Guten Tag! Last day in Frankfurt for a week or so. I forgot to mention we went and saw the movie “Oceans 13” at the only English (Original Version) cinema here the other day, we really enjoyed it, very snappy, slick, funny movie, loved the out of character banter between Brad and George near the end of the film.
Last night, Saturday night, before heading off to the Robert-Johnson club, Andreas took us out for some traditional Frankfurt drinks and food.
We went to a very well known, old, original Äpplerkneipen (apple wine inn) called Zum Gemalten Haus, over the river Main in Sachsenhausen, a quite trendy part of Frankfurt.
As you would expect, we drank a lof of Frankfurt’s national drink, Ebbelwei (apple wine), which is poured from a huge grey ceramic jug called a Bembel, and then drunk from a Gerippte, a special apple wine glass. We drank it mixed with sparkling mineral water, as it can be a bit sour and acidic drunk pure. It goes down as quick/easy as sparkling apple juice and you get drunk very easily.
For eating we had some Frankfurt specialties, I had a huge thick pork chop (salted and boiled) served on top of sauerkraut, with boiled potatoes, usually you have mashed potato, but they had run out, as we were eating late at 11pm (just after sunset!). Joanne had a traditional large Frankfurt beef sausage, also served with sauerkraut and potatoes. Andreas (who is vegetarian) had the traditional Frankfurt eggs with green sauce, served with boiled potatoes. The eggs are hard boiled and sliced, and the green sauce, Grie Soss, is a thick, creamy sauce, always made from the same seven herbs; parsley, pimpernel, chives, water-cress, chervil, garden sorrel and borage. Much eating and drinking, we rolled out of there, and then headed to the much hyped Robert-Johnson club in Offenbach.
On arriving and walking upstairs, once inside my first thought was… This is it? This is a club? It’s a little room with white walls. It looks like an art space, with make-shift bar and DJ console. It’s small, capacity 250 people. A couple of coloured neon tubes are the only lighting. It’s very loud in there for such a small space, using 6 large speakers suspended from the ceiling, 3 on each side of the dance space. There’s benches all around the walls to sit on. There is also a balcony outside, looking over the river. Lots of smokers in this club, all ignoring the ‘thank you for not smoking’ signs. We saw one guy wearing a t-shirt with “I Love Myself” written on it, which err… said lots about the type of crowd, very different to the Cocoon crowd.
We had to ask the DJs who was playing. I think I may have asked DJ Ata the guy who runs Playhouse/Robert-Johnson. It was DJ Stephen Kürtz (sp?) from Frankfurt who warmed up with some nice deep-tech-house and minimal sounds. He was followed by the main act, two guys playing back to back, known as Optimo. Google tells me they are DJ’s JD Twitch and JG Wilkes from UK/Glasgow. They played a lot of funky, chunky house, electro-house and old-school analogue/acid techno, a few old classics. They got the room jumping. It was loud/busy music, and I wasn’t really in the mood for it, struggling to stay awake, too much apple wine earlier.
Their set was split up with a live set from Max Mohr, a Playhouse artist. He performed on a small stage opposite the DJ console. Another Apple laptop, Ableton Live live set. His music was ok, simplistic tech-house/minimal stuff. It was really obvious he was just turning clips on/off in Ableton Live and not doing anything else.
We left around 3am, which seemed to be the time a lot more people were arriving. Andreas tells us the club sometimes keeps pumping until 10am the next day! It would be a sweat-box! I really don’t understand the attraction of partying that long in a small club.It was cool to check out Robert-Johnson, but wasn’t anything at all like we were expecting.
On the move… We’re off to Paris tomorrow for 4 or 5 days, so this is the probably the last long post for a while. We’ll be back to using Internet Cafes again. It’s been handy having a laptop and Internet to use whilst here in Frankfurt… We may go check out John Acquaviva at Rex-Club in Paris whilst we’re there.
Thanks for reading… Speak to you again from Paris, au revoir.
Optimo did a really good mix on Beats in Space. Sounds like you are partying hard, keep up the good work, and post some photos somewhere please!
Comment by Rozie — June 25, 2007 @ 4:38 pm