Wilkommen in Frankfurt am Main

So pretty much everyone who visits Germany flies into Frankfurt am Main (literally, "Frankfurt on the Main.") It's a medium-sized city that for some reason has Germany's biggest and busiest international airport. It's kind of strange - imagine if Indianapolis were the largest airport in the US.

But Frankfurt is a nice, manageable city. It's also the only European city with a skyline - most other cities like Paris and London relegate their skyscrapers to the outskirts of town, so the original medieval city can be preserved. Not Frankfurt. Tall buildings everywhere:

If it looks cold in these pictures, that's because it was. The first night I was there, they got about four inches of snow. The German word for snow is "schnee," and this schneestorm was pretty serious (they called it "schneechaos" on the news). Some other cities lost power for most of the day because the powerlines iced over and collapsed.

More views of the schneechaos, although by this time it wasn't too chaotic. It was actually really quiet and peaceful (and cold as anything, too.):



In Germany, even hell is attractive (or attraktive, I guess):




I didn't spend too much time in Frankfurt, since I visited there last year and there's not much for tourists to do. It's a huge banking and financial city, so the place is crawling with businesspeople. I did visit the Christmas Market, which sells a lot of Santa-related trinkets as well as delicious bratwurst and hot apple cider. I'm not one for Santa trinkets, but I had a lot of cider and sausage.

Coming up in part two: Jamie goes to Berlin. Stay tuned.