After the first Frankfurt trip, I had to go to Frankfurt again for work, and this time we had a little bit more time to explore the city. Frankfurt, or as the city center is known - Frankfurt am Main - is mainly a financial/commercial area, so we asked around where we can get some of the local 'flavor' so to speak, and we were all pointed towards a city district called Bornheim. Bornheim is a block of area designated as a historic area, where there is a huge concentration of cafes, bars, restaurant and myriad of fairs and activities for younger people. It was the original red-light district of Frankfurt - called Das lustige Dorf ("The merry village") - about 120 years ago. The main street of Bornheim is Berger Straße, a cosmopolitan boulevard with many bars, pubs and restaurants and two of Frankfurt's most traditional cider houses, Solzer and Zur Sonne.

Other than the traditional fare of all different kinds of wurst, one of the local favourites around here is the Bornheim Stinker. I'm sure that name made you curious. So - Bornheim Stinker is a dish that is made with a type of cheese found locally, called Handkäse cheese. This cheese is VERY smelly and pungent. The dish is served with the cheese (sometimes baked) on top of bread, with a vinegar and oil dressing. You have the option to get it "wit musik" (with music), which means you get it topped with chopped raw onions. When asked to explain "wit musik", the standard response is that the vinegar/oil dressing creates musical notes when it is combined with the cheese and the onions. But local inside joke is that "Die Musik kommt später," i.e. the music "comes later." meaning all the gas that can be produced by consuming raw onions. The Bornheim Stinker we had is from Wirtshaus Gikelschlag. This is very much an acquired taste, so I'll leave you without any opinions to judge for yourself.....

Another fun area to go to in Frankfurt is Sachsenhausen, but its more touristy, but it does have some really good restaurants that have more diverse food. Other than German food, Thai food seems to be very popular here (which I thought was totally random) - and also Turkish food, possibly made popular by Turkish immigrants.

After a long drive through Switzerland, we made it into Frankfurt for the workshop, and then it was all work for a few days - the area was cool, and we had some awesome views of downtown Frankfurt:

After the workshop was over, we got to go visit Frankfurt briefly. Frankfurt is a pretty commercial area, with the financial center of Germany in the heart of the town. It's also the most diverse and international - almost one in three of the people living in Frankfurt do not hold a German passport. Walking around town we also managed to stumble into the shop of a very famous graffiti artist, who goes by the street name of Klark Kent. I honestly don't know much about graffiti art, but NYC is a huge playground for graffiti artists. When he found out that we were from NY, he got all excited and started showing us all sorts of pictures from his work in NYC.

He seems to be an established artist in his field, and has worked in many different cities. He owns/runs arts and craft store in Frankfurt, names Montana. He is part of the Montata Writer Team, a group sponsored by the spray can painting manufacturer Montana. The store sells a lot of spray paint stuff, obviously, and he is pretty passionate about it. He also described Frankfurt briefly, and explained that Frankfurt is a gritty city, which makes most tourists think that its full drugs or something of that sort. But It's a hard town, he said. I didn't really feel that as we walked around, but possibly we didn't go to the 'right' areas.

We had to leave pretty early, but we came back to Frankfurt after a few months again - more here: Exploring Frankfurt: Part 2