Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
How to make a meal of an 8-hour hiatus
IN THE just-waking hours of a cool, misty morning, we slipped into Frankfurt, Germany, the way dreams slide between vivid reality and hazy memory: surreal and ephemeral.
A smiling woman wearing a hairnet reached over a counter, and speaking neither English nor German, offered my daughter a cold, skinny frankfurter.
We sleepily wandered through meandering lanes flanked by medieval, half-timbered houses that could have been the backdrop to a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.
We passed under the old city gate into a long-dry moat at the foot of a white castle, walking among ancient, moss-carpeted stone steps and walls covered in thick ivy.
Huge bunches of white asparagus and piles of fragrant lilacs crowded tables at a weekend farmers market where we, the interlopers, snapped pictures as locals eyed us curiously.
We glided up and down on a teeter-totter in a deserted playground, while enormous white swans preened their feathers on the banks of the Main River a few metres away. I felt light-headed and dazed.
My husband, Brian, daughter, Chloe, and I had just got off an overnight flight from Boston, in the US. We were heading to Barcelona, but the eye-poppingly cheap airfare I snagged online came with a catch: an eight-hour layover in Frankfurt.
Spending eight hours in an airport would strain the patience of most adults, let alone a 7-year-old. So I was thrilled when I discovered Frankfurt on Foot, a local company that counts a layover tour among its walking offerings.
Layovers are usually spent in a weird netherworld of being somewhere without really being there at all. I’ve been to ParisCharles de Gaulle Airport, for instance, but I haven’t actually been to France.
Escaping the airport to explore Frankfurt, even just for a few hours, felt exciting and strange.
A walking tour with Frankfurt
In Frankfurt, Germany, en route to Barcelona, Alexandra Pecci finds an ideal way to while away
the time – and gets a free frankfurter to boot
on Foot, a local company that counts a layover tour among its offerings, included Höchst Castle.
“We are allowed to do this, aren’t we?” Brian asked me one last time as we made our way through the airport.
None of us slept on the plane, and we were bleary-eyed and hungry when we met our guide, Jo Ator, at the airport at about
8am to begin a private tour. She cheerfully showed us where we could store our luggage – at 7 per bag – for the day and led us outside and onto a city bus.
Jo and her husband David co-own the business.
Wielding her perfect German and knowledge of the city, Jo took us to Höchst, a quiet neighbourhood in the western part of the city that felt markedly different from Frankfurt’s busy metropolis.
Jo and I had e-mailed before our trip, and she suggested visiting the town for its morning farmers’ market and streets that were quiet and easy-to-navigate for Chloe, who has a walking disability.
“You’ll go back to Boston and your friends will say, ‘That’s not Frankfurt!’” Jo said, as we snapped pictures of the pretty streets.
Höchst’s distinctive green, pale pink and yellow half-timbered buildings earned it a spot on the half-timbered house road, which weaves through the country, connecting cities and towns that feature examples of that architecture.
“This part of Frankfurt didn’t get bombed in the war,” Jo said. “That’s why it looks so nice.”
She pointed out carved Roman numerals on the sides of the houses that helped the builders assemble them out of corresponding pieces.
Also beautifully preserved in Höchst: St Justin’s Church, with a basilica consecrated in 850, making it one of the oldest standing houses of worship in Germany.
We cobbled together a mix-and- match breakfast at the farmers market, Wochenmarkt Höchst, which sets up under tents three times a week, and at its nearby indoor market while we sampled freshly pressed apple and applepear juices, cold frankfurters, pastries, chewy, fist-sized rolls called brötchen (“little bread,” Jo told us) and bauernkäse, or farmer’s cheese.
Through the narrow, cobbled lanes, we meandered until we reached the white Höchst Castle, which belonged to the archbishop of Mainz and was built in stages between the 13th and 16th centuries.
We marvelled at its tall tower and dry moat, and passed through a stone gate to emerge on the banks of the Main River.
There, we happened upon a quiet playground and swans waiting for some food scraps by the ferry dock.
Behind us, the old city fortifications marked flood lines and dates, commemorating when the river waters spilled over their banks to creep up the high, towering walls that surrounded the city. – The Washington Post
■ For further information, visit frankfurtonfoot.com