I went to Frankfurt am Main on Monday and here are some thoughts I jotted down while visiting...
Frankfurt is a remarkably ugly city - a judgment I have not passed on any of the towns that I have visited since arriving seven months ago. Its boulevards are excessively wide and poorly adorned unlike the Stalinist structures that inspire fear in the cities of eastern Germany.
It seemed that Frankfurt's commercial area was a hodgepodge of cheap jewelry and clothing stores interspersed with large chain outlets found in every other big city.
Walking along the road from the main train station to the center of the city, I saw bankers in their well tailored suits rush to eat power lunches at a multitude of second rate restaurants against a backdrop of strip joints and sex shops. Everywhere I turned were squat buildings from the 1950s that looked as though they had just sprung from a Mies van der Rohe nightmare. I managed to reach the reconstructed Old Town (Altstadt), but it too was a disappointment. The dolled up buildings couldn't even pass on "Main Street USA" at Disneyland.
Even Cologne, it too completely destroyed in World War II, retains some element of charm in its gently radiating streets and alleys. But Frankfurt is just a confused patchwork of urbaness. It is strange to think that it is the financial heart of continental Europe.
