It's Been Fun, Frankfurt!

 Today is our last full day in Frankfurt and tomorrow evening we will fly back home. So to finish off our visit we went to two Museums and walked around a lot.

We started the morning by taking a train to Mainz about 40 minutes away. Mainz is near the Rhine River (spelled Rhein in German). Mainz is considered the wine capital of Germany and every Saturday they have a Farmer's Market with food and lots of wine. Too bad I'm not a big fan of wine. This would be a good place to enjoy a little wine tasting. Instead we were on a mission to go to the Gutenberg Museum. Johannes Gutenberg was born and raised in Mainz. He is considered the man of the millennium by many and his invention of the moveable type printing press in the mid 1400's revolutionized mass communication in Europe. There was a lot of information about the history of printing and Gutenberg's life. Most of it was written in German and the museum was very dark to protect the manuscripts. There were some beautiful handwritten documents with gorgeous illustrations, but I wasn't able to read that much about them since I don't read German and the lighting made it hard for my old person's eyes to read the little bit of English.

Gutenberg printed between 158 and 180 copies of the Bible in Latin. 49 copies still remain. The museum had two complete copies and a portion of one. They are displayed in the "Strong Room" which is a fire-proof vault. The copies are displayed behind bullet proof glass and you are not allowed to take any photos while in the vault. Along with viewing the exhibits, we also watched a printing demonstration on a Gutenberg printing press reproduction. It was about 40 minutes long and the woman doing the demonstration spoke very enthusiastically in German. Fortunately, Joe and David had taken me to the International Printing Museum in Los Angeles for Mother's Day, so I had a good idea of what she was talking about.

We finished at the Gutenberg Museum and took the train back into Frankfurt and found our way back to our chosen museum along the banks of the Main, The Museum for Communication. This museum was fascinating. It had several floors with interactive exhibits about types of communication including letter writing, radio, TV, teletype, telephone, and the internet. We played with switchboards, listened to a variety of radio stations, read love letters from poets, and learned that fake news has been around forever. 

There was a special temporary exhibit about a well-known illustrator, Axel Scheffler. He is a German illustrator and animator who lives in London. He is best known for his drawings in The Gruffalo written in 1999 by Julia Donaldson as well as many other children's books. The exhibit was so much fun. Scheffler was known for sending his friends letters where he creatively drew all over the envelope often incorporating even the stamp into his drawings. We were able to view dozens of these amazing works of art.

We had an early dinner (6:30 pm) at Frittenwerk where everything is on french fries. I got Chili Cheese Fries, Joe got Pulled Pork Poutine, and Zach got Bolofritten which was lots of different veggies over fries with a chipotle type sauce. The chili in my chili cheese fries was more like a tomato sauce with onions and the cheese was similar to a nacho cheese but not spicy. Zach said the Bolofritten was the spiciest thing on the menu and that it ranked a 3 out of 10 for him. I guess Germans don't really like spicy food.

We are back at Zach's house now and the guys are playing some video games like Nintendo Switch Sports and Overcooked with Zach's roommate Jon. My suitcase is basically packed and ready to go tomorrow. 

We have had a good time with Zach exploring Germany. Joe checked his steps over these past few weeks, and each day we averaged between 13,000 and 15,000 steps except for the first day when we did the walking tour with Marylyn. That day we went about 27,000 steps. It's been some fun days filled with walking and riding numerous types of transportation. We have ridden buses, trams (similar to the San Diego Trolley), the S-Bahn (stands for Schnell or Street Train), the U-Bahn (stands for Underground Train), Regional Trains, and high speed trains. I now know how to read and understand "next stop" or "next station" although I still would not be able to find the right station or platform to get on the correct train!

Time to play Happy Little Dinosaurs and then head to bed.