I’ve had a really delightful stay in Frankfurt with my friend Tamar and her partner Rafi. When I arrived on Tuesday, we went out for Indian food. It had to be some of the best Indian food I’ve ever had.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday, working on all the blog entries that I missed because we didn’t have Internet at all the places we stayed in Egypt. Thursday night we also went to see a comedian at the Jewish community center. Luckily, it was all in English and he was very funny. On Friday Tamar and I went swimming at this complex that got its water from mineral springs. The water was pleasantly heated. There was also some hotter pools.

On Saturday, Tamar and I went to services in the morning. In the afternoon, we took a delightful couple of mile walk to a very cute little town that has a river running through it. .

On Sunday, we visited the town of Friedberg which was one of the most important trade cities during the middle ages. In the 13th century, one of the rich Jewish merchants, Isaac Ben Natan, decided to build a mikveh. Also, being built at the time was a church. Unfortunately when trying to bring the bell to the church, it toppled over and killed a child. Because of this, work on the church was suspended temporarily. The workers were hired to work on the mikveh. This made the monk in charge of the church so angry that he cursed the Mikveh. The mikveh was operational up until the 20th century though there were certain times when it was closed. However, there are many stories about women falling and hurting themselves, or in one case of a woman actually disappearing. So one really wonders about the curse. Because the town is built on a basalt hill, they had to dig fairly deep to reach water for the mikveh. The shaft going down to the water is 5 m x 5 m with a depth of 25 m. The temperature of the water is 7.5°C. It is the largest surviving Medeival mikveh in Europe, probably in the world.

At one time near the mikveh was a synagogue. It was destroyed in 1938 when most of the synagogues in Germany were burned.

We next visited the church that was being built at the same time that the mikveh was being built. It was built as a Catholic Church but is now a protestant church. It was also upgraded significantly at the start of the 20th century.

Friedberg castle is one of the largest castle complexes in Germany and was probably founded between 1171 and 1180 CE.

I really enjoyed visiting this town. Here are some pictures just taken as we walked through the streets.

After visiting this charming town, we went out for Ethiopian food.

Tomorrow I fly home. This has been a great vacation. Sorry I didn’t make it to Israel However, Egypt and Germany were just wonderful. it was also great to see my college roommates in Boston before I actually flew to Cairo.