9 October

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.

Here and below: a few fine-art pieces by my second host in Frankfurt, Kerstin Lichtblau (originally full-sized paintings, shown here in their postcard form). I love Kerstin's work, man - on the surface they look like these funny little outsider-art nature paintings, but once you stop and notice what the animals are actually doing, they get curiously creepy and sinister. Klasse!

Next four photos: A church craft fair, held in the older blue-collar neighborhood of Roedelheim, where one of Kerstin's middle-aged painting students was exhibiting her work. It sounded like a fun lark, especially since I grew up on a steady diet of church craft fairs myself (Southern Baptist in my case), so I ended up tagging along. Beware the shewd salesperson skills of the middle-aged churchgoing creative mothers!

Next nine photos: After the craft fair, Kerstin and I spent the rest of the morning down at the Frankfurt flea market, in the museum district on the south bank of the Main river (down by Saschenhauser and the youth hostel and the other things I pointed out in my bike ride of the area, found elsewhere on this website). Man, what a trip; imagine all the things you find at a normal American flea market (used clothes, boxes full of remote controls), then add all the weird-ass shit you'll only find at flea markets next to former Communist countries (including eastern German telephones from the 1950s, and boxes full of old Soviet coins), plus just odd rarities like antique accordians and complete silver tea services. Woah!

Panoramic shot! This, I believe, is Alte Bruecke, or "Old Bridge" (proper noun, not a description), one of seven vehicular and pedestrian bridges crossing the river Main in the central city. We are looking north, into where the vast majority of the Frankfurt city limits lay. There's a fascinating thing that's worth noting about Frankfurt, which you can see here in the second and third slices of the panorma: it is one of the only cities in Europe with a modern skyscraper landscape. It's because not only is Germany's national banking system headquartered here, but also the central system for the entire EU's banking system. As a result, there is an immense amount of money that flows in and out of Frankfurt each day, and a certain kind of money as well - fast, new, smart money, made from telecommunications and dot-coms and tech-based stock markets - which tends to then produce these kinds of modern skyscrapers. (Almost all the cities in Europe where you find modern skyscrapers, in fact, are banking centers.) The mixture of ultramodern with classic European is a favorite topic of conversation and angst amongst Frankfurters, who don't quite know how to feel about it all; it is, of course, a constant source of put-down by other Germans, who routinely refer to the city as "Bankfurt" and "Krankfurt" when Frankfurters aren't looking. (Click on the photo or here for the full-sized [800-pixel] version; or here for a special page displaying just the panoramic shots I took during my trip.)

Here and below: The cafe at Frankfurt Kunstverein, literally translated as "The Arts Club of Frankfurt," a cool multimedia facility right in the Dom/Roemer tourist district. Despite thousands of tourists walking by its windows when I was there, not a single tourist was in the cafe with me. Maybe because, as you can tell, it looks way too upscale to be just a little ol' cafe, although that's what it is - two-dollar capuccinos and beautiful art-school punk girls as baristas. What a great place to spend the afternoon, writing and drinking and flirting with art-school girls.

Next four photos: That evening I drove with Juergen Klumpe to the nearby collegetown of Karlsruhl, to perform at their burgeoning open mic. The show is held at this amazing homegrown arts complex called Gotec, which among other things has a disco, drum-and-bass room, classroom, recording studio and cabaret all housed in one labyrinth-like former industrial space. Along with everything else, they also operate a 1980s retro videogame parlor - two euros to come in, then free games the rest of the night. Once again - ah, the Germans! How I love them so!

The cabaret (called Tango, and treated as a separate facility by the owners), where the slam was held. The person onstage is Robert, one of my travelling companions from Frankfurt, half-German and half-French, young, cute and tan, and an earnest and very talented hiphop poet. What's not to like? It was a little too dark to get decent pictures; I took some the next morning (find them on the 10 October page) that give you much better images of both the cabaret and of Robert.

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.