We will always have Frankfurt

While we usually post soon after we visit, circumstances this year got in the way.  

Revisiting our last stop on this fugue before starting a new one domestically at the end of this month.   

We had passed through Frankfurt several times utilizing both of it's airports and train station as a transfer point without seeing it.  Like Luxembourg we felt it deserved some attention. 

A very short stay in Frankfurt as we prepared to leave Europe again, hoping to come back in a few months. Arrived late to a very silent weird dorm/hotel/airbnb, very efficient with an odd cube of a bathroom in the middle of the room. Don't know if was knowing it was the end of travels for awhile or just the disorienting nature of empty streets, but Frankfurt felt kind of surreal.  Germany believes in extending it's Christmas holidays, so the streets remained empty.  An early morning wake up and walk through a rather cold and seemingly deserted city did nothing to dispel the Twilight Zone feel of the day.  An eerie foreshadowing of the year ahead perhaps. 

What also was disorienting was trying to figure out what was really an old building or a very good reproduction as Frankfurt was pretty much demolished during World War II and afterwards sought  to change the narrative and just redo what had been.  They did a good job, at least we could not tell. 

What is new is old again

New in 1880 Opera house, made old in 1981.          Medieval city gate now a modern coffee house. 

In the "new" old town, parts of the Römer city hall are 600 years old

Actually rather new

As with most German cities,  the built environment is complex.  Each building has convoluted history as does each sculpture.   We wandered through a chilly city sculpture garden, finding Den Opfern (the victims) by Benno Elkan from 1920, memorializing World War I.  It  now does double duty also memorializing World War II as it was removed in 1933 by the Nazi's (Benno was Jewish), but was replaced in 1946. 

So of course, like all German cities, that brings us to Frankfurt's Holocaust memorial.  Another rather complex story addressing"how do you consider the past while living in the present"?   This is especially relevant in Germany where  many Germans felt they were victims of Nazism as well. Seems like everywhere we visited, not just in Germany, but any country that was complicit, these memorials were created only in the past 15 to 20 years amidst controversy.

Frankfurt's story is that the ruins of the medieval Jewish ghetto were uncovered while excavating to build a new a city services building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Neuer_B%C3%B6rneplatz
The argument discussion regarding whether to keep on building or stop and preserve was intense, with the eventual resolution of creating a Jewish museum built upon and including the ruins.  Another Jewish museum is associated with the Rothschild Palace  (home of the Rothschild family) . https://www.juedischesmuseum.de/en/visit/museum-judengasse/.
A gripping memorial wall was built along the remnants of the old Jewish cemetery next to the museum.  The wall contains names of the 11,000+ Jews forced to leave Frankfurt.

Anne Frank, born in Frankfurt

The wall went around the block surrounding what had been the Jewish cemetery.  Tombstones that had been found were lined along the back walls, impossible to know which graves they belonged to.

Frankfurt also had it's fair share of stopelsteine https://thechosenfugue.blogspot.com/2019/01/they-do-make-you-stumble.html

After our stroll through the historical center of the city, we walked back along the river, marveling at the buildings, the river Main and appreciating this really beautiful city like so many we have appreciated over the past year and a half.   

And while we skipped most of the industrial, financial portions of Frankfurt, at the end of a lovely path, we did catch this reminder that we were in the financial center of the European continent, home of the European Central Bank.  Fitting that on our last stop we were already looking backwards at the Euro. 

We spent our last few euros at a little market, buying an assortment of odd things for dinner (again, VERY typical of our travels), and strategically, a bag of clementines plus chocolate for our flight.  Then woke up to a magnificent sunrise and left for the airport.  

We will always have Frankfurt. That wasn't the plan but this might be the last European sight we see for some time. 

Our Frankfurt-Seattle-Portland-Santa Rosa flight had a bonus  overnight in PDX.

Leaving Frankfurt, 11 hours to Seattle, 4 hour layover in Seattle, Sleeping on the new, famous PDX carpet. 

Greeted well upon our landing in California

Writing this from Eugene, Oregon in June,  we really appreciated our year and half on the road, and now planning a new fugue with a cross country car road trip at the end of this month and hoping that all gets better soon...