Frankfurt

I spent Friday wandering around Frankfurt. No real purpose other than getting my haircut! Sitting on the square outside the Zoo, a tram went by: it was going to Ernst May Platz. It was like lightning struck me "I'm in Frankfurt, where the Frankfurt Kitchen is!" How I failed to make the connection, having been so interested in the design of this kitchen (it's the subject of my first post on this blog) is strange and beyond me!!! So I set off on a mission, full of excitement and apprehension that there were enough hours in the day to find and see the flat complex and that it would be open and that I would find people with the info.
So I figured my first port of call should be The Deutsche Architektur Museum. The staff were incredibly unhelpful and weird. They knew nothing and didn't care to help so all I could do was pay my entrance fee to the museum. It was utter crap. One of the temporary exhibs was being changed. The way in to the exhibition rooms was bizarre - through the empty auditorium, down a corridor, up a stairs and having to choose between corridoors or doors. It was very unclear. Badly laid out. So I found the permanent exhibition. A series of models called "From hut to skyscraper" or something. It had models of buildings representing generic building types - ie a primitive hut, a medieval cathedral, a greek amphitheatre. Nonsense! No architectural depth. Appropriate for a children's sideshow but not as the main exhibit in an architectural museum. Is it the national such musuem? And on the top floor: "American Architecture Today". A huge poster, each the same layout, with a picture of the partners in the practice, a biography, a photograph and maybe a drawing or photo of a model - and this for maybe 20 architects. Nonsense. Suitable for a pamphlet but by no way representative of American architecture in 2007.
And so i went to the tourist info office in the main train station where I met a most helpful young guy who happens to live in pne of the apartment blocks that used to have the Frankfurt Kitchen. So he knew about them! He looked on the computer/internet maybe and said the preserved kitchen was open to the public on saturday from 3-6 but I wasn't free and couldn't go. I didn't ask him if I could go home for dinner with him! Or even if his apartment still had the original kitchen (even the layout). And I didn't check to see if there was a phone number I could ring to make an appointment. But I did some internet-ing back in the hotel and saw that the Kitchen is reconstructed in the V&A so a trip to London is quite urgent as I've written an article on the subject and hope for it to be published.
As for Frankfurt, I didn't feel safe in the city. I found it grubby. The riverside however was beautiful; a really interesting space/place. And the way the museums are mostly all in the one area is cool. Though maybe that's a German thing-I'm thinking of Berlin's Museuminsel.