The big run on the shops in Frankfurt did not materialize, but the supporting program is already right. People with a mask are clearly in the minority.

Frankfurt – In a critical preview for this Saturday (November 20th, 2021) the Advent apocalypse was feared. Economic bottlenecks everywhere would cause an unpleasant “If you don’t have a present now, you can’t buy one anymore” feeling and lure people en masse to power shopping in the city centers.

At least on Germany’s largest shopping mile, the Zeil in Frankfurt, this gloomy forecast will not come true. In any case, everything is still quite normal here on Saturday afternoon. In other words, all hell is breaking loose. In such cases one could speak of a Kinski normality: completely meschugge, but as always. A certain Kinski normality has crept in when it comes to epidemic protection in Corona times, and mask wearers are clearly in the minority. But if you manage to keep a minimum distance from your neighbor, you can also perform in the Tiger Palace. But the mask is not yet mandatory either.

Frankfurt: Shopping madness is within unexpected limits

Long queues in front of trendy shops, as we know them from post-lockdown times, are hardly to be seen on Saturday. Only in front of the Louis Vuitton store on Roßmarkt are customers dying in the alley when it would be free inside. The opposite is true. Another line worth mentioning can only be found in front of the sausage roastery in the new old town, but they at least sell something that people need to live, namely sausage. Yes, uh needs it! It’s now also available in vegan.

The shopping madness is also within unexpected limits. But as far as the supporting program is concerned, you can rely on the Zeil and everything on Kinski. Street musicians play against each other with everything the instruments produce. Inspired preachers yell in your face that God loves everyone – but can’t he do it a little more quietly? Animal rights activists scourge the injustice of animals, as they scourge the Zeil visitors with animal complaints and grunts from the tape.

Frankfurt: Does he think outside the box now or does he just want to shop?

Young people hop on the Roßmarkt. But it is not about coal-power critics, but about cosplayers who don’t really care whether they are freezing or just dancing. The music played along with it suggests the latter. Next door at the Goethe Monument is the Roßmarkt with a unique number of police vehicles. The state power did not come because of the queer thinkers, but because of the “lateral thinkers”.

Because, of course, dying shouldn’t be missing on such a day, that would be even nicer. They met at 3 p.m., around 500 crossheads, at the Austrian consulate in Reuterweg, and then wandered through the city without a mask, which would not have been noticed in view of the conditions on the Zeil. Shortly afterwards, however, there were already 1500 crossheads, so that the organizers briefly pressed the great reset button and changed the demo hiking trail. Now you don’t even know who is doing what, when and where, especially because another “lateral thinker group” already met at 1 p.m. to march at Willy-Brandt-Platz – and you ask every maskless person you see involuntarily: is he thinking outside the box or just wanting to shop?

Even fewer masks are worn in Frankfurt in the evening

But as I said: the shopping craze is limited. Which is no longer surprising when you first have to clear the way to the apartment in the stairwell at home with a machete through the Amazon parcel jungle. And for the real madness there is still four Saturdays until Christmas, maybe it will be something else. It will definitely be something.

Much fuller than it was already, but at least it won’t be on this Saturday evening either. The only thing that changes is that even fewer people wear masks at night. And that a few more have been added to the Louis Vuitton sausage roaster queues, namely in front of every inner-city parking garage, where motorists wait in seemingly endless rows for a parking space to be free inside. You can of course wait a long time, and they do that, undaunted and with the engine running. Everything within the framework of Kinski normality. (Stefan Behr)