Frankly, Frankfurt...

Entering this blog, I haven’t quite parsed out my feelings toward Frankfurt. At times, I’m walking through the skyscrapers like a starry-eyed country boy, even though I’ve spent the last month and a half of my life in Berlin. At other times, I’m mourning the death of German culture, and my budget, at the invisible hand of globalized business culture—Frankfurt is, after all, the home of the European Central Bank, so the entire EU economy hangs from its absurd glass phalluses. In order to settle this internal battle, here’s an alternating list between the elements that make Frankfurt one of the most fantastic and most irritating cities in Germany.

1) Con: 3 hostels. That’s right, in one of Germany’s biggest transportation hubs, there are only 3 places in which a backpacker heading onto cheaper climes can rent a bunk so as to ensure that he or she won’t have to work at a currywurst stand by summer’s end in order to get home. I blame this phenomenon on the fragmentation of capitalism: dorms are just too communal, man.

2) Pro: Some of the strangest post-modern buildings outside of Dubai. Home of the euro means men with too much dough, and in Germany, excess translates into eccentricity. Here CEOs show off their worldliness by commissioning the strangest buildings money can buy. One shopping mall bears a tremendous, curving wormhole a la Donnie Darko through its blue glass façade. One skyscraper seems normal upon a cursory glance, but proves to defy several laws of physics upon closer inspection, as if to say, “F*** Newton. I’m rich!” I guess I have no right to disagree.

3) Con: More suits than the last fight scene in that shitty Matrix sequel to that shitty Matrix sequel—that is, a lot of them. This might be a pro if you’re into men in uniform. To me, this is just an invitation to dress as shabbily as my small pack selection will permit.

4) Pro: Green sauce and apple wine, Frankfurt specialties. What are these things, and why am I eating them so quickly? Two good questions, but both irrelevant. The green sauce may just taste like a standard German sour side at first, but by the end of a meal, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be spooning and forking it directly into your mouth like it’s cream of broccoli soup. And apple wine is like the first time you drank apple juice as a kid, except it’s booze.

5) Con: Expensive food. Since no businessman wants to admit that he eats at that cheap, delicious Vietnamese place down the street, there are no cheap, delicious Vietnamese places down the street. If Tiny Tim came to Frankfurt’s doorstep, it would charge him €10 for a small dog dish of green sauce and make him sit up straight to eat it. Oof.

Well it looks like by the law of blogpost brevity we’ve ended on a con. I think my attitude is clear.