comparisons: view coming out of the metro in frankfurt & rome
kat in giro
Posts tagged with 'frankfurt'
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the first moments in a new place…
So, I don’t speak German. Perhaps I should start there. Like, I don’t speak any.
Which constitutes quite a big change, in itself, from living in Italy previously, apart from all the cultural differences. I hadn’t realized I guess how much I had adjusted to Italian culture, even though it still felt “foreign” to me and I don’t think I changed myself to fit into it, necessarily. But you get used to being able to understand the other people on the bus, what people are complaining about and why, that this or that gesture means someone is speaking ironically.
To go from that back to square one, “terra incognita,” is quite a difference. Yet at the same time, there are many more people here speaking English everywhere, and not just tourists, but a large expatriate community. There are also lots of people speaking Italian, Spanish, French, Turkish, on the street. There are a lot of little subtle things that remind me of New York, probably exactly because we have had such a German influence in the past. So these things feel familiar, though they are a slightly different version always.
Main-hattan, or so they sometimes jokingly call the skyline of Frankfurt-Am-Main
A simplistic, but quickly visible example is the street food. Most of what we consider “American food” actually has German origins of course: hot dogs, hamburgers, the big NY pretzels they sell on street corners from little carts. Here in Germany the pretzels are a slightly different shape and consistency, and you can get them not just with big chunks of sea salt, but poppy or sesame seeds as well. Hot dogs come in a variety of different types, sizes, shapes (the extra-long skinny ones are folded in half when served in a bun) and are tucked into a rounder, smaller bun. The overall culture of street foot is familiar though — it’s acceptable, whereas in Italy and Spain it’s usually considered rude to be eating on the street, unless it’s gelato, or in some cases pizza al taglio, folded and served like a sandwich to be taken on the go. I think even this is a recent adaptation however.
Anyway, the first few days in a new place, I find myself cataloguing mentally all these little things, some of them trivial, superficial, others which become the clues to interesting, relevant cultural differences. It’s tiring, the first few weeks, just being somewhere foreign. “Like how standing in a museum is exhausting, even though you’re not really doing anything,” my mom described it. There’s so much input, sights and sounds and your own memories and associations coming back, and just taking it in can be like a job.
Nevermind looking for an apartment in a country where you don’t speak the language, hoping to find other young foreigners with whom you’ll at least be able to communicate. At least there’s one concrete worry ticked off the list, when your work visa is finally officially approved, and it’s just a matter of continuing to wait while it’s sent here and then there and then back again.
But the great thing about getting started in a new place, is how it’s actually sort of simple — just taking it one day at a time. A clear head, a beginning.
a different take on new & old architecture in frankfurt
This is the first view you’ll get of Frankfurt as you step out of the central train station, the “Hauptbahnhof,” and it pretty much sums up my initial impression of the city, at least in terms of its physicality, its architecture. There’s a mix and a contrast of an old European city, with low-level buildings, in a classic style with decorative facades (some original and a lot rebuilt and abbreviated/modernized in style) — and the city’s 17 or so skyscrapers, mostly in an ultra-modern mirror-like style.
Frankfurt is the home to the European Central Bank (possible that tower in the back to the right) as well as a large stock exchange and financial sector, which accounts for the huge office buildings, commonplace in many parts of the US but an anomaly here in Europe — particularly “foreign” to cities like Paris or Rome which are justifiably concerned with keeping their historic character. To get ahead of myself, this aspect of the city’s economy also accounts for its prosperity as a small city, and it’s vibrant scene of small modern restaurants and myriad of lunch types of places and “happy hour” bars and cafes, another big difference from my last experience in Rome.
The facades of some old buildings, reflected in the modern European Central Bank.
Frankfurt was bombed heavily during World War II and a lot of the architecture was destroyed — particularly in the large original Medieval neighborhood near the central “Rom” square and the cathedral (not pictured). All except one I believe of these medieval-style houses that you can see today are re-creations (“You can tell because all the lines are actually straight!” as someone pointed out to me), as was the famous landmark of the Alte Oper (operahouse), which is seen below. It was destroyed and this one was built replicating the original in the 1970s.
Above you can see how a lot of the rest of the city coped with the destruction: what appears to be a building half-destroyed in the war, with the left in the original style, and the right half built with a nod to the old architectural elements, but unabashedly modern.
Personally I really like this idea — the destruction of war is obviously an awful thing, but it has also given Frankfurt an opportunity that many European cities like Rome don’t let themselves take, to carve out a new 20th and 21st century identity, looking solely forward. New buildings that break with old styles are not aberrations to be debated by the city and inevitably hated by half the citizens, but they are an inevitability.
The small number of towers, loosely spaced around the center of the city, lets you actually get a look at them as well, unlike in a place like New York where it’s a tourist move (and a quite literal pain in the neck) to look up and try to get a sense of the scale of the buildings. The center also has a large amount of green space to help you breathe a little oxygen, the result of an interesting twist of history that I will write about soon!
So this is a first little look at Frankfurt, as I am still finding my footing in the city myself. I know of course, and have no illusions, that it is not a city with the grandeur of Rome, but I am quite looking forward to what it will have in store for me, in part because it is so vastly different from what I’ve seen before.
a bit of a change…
Since my last post, about a month ago now, I have actually had the opportunity to move for a new job. So I find myself now in Frankfurt, Germany, once again back at square one in terms of having no idea what the people around me are saying! A little bit overwhelming, but also quite an adventure so far…
I still have a lot of pictures and stories of day trips and so on in Italy, so I’ll continue to post about Rome as well as my new life here, as well I’m sure of the many comparisons I will find between the two. I’m also going to keep working on a “city guide” for Rome, which you can find in the right column over there.
Thank you for continuing along the journey with me! Now I’ve got to get back to searching for apartments in a language I don’t know, and the rather less exciting activity of waiting for my work visa to go through (involves a lot of crossing fingers).
