Before I walked to the Goethe University Frankfurt to attend Kaya’s and Arnoud’s lecture where they compared the following two postcolonial memory films: De Oost (Arnoud) and Measures of Men (Kaya), I took myself on a trip to explore the city centre of Frankfurt am Main.

The goal was to reach Isabella, a dedicated gluten-free establishment. I earlier wrote a blog about Isabella patisserie located in Düsseldorf. This time again, I ordered a lot of goodies to try but not all of which I enjoyed.

When I entered their café it was lively and the two employees that were running the café were too busy with juggling all the balls. I had some additional questions about the panini’s that they offered and which ones were without garlic, onion, leeks, spring onion, chives, rakkyo et cetera (everything from the allium family). To help me out, they needed to call the manager. In the background of this, the two employees were bickering about customers’ orders, who should do what et cetera. One of them was telling the other one what to do, while she did what she was told, she talked back at him as well. The female employee called the manager to ask. Luckily, for me and for them as well, she spoke on the phone with the manager and the manager replied that she wanted to come down to the café herself to explain to me which panini’s I could order. When she came down she took charge of the situation again. The male employee was made visible what he should have been doing which created a little bit of internal conflict within, while both the employees continued to argue with each other.

I finally placed my order and waited for my coffee to be brought to me by the very lovely female employee. The male employee took a lunch break, went for a walk and called someone to vent to. After I finished my coffee, I needed to visit the bathroom before walking back to the hotel. I learned that the bathroom is not easy to reach. It was located on the first or the second floor (I can’t remember) and you need to take the elevator to reach it. There is no other way. The male employee just got back to the store and we ended up in the elevator together with a bit of tension because the whole situation enfolded in front of me. He was on the phone talking. He kindly showed me the way towards the toilets. When you arrive on the upper floor you need to go left, take two more left turns before you reach them. I peed, washed my hands and walked back towards the elevator. I pushed the button and entered the elevator while I heard the doors slams of one the earlier exits down the hall (where the male employee went in). I quickly pushed the button to go to the ground level to not end up in the situation where the other person does not in time catches the elevator but you do end up seeing the face of disappointment off the other person between this line of closing elevator doors (he was not in the best mood for that). I was also in a hurry to get back to the hotel in time, eat some food and after that leave to walk to the university, plus fetch some dinner somewhere. After their lecture, we were going to eat and have drinks in an Ethiopian restaurant where I knew I wasn’t able to order anything due to Kaya being so kind to check with the restaurant before we visited! I left the cafe, while I quickly took a few photos of the counter.

On the road to the hotel, I tried to figure out where I could buy something to eat to take with me. I found a breakfast/lunch café to buy a smoothie bowl which was easy to carry and the café was almost en route to the university where I would meet up with Arnoud and Kaya for their lecture which I was very enthusiastic about, plus to see Kaya again after our time in Lima! I ended up being right on time for the start with a smoothie bowl and we left that night after a pleasurable trip that we ended with after dinner drinks with a small group since Emmanuel went on an odyssey to reach Frankfurt!

Isabella - Frankfurt am Main

Shojin – Los Angeles