August 22, 2022 to August 23, 2022
Frankfurt Time
Trains, boats and heat
August 22 Monday. August 23 Tuesday.
Our landing care of an Emirates speedster is about 15 minutes early. Energised after countless airline meals, we clear immigration quickly and locate our baggage. It’s all there, including our bike boxes which have survived the trip as well as we have, albeit with a couple of small indentations.
Out on the concourse we await Ulli, who is bringing a car for us and our boxes.
It’s hot and there’s mayhem for a while out there as vehicles come and go, picking up arrivals. Then, there he is, and with our bikes stowed we’re off.
After a brief chat and cuppa we decide to cold turkey the jet lag and take a walk. He shows us an area of housing apartments and allotments established during the 1920s in Bauhaus style. So relevant still. We walk along the local river Nidda briefly. It looks stressed and below its normal level and the path is very dry and dusty with plants that look exhausted, although the blackberry is doing well.
Then back at the house, a beautiful old solid building of about 90 years vintage, to unpack boxes and assemble our steeds. Ulli has a good collection of tools and we soon have our bikes back together with handlebars, pedals and wheels in the right places. After a light dinner and discussion of local politics and goings on- cycling issues are similar worldwide, we crash for a reasonably good nights sleep.
Tuesday
We catch the train into the city to explore. Getting out early, the day is still cool and pleasant. The train service is fast and efficient and we emerge from underground onto a tree lined avenue. Here we spot our first bakery and reacquaint ourselves with wonderful German bread!
Establishing the whereabouts of the Main River we head in its direction. There still seems plenty of water and barges ply the Main, though I’m told that those carrying oil and important goods are at limited capacity.
We cross the Iron Bridge, the struts of which are covered in a mass of fairly unsightly padlocks, though romantics might say otherwise.
The city centre is dominated by a number of tall, colourful, traditional buildings, apparently reconstructed by Polish builders following the ‘strategic’ demolition job at the hands of the RAF. We want to visit the museum of caricature but it is closed and so we opt for the historical museum. This turns out to be a veritable rabbit warren of a building with its most interesting section the educational one, for school children. At our level perhaps, but the WW2 personal stories are very interesting.
As the heat of the day climbs into the 30s, and tourists ( not us of course ) accumulate, we begin to wilt and opt for a train ‘home’ from Willy Brandt station. Momentarily confused by forgetting the name of Ulli’s suburb, we head in the wrong direction but with a bit of applied science, figure it out.
In the evening, Ulli takes us up to Berkersheim, once a rural area, and still possessing a rural atmosphere. In a open air restaurant we dine and taste the local cider. It’s slightly tart and even with a dose of diluting mineral water, reasonably potent.
We sleep well.
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