Commerzbank

We spent a few hours in Frankfurt without really knowing why. Now we do. It turns out that Frankfurt is one of the biggest banking centers in Europe, next to London and Paris. The Frankfurt au Main airport comes in second only to London Heathrow in terms of most flights in Europe, ahead of Charles de Gaulle. And, perhaps most importantly (in arcane measures), it has the tallest building in Europe, the Commerzbank Tower, weighing in at 259m. It is an intense city: it looks like lower Manhattan landed on a quaint German town.

We wandered around a bit, but are due for a full day on return. We'll head for the zoo. All the Germans we met were grumpy.