3 October (part a)

For a full list of all trip photos, click here. For more on the technical specs behind these photos, click here. For the text entry that accompanies these photos, click here.

Happy Reunification Day! In celebration of the national holiday (and the fact that it was Sunday and nothing was open), Dirk and Sonja decided to give me a big long tour of the city by bike on this glorious 78-degree October day. The tour lasted the entire day, six or seven hours altogether, and was much better than some packaged sightseeing tour by bus - not the least reason of which was that we could just stop whenever we felt like it, swerve into a side alley to visit a cool cafe, or simply sit, smoke a cigarette and gab for a bit.

Next seven photos: our tour first began at Volkspark Niddatal, across the street from Dirk's place in the Praunheim district. The park has a special place in the city's history: originally just a piece of wildland, as the city grew around it it was designated to be an uncultured park, allowed to grow wild as the entire region used to look before man had encroached. The photo you're looking at now was the only exception to that rule, back in the fascist days when a formal garden was built in the center of the unstructured park to mark some anniversary or another. The government has decided to just let the fascist structures go unrepaired and rotting in the park, eventually being claimed by the wild nature it once presumed to withhold. Oh, excuse me - the Volkspark has this way of making you think poetically when in the midst of it.

Germans love their bikes. Germans love their dogs. And brother, Germans LOVE their bikes with dogs. Er, dogs with bikes.

Next three photos: the always delightful Bockenheim district, one of the two slacker neighborhoods in Frankfurt.

The old Frankfurt University, full of traditional-looking buildings and the pedestrian quadrangles connecting them.

Next three photos: the Frankfurt Museum of Natural History.

The trendy and rich Westend, this photo about a block from the US embassy. This is about as close as you can get to the embassy with a camera, before really scary-looking soldiers start rushing you and explaining in quite emphatic terms why you cannot in fact take photos of the US embassy. "Well, I'm proud to be an American, 'cause at least I know I'm free..."

The new Frankfurt University, an overwhelmingly massive single building in which the entire university is getting moved, one department at a time. The building has an interesting history as well: originally designed during the Bauhaus era, it was a favorite of Hitler's and a main Nazi headquarters during the war; Eisenhower liked it so much that he ordered it not bombed, so it could be used as the Occupying Army headquarters after the war. Later in the week I was to go inside this building and get photos of its historic and unique elevator system; those photos can be found elsewhere at this website.

More of the trendy Westend neighborhood.

Next three photos: Cafe Michielin, at the edge of the Stadtmitte (central city), where we stopped for coffee, ice cream, and to catch our breath and energy.

Next five photos: More of Frankfurt's Stadtmitte, the original core of the town where the Roman settlement was first located.

Next three photos: an open-air market down in the Stadtmitte (also known by some as the Altstadt, or "old city").

The bike ride doesn't end here! Click here for the other half of the photos from our seven-hour trek across the city.

Copyright 2004, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved. Although this material is presented here for your enjoyment free of charge, it is still illegal to repost this material without my permission, and especially so if you charge others money to see it. I am usually happy to let others reprint my work in the context of a free artistic publication, so please don't hesitate to contact me at ilikejason at hotmail dot com if you are interested in doing so.