This is a post for photos that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else.
Cash vs. card
Does Frankfurt’s money museum answer the question of when or whether Germany’s small businesses, a famously cash economy, will routinely accept cards instead of cash? Not definitively.
Germany’s still a cash economy, and it “pays” to keep €100-€200 Euros on you. Some places, especially smaller ones, don’t take cards. But maybe times are changing. In 25 days and seven cities this trip, I can think of only three places where I didn’t hear “Karte oder bar?” (card or cash) on paying.
Paying at a restaurant table surprised me a bit. The trend in tipping here is about 10%. Used to be servers would approach the table with their change purse out and tell you how much. In your head, you’d calculate what 10% would be and add it to the total, telling the waiter to round up.
Nowadays, even in relatively small spots, you’ll get a printed bill instead. There’s no stumbling over what the waiter said, no matter what your language. Or the waiter will have a handheld processor that can accommodate your card right at the table.
I.G. Farben
Almost walking distance from the money museum is the former I.G. Farben (Dye-stuff syndicate) building. The gigantic home of the world’s largest chemical conglomerate was seized by the Americans at the end of WWII, and it became a U.S. military headquarters.
In the 1990s, after the wall fell, the property was returned to the Germans, and it became a campus of Frankfurt’s Goethe University.
Ike (General and later President Dwight Eisenhower) had his office here when he was supreme allied commander in Europe. Now it’s a conference room. When I went to Frankfurt as a reporter covering the U.S. military, the quotable people had offices in this building. The building became the story in 1972, when leftist radicals set off bombs that destroyed much of a building and killed one U.S. military officer.
I’ll never forget the “pater noster” (our father), the “elevator” on a never-ending loop in the Farben building. Joke was: What happened to you if you stayed on after the car reached the top floor? The lift is still there, just immobile and chained off now. Modern elevators have been installed nearby.
Train station quarter
Frankfurt’s train station quarter (Bahnhofsviertel) has gotten a bum rap, it seems to me.
Frankfurt has the highest crime rate in Germany, and at the end of July, a man was shot dead on a platform in the train station. Knife crimes have risen across the country, more than half at train stations.
By day, it’s drug deals. By night, prostitution. One newspaper called the area “the biggest slum in Germany.”
Now it’s a weapons-free zone. If you get caught after dark with a knife that has a blade of more than a couple inches, the fine is €500. Get caught a second time, and the fine is €10,000.
I didn’t see anything approaching aggression or violence in the days I spent there. Maybe because the police were out in higher numbers after the incidents hit the media.
When I was here, it was business as usual in the station.
The station functioned as a little city with kiosks and stores that offered everything you wanted to pick up on the way home.
On the streets outside, I didn’t see men, women or children who seemed to be in fear. I saw no reason to rush away. I stopped and bought an eSIM at at the first electronics store I reached.
Bockenheimer Warte
Passed this on the way to the Money Museum. Looks like a collapsed streetcar, but it’s been a functioning entrance/exit to the subway since the mid-1980s. Just art, apparently a nod to a surrealist painting.
Sachsenhausen
One exception to the blatant generalizations I’ve made about big-city Frankfurt is Sachsenhausen, the “small town” suburb across the river south of the city. On street corners and squares and in crowded, dimly lit clubs (then off limits to American military), I picked up a taste for small-group jazz that persists to this day. For that, I’m profoundly grateful to Frankfurt.
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