhere near as busy as it would normally be. |
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| Even more then ten years after it opened, I still love the architecture of the myZeil shopping centre. |
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| It speaks volumes that the throngs of protesters attending the numerous May Day rallies in the city completely ignore St. Paul's Church, the seat of the 1848 Nationalversammlung and one of the birth places of German democracy. |
But enough of that, that topic could fill a full blog post on its own. Either way, this combination of political rallies and cycle race has effectively torpedoed my original plan of using this public holiday to head to Speyer. As such, it was time to make my way through the city centre. My path leads me from St. Paul’s Church, the seat of the Nationalversammlung of 1848, Germany’s first national parliament, via the Alte Oper opera house and Hauptwache to the Zeil, Frankfurt’s main shopping street. Naturally, this is effectively deserted due to the public holiday, but even with that, I can’t help how much of the city effectively feels run down. Okay, Frankfurt has never been the prettiest city, but even with that, the general air of neglect seems obvious to me. Former anchor tenants on the street are either in the process of closing their stores or have already shut them, and a worrying number of signature buildings are filled with pop up shops or low effort art galleries. It’s not a pretty picture.
On my way to the waterfront on the River Main, an area of the city that I mostly ignored whilst `I lived in the area, I inevitably run into Frankfurt’s “old town”, although this is mainly driven by the desire to avoid the rallies on Römerplatz. Those quotation marks are there for a reason, by the way. You see, this is not the original old town. Much of that was destroyed during a number of apocalyptic Allied air raids during World War 2. Whilst the rubble was cleared, significant parts of the old town centre remained untouched for over a decade, before the site was used in the 1970s to accommodate the Technisches Rathaus, the technical city hall. This was a prime example of a particular type of brutalism that took Germany by storm in the late 1960s and 1970s. It was unabashedly modern, a clear break with tradition and the past. As someone who’s quite partial to brutalism anyway, I always liked that build. Unfortunately, a lot of locals absolutely hated it. So, by the end of the 2000s, the decision was made to tear down the building and, as much as possible, recreate the old town structure present before 1939. I was never a fan of that project, to put it diplomatically. Still, now that I’m here, I might as well take a look at the end result.
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| I have to give the architectural team behind the new "Old Town" in Frankfurt at least some credit. When they're not mindlessly imitating the old medieval architectural style, they can actually deliver some interesting buildings. At least, this re-interpretation of an existing building is trying to do something new. |
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| However, more often than not, the end result is more Disneyland than historical accuracy. |
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| Honestly, I just find this style of architecture oppressive and hypocritical. The lack of any mature greenery doesn't exactly help things either. |
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| The solitary tree in this picture and the outside tables of that cafe bring at least some life into this sterile ensemble. |
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| Once again, the most interesting buildings are ones where the architects at least tried to integrate some modern elements. |
To start with, the materials used seem to be a lot higher end than I expected. In addition, the architects tried to use the reconstruction effort to ensure a certain level of accessibility, something the original buildings certainly wouldn’t have had. However, that’s as far as the positives go here. The straight lines, the materials, the windows, all this make it abundantly clear that this “old town” is a product of the 21st century, rather than a naturally grown urban landscape. This extends to the retail units and eateries in the old town area, who seem to have been allocated according to some master plan rather than having developed on their won. It is this subtle artificiality, this headlong dive into an architectural “uncanny valley” that really boils my blood. This is not an “old town” at all, this is a coldly planned development fresh from the drawing board. At its most brutal, this is a folkloristic pseudo-traditional shopping mall clad in fake timber-frame shells and designed to lull oblivious tourists and wilfully ignorant pseudo patriots into a false sense of history, while brushing aside the horrific younger history that led to the destruction of Frankfurt’s old town in the first place. It is thoroughly dishonest and quite honestly sickening. The Technisches Rathaus was at least honest!
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| There's certainly something about the riverside on the Main. Why didn't I go here more often when I still lived in the area? |
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| I absolutely love there panorama of Frankfurt's sky line. |
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| Although the contrast between the high-rises and this ensemble of 1950s post-war architecture couldn't be any bigger if you tried! |
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| The "Eiserner Steg", a metal suspension bridge stretching across the river Main, is a whole lot more impressive when viewed against the backdrop of the Frankfurt skyline. |
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| The "verticality" of Frankfurt catches me out again and again. Also, one of the buildings here reminds me of the game Jenga for some reason, but. I can't put my finger on it... |
With that out of my system, I finally make it to the riverfront. For some reason, probably related to the fact that I was living in Frankfurt’s northern commuter belt at the time, I never really realised that this part of Frankfurt existed. And right now, I’d very much like to kick myself for that! The views of the Frankfurt skyline alone, the only one of its kind in Germany, are worth it. This is all the more true now, at the beginning of May, when everything is in bloom. Also, was the river Main always this wide? I remember it being narrower. Anyway, my path leads me across the “Eiserner Steg”, a pedestrian suspension bridge linking the Römer and old town area of Frankfurt to the south bank of the river and the Sachsenhausen district of the city. Once again, I’m intensely frustrated with my earlier self for not coming here when I was still living in the area. My way back to the city centre leads me over streets and squares that have been closed for road traffic because of the bike race. At least, these empty streets allow me to get some interesting photos and perspectives. After all, there are few negatives that don’t have at least some positive aspect.
Back in the hotel, I have a few hours to kill until I meet a friend and former manager of mine for a few drinks. My first order of business is to import and consolidate all the photos I took throughout the day, both with my trusty Canon and my iPhone, followed by getting my thoughts down in Notion. `however, my tech absolutely refuses to cooperate. No matter what I try, I cannot get my MacBook to play ball with the hotel WiFi. The Captive page I need to log into the WiFi just won’t appear, no matter what I try and using my Phone as a mobile hotspot is not exactly the most sustainable way of dealing with this issue either. Spoiler Alert: It will only be the next morning when `I find out that my DNS settings are the root of this particular evil.
After a few hours, as well as successfully resisting the temptation of turning my MacBook Pro into a MacBook Airborne, I make my way to the bar on Münchener Straße, in the city’s station district, where my friend is waiting. The rest of the evening passes far more harmonious than my preceding battle with the hotel WiFi, as we reminisce of the time at DHL, catch each other up at what happened over the preceding ten years and just have a good time. There’s loads of laughter, loads of beer and, at least for me, the realisation that 2012 really was a hell of a long time ago!
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