HERA'S BLOG

Hera

Day 4: Bikes and Frankfurt Museum Festival
Saturday, July 8, 2006

It was nice to wake up and then go back to sleep today, since we didn't have to make a train or any such nonsense. We took our time over breakfast (white sausages with sweet mustard, more bread, butter, coffee, tea, gah! they're going to kill me with food here). Showering wasn't a horrible ordeal since it rained the night before, and the day was overcast with a high chance of more rain. Since it was cooler, the steam from the bathroom didn't inundate the apartment with damp.

Britta took the day with me to go to the Museumsuferfest, which is a three-day festival where you can tour all of the museums for the cost of 4 euros (aprox $6). You pay the 4 euros for a button, and then you try and see how many museums you can tour before you collapse from either foot fatique or from your brain being too full of educated things. A sure sign of your museum dementia, all crotchety and mean.

We headed out by bike about 1pm, going towards town on the pedestrian/bike path that runs parallel to the river. Now let me just take a moment to describe the guilty pleasure of riding in a city crawling with cyclists. I wore no helmet. I had flip flops on my feet. I didn't have cycling gloves. I'd ring the wee bell, and the pedestrians would drift to the right, making way for me, the bicycle goddess. I was in heaven. There's a lot to be said for having the wind in your hair instead of sweating under a helmet. My cycling friends from Austin would say that I was a fool, but hell. When in Rome, ride like the Romans. It was a blast. Oh, and did I neglect to mention that this city is completely FLAT? I could detect no inclines going to or from the city. Is that even possible? On the road:



We met up with Stephen in the alt stadt square near the statue S & B call 'Biased Justice'. It's the typical woman standing holding the scales and the sword (which England soccer fans made off with, BTW), but the sculptor neglected to include the blindfold. Ooops! Oh well, just kidding about that whole impartial thing. Very near the square is a museum dedicated to Der Struwwelpeter, a German childhood icon from the 1850s used ever since to educate/terrify small children with their dark morality lessons. Here's my favorite, The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches"

http://www.fln.vcu.edu/struwwel/pauline_e.html

The very nice proprietoress of the museum spent a ton of time talking to us and gave us a small personal tour. The exhibits were so much fun. My favorite part was a third of the room was given over to modern art re-interpretations of Der Struwwelpeter. Very dark. We discovered also that the British had written a parody of Der Struwwelpeter in 1941 called Struwwelhitler, so we had to go off and buy a copy straight away from the book store.

http://openpr.de/news/56407.html

After afternoon coffee and chocolate to fortify ourselves for the task ahead, S took off to his band practice, and Britta and I soldiered onward to the Goethe House and Museum. Once again, since I read little German, I just took a lot of pictures. There was a massive mechanical clock that indicated the phases of the moon with a silver orb, and a pyramid piano, which for all intents and purposes looked liked a china cabinet. The keyboard was at table level, but the soundboard, hammers and strings ran perpendicular to the floor, against the wall. Useful for folks with small parlours, I suppose. Very cool looking. I was with child to know what it sounded like, but the keyboard cover was locked, alas. The other part of the museum was given over to paintings and the like from Goethe's time, and I got to see the original for the famous painting 'The Nightmare'.

http://artyzm.com/e_obraz.php?id=756

After this exhausting experience, we had to go eat, of course. Britta took me to another apfelwein restaurant, and I was treated to the famous Frankfurt food thing known as green sauce, which is a creme-based/egg sauce with a list of herbs that I've only read about in Medieval stories. Sorrel, fennel, chivel, etc. It was sooo good. It was served on ochenbrust, or what we in Texas are fond of calling brisket. Food looks like:



I insisted we go to the museum dedicated to the applied arts, graphic and book design, drawing. I was a little disappointed (or maybe just really tired), but I don't like museums where there is a lot of space and very little art. Museums should be bursting with stuff, not have their exhibits laid out like shoes in an overpriced shoe store. The most amazing thing was this inexplicable dark room where the walls were covered with those translights of 'paintings' of waterfalls where the water looks like it's flowing. In the middle of the room was a cushy circular bench, and you could just sit in the dark and listen to the fake sound of flowing water. It was surreal.

Britta and I got back to the apartment around 10:30, which was tricky, it being after dark. Since my bike didn't have a headlamp, anytime I would see a policeman, Britta told me to walk my bike so I wouldn't get a ticket. Let's just say there were a lot of policeman out and about on Friday night. Sheesh.

After we got caught up on our day with S, I made popcorn the old way in a skillet with oil, and we settled down to watch the German edition of Serenity. We spent a lot of time discussing the various mistakes in the subtitles, some of which even I caught. It was enjoyable talking about the nuances of the dialogue with Stephen. He really delights in subtleties of humour, and his appetite for learning new words is voracious. During the wave scene where Mal and Inara are talking, Stephen just muttered to himself 'huh. it's a trap.' I started to laugh, and he said 'what?' Nothing gets past that Stephen, let me tell you. So, all in all, he genuinely seemed to enjoy the movie, and we talked about it the next morning. He had some great opinions about the Alliance, and I gave him the full backstory on the war. Way cool. He wants to watch it again later, the dubbed version, so we can argue somemore about how correct or incorrect that will be.

OK kids, that's it for today. More tomorrow about the BBQ and live music extravaganza with Stephen's roots country band, Johnny Erle and the Vintage Two!

Best,
Hera




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