Taunus forest walk

 

 

Being close to the woods is definitely an advantage in Germany. This one was quite hilly and filled with mountain bikers. We happened to sit at a cross road after a tough uphill road, and observed the many bikers coming and stopping for a breadth.

  
 

Special easter

Goethe University

Today was such a perfect weather for a Sunday walk through Goethe University in Frankfurt. Funny how the feeling you get from a university ground is pretty much the same all over the world - students playing some kind of casual ball game on the grass.

The building construction was extremely impressive. It was the former HQ for the Allies after WWII where the Marshall Plan was implemented for Europe (sort of like the Dai-ichi Life Insurance building in Tokyo). The building was also where Nazi's lethal gas was created by IG Farben, the chemical company that originally built the whole ground. Some interesting reading here.

Monocle kid's first day of school

 

My friend Chika had prepared her son for the first day of school. Pretty.

Photo credit: Chika Yamazaki

Kloster Eberbach's winery

Who would have thought monasteries are for making and drinking alcohol. Kloster Eberbach has preserved well its old institution of wine making.

Kloster Eberbach, an old big German monastery

This monastery outside of the city was attracting almost half of Frankfurt's population... and no wonder. It was gigantic and extremely well preserved for something in Germany and from 900 years ago. It must have been such a huge institution, like those towns in the U.S. with factories, worker housing, schools for the kids of the workers, etc; only this was a monastery so they had wine making facility instead :)