3 October (part b)

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.

(Click here for the pictures from the first half of this seven-hour bike ride.) After our break at Cafe Michielin, it was time to resume our trip - this time continuing through the Stadtmitte, or "central city." The next six photos are random shots along the way, including the tourist center of the city.

Next four photos: Meeting up with my new friends Ruth and Bruno, at a cafe run by one of the city's many art museums. Ruth is a computer-engineering professor at the University of Darmstadt; Bruno is the owner of a cutting-edge art gallery in Milano, Italy. Hey, they make it work! Ruth found my site randomly earlier that year, and then dragged Bruno out to my performance at Salon Franco earlier that week; I guess they were impressed enough to want to hang out a couple of days later, and Bruno has invited me to come out to Milano in 2005 and perform at his gallery. Mmmm...maybe! Ah, das Geld, das Geld...sigh.

Next five photos: more random shots from Frankfurt's Stadtmitte.

Next six photos: Now along the edge of the Main river - thus, the official name of the city, "Frankfurt-am-Main" (much like the British tradition - "Stratford-on-Avon," for example). We are on our way east at this point, eventually crossing one of the bridges into Sachsenhausen and the south side of the city.

Next four photos: The Frankfurt international youth hostel - huge, clean and very friendly, located in the older south side of the city, down with the non-European restaurants and the old GI applewine haunts.

Next three photos: the end of our daylong bicycle ride, now in the far southern district of Sachsenhauser, for decades a notorious endpoint for a Saturday night of American GI boozing and whoring. Now that the American army is finally leaving after 60 years, the neighborhood is turning back into a quiet local blue-collar one, as well as a popular meeting place for Indians, Africans and Asians who live in the city.

Next four photos: We finally ended our long day at Schuche's Restaurant, an ebelwein (hard cider) microbrewery up in the Praunheim neighborhood, northwest of the central city where Dirk also lives. We were joined that night by Dirk's old friends Peter and Karin, who he knows from way back in his punk days.

First course: apple bread with apple pate (or "schmaltz," auf Deutsch).

Second course: apple sausage with apple mustard, served with generous helpings of apple wine. Ja, der Essen, es ist nicht schlect (the food, it is not bad) at all.

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