When in Mannheim, don’t forget to try a delicious Food Burger. Props to LEB for providing the photo.
Waiting for a new tire for my motorcycle, I was forced to travel around Frankfurt by public transit this past week. The experience really reaffirmed how small the city actually is. Since I can’t read on buses or trams or subways without getting sick, I have the opportunity to really pay attention to everything going on around me. I realized that I could see the same landmarks at comparable distances in different parts of the city. It’s no surprise then, that the city is much smaller than it feels while riding public transit.
Being able to drive through the city on your own gives you a better sense of the size of the city. However, two things have so far hindered my perception of Frankfurt. First, driving a motorcycle doesn’t allow you the luxury of gawking. Loss of focus can easily lead to a fender bender on crowded city streets. You also have to pay attention to your immediate surroundings to avoid missing a turn or going the wrong way (map bags and handlebar mounted navigators are simply less user-friendly than their automotive counterparts). Which leads me to my second hindrance. Frankfurt’s streets (like streets all over Europe) are rarely laid out in grids. They also compensate for lake of space by having an excessive amount of one way streets. It’s very easy to get disoriented. It’s very difficult to correct any mistakes made while disoriented. Getting stuck on a one way street might cause you to take a 15-20 minute detour just to get back to where you missed a turn. This is also true on the freeways surrounding the city. Unlike most US freeways that allow for a quick turnaround at every exit, many exits off Frankfurt’s freeways are unidirectional.
Traveling by transit alleviates some of the stress city driving can bring (even though crowded trains can add a different kind of stress). What transit makes up for in ease, though, it lacks in speed. Buses, trams, and trains lack the frequency of their larger city counterparts, yet cost relatively higher in Frankfurt – a one way ticket within the city will cost €2.50, or €4.10 to or from the airport. From where I live at the edge of the city limits to the city center takes me about 30-40 minutes with transit (depending on punctuality and such). In that time I travel about 6-7 miles. If I were to travel 30-40 minutes from my rural hometown, I could reach a distance of between 20 and 30 miles. Unfortunately this is kind of an apples to pomegranates comparison.
To even it out I’d have to use city a city driving versus country driving comparison. So traveling from where I live to the city center should take me about 20 minutes. By contrast, a 20 minute drive from my hometown will leave me 13-14 miles away. The comparison still favors rural distance 2 to 1.
So what does all of this mean? I don’t think it’s any great revelation that driving in the country covers more distance in less time than city driving. I think what it means is that, like any other city Frankfurt may seem bigger than it actually is to those visitors using it’s network of public transit. However, careful planning with readily available transit maps, using the local transit’s website, and covering as much ground as possible by foot will save a lot of time and effort when travelling throughout the city.
I’m wondering what that poor animal did to get shot in the paw like that.
jknitt
