We were soon determined to find out. We set out from our
hotel (the über traditional German Holiday Inn Express), walking
around downtown Frankfurt, past park, museum, opera house and
skyscraper after skyscraper. We must have walked two miles before
we decided we were hungry enough to look for a place to eat a
proper Sunday lunch.
Nothing was open. Nada bookstore or a department store. Not
the Apple store! Not even a Starbucks! A few sidewalk cafés seemed
open, but they were sparsely populated, even on a mild late winter
day. It seems German “blue” laws endure into the 21st Century.
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8
“If you live in a land where you
wear shoes out every few months,
and avoid consuming virtually all
fried foods, you can eat whatever
else your heart desires.”
So we walked the half mile or so down to the Main River, which
bisects the city, much as the Seine crosses Paris. And there we found
a lovely “modern German” restaurant, Main Nizza, doing a
bustling business.
We were introduced to the owner, a gregarious British fellow,
who welcomed us to Germany, to Frankfurt, and to his restaurant.
We were seated at a banquet with a glorious view out the wall of
windows overlooking the Main River. This restaurant reminded me
of what Rick’s Boatyard could have been if they had only tried. The
food was essentially a fancy version of German comfort food. We
really liked it, including the apfelwein. We also noted that the only
amply proportioned people we saw in all of Germany were seated
around us in Nizza. More than a few were Brits and Americans, as it
turned out.
That night we walked the neighborhood around our hotel, trying
to decide where to have dinner. Fortunately, most of the restaurants
were of the ‘mom and pop’ variety, either pizzerias, Japanese or
Turkish. We opted for the latter. I confess to have never eaten at
a Turkish restaurant before, and though I am certain there are
differences with Greek cuisine, I will only say that if you enjoy
Greek food, you will enjoy Turkish just as much. The similarities
dwarf the differences.
The bulk of our time in Germany was spent in the charming
little university city of Heidelberg, located on the edge of the
Black Forest. The University of Heidelberg hosted the conference
I attended. The city seemed designed for walking, and we did a
lot of it (we ended up wearing out three pairs of shoes during our