HERA'S BLOG
Day 4: Bikes and Frankfurt Museum Festival
Saturday, July 8, 2006 1:48 PM
It was nice to wake up and then go back to sleep today, since we didn't have to make a train or any such nonsense. We took our time over breakfast (white sausages with sweet mustard, more bread, butter, coffee, tea, gah! they're going to kill me with food here). Showering wasn't a horrible ordeal since it rained the night before, and the day was overcast with a high chance of more rain. Since it was cooler, the steam from the bathroom didn't inundate the apartment with damp.Britta took the day with me to go to the Museumsuferfest, which is a three-day festival where you can tour all of the museums for the cost of 4 euros (aprox $6). You pay the 4 euros for a button, and then you try and see how many museums you can tour before you collapse from either foot fatique or from your brain being too full of educated things. A sure sign of your museum dementia, all crotchety and mean.
We headed out by bike about 1pm, going towards town on the pedestrian/bike path that runs parallel to the river. Now let me just take a moment to describe the guilty pleasure of riding in a city crawling with cyclists. I wore no helmet. I had flip flops on my feet. I didn't have cycling gloves. I'd ring the wee bell, and the pedestrians would drift to the right, making way for me, the bicycle goddess. I was in heaven. There's a lot to be said for having the wind in your hair instead of sweating under a helmet. My cycling friends from Austin would say that I was a fool, but hell. When in Rome, ride like the Romans. It was a blast. Oh, and did I neglect to mention that this city is completely FLAT? I could detect no inclines going to or from the city. Is that even possible? On the road:
We met up with Stephen in the alt stadt square near the statue S & B call 'Biased Justice'. It's the typical woman standing holding the scales and the sword (which England soccer fans made off with, BTW), but the sculptor neglected to include the blindfold. Ooops! Oh well, just kidding about that whole impartial thing. Very near the square is a museum dedicated to Der Struwwelpeter, a German childhood icon from the 1850s used ever since to educate/terrify small children with their dark morality lessons. Here's my favorite, The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches"
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/struwwel/pauline_e.html
The very nice proprietoress of the museum spent a ton of time talking to us and gave us a small personal tour. The exhibits were so much fun. My favorite part was a third of the room was given over to modern art re-interpretations of Der Struwwelpeter. Very dark. We discovered also that the British had written a parody of Der Struwwelpeter in 1941 called Struwwelhitler, so we had to go off and buy a copy straight away from the book store.
http://openpr.de/news/56407.html
After afternoon coffee and chocolate to fortify ourselves for the task ahead, S took off to his band practice, and Britta and I soldiered onward to the Goethe House and Museum. Once again, since I read little German, I just took a lot of pictures. There was a massive mechanical clock that indicated the phases of the moon with a silver orb, and a pyramid piano, which for all intents and purposes looked liked a china cabinet. The keyboard was at table level, but the soundboard, hammers and strings ran perpendicular to the floor, against the wall. Useful for folks with small parlours, I suppose. Very cool looking. I was with child to know what it sounded like, but the keyboard cover was locked, alas. The other part of the museum was given over to paintings and the like from Goethe's time, and I got to see the original for the famous painting 'The Nightmare'.
http://artyzm.com/e_obraz.php?id=756
After this exhausting experience, we had to go eat, of course. Britta took me to another apfelwein restaurant, and I was treated to the famous Frankfurt food thing known as green sauce, which is a creme-based/egg sauce with a list of herbs that I've only read about in Medieval stories.
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