Frankfurt Book Fair—Saturday/Sunday

I haven’t meant to leave out the parties, but the truth is that between late-running dinner conversations and early starts, I hadn’t been going to any worth writing about, until Friday night.

"Catalan culture" has been the "guest of honour" at the fair this year. Not a country but an "autonomous community," with political and linguistic "issues" complicating its relationship with Spain and the rest of the world, Catalonia has much to prove. It has clearly thrown a lot of money into the fair and invested in some great design. Apart from beautiful thick information booklets about Catalan writers and a dazzling white stand, all retro curves and playful portholes, the Catalans organised a series of functions to bring us up to speed on the main points of Catalan culture. Friday night’s dinner party was one of these.

A few hundred people queued to get into the Bockenheimer Depot on Friday evening. Once inside, we certainly didn’t fill the enormous space of this 100-year-old vaulted warehouse. We were greeted with champagne, but the decadent tone was underlined by a bar serving four different reds and four fine white wines, all free. Dinner was a series of tapa-sized platefuls: a modern Catalonian tasting menu in effect, fielding some odd combinations such as beef in chocolate and melty goat’s cheese dim sum. After dinner, Barcelona’s famous Sonar festival was due to take over with a Frankfurt special, and some Catalan poets took the stage. More decorous than wild, but it was a great show.

Saturday night was a different story. I met some friends at the glitzy Frankfurterhof Hotel for what could have been a nightcap, but the place was buzzing, as every night of the fair—this is where the legendary parties are thrown. Then someone mentioned a secret Canongate party so we followed the tips and ended up in a little bar by the river Main. My friends were pointing out famous writers and publishers whom I hadn’t recognised, all drowning their exhaustion in drink. Someone said it was all very well but she wanted some dancing, and as if by magic a little cave appeared round the side of our bar. We all crowded in and straight onto the dancefloor to I Love Rock n Roll…

I had thought the Frankfurt party scene would be more about dance music, you know, more of a rave scene. But I guess when it comes to this old-fashioned industry still depending on people with time to read and a product made from paper, we prefer our parties classic and our music to have stood the test of time.