Frankfurt is rapidly overtaking Hamburg as the capital of Germany's sex industry. We investigates the city's burgeoning red light scene.

Beate Uhse's stylish new Mae B. stores are designed to appeal mainly to women

When you pose the words 'Germany' and 'sex' to travel agents or well-travelled friends, it's likely you'll be sent on your way to Hamburg. The north-western city's famous Reeperbahn is known as the biggest German port of call for businessmen and exploratory couples alike who are searching for all the tools and taunts of love outside of the bedroom (or Amsterdam).

What these accidental sexperts are not so likely to tell you is that there is a burgeoning erotic centre a few dots on the map south of Hamburg - in otherwise staid Frankfurt. As one of the main ports of entry for travellers to Germany, as well as a major thoroughfare for other European destinations, the city - and its airport - has boomed in the last 10 years to become one of the country's leading destinations for fantasy-fulfilling shopping and commercial sex services.

The more hyped Hamburg is known for its gaudy, obvious ways. Not that Frankfurt doesn't glow with its inevitable proportion of tacky - most stores sport the ubiquitous flashing female figures and garish downward-pointing red arrows. But there is a user-friendly, everyday vibe to Frankfurt's red light district that makes spending beer money on vinyl corsets and attending a blue movie at noon on a sunny day just another thing to tick off the traveller's to-do list.

In fact, one need not even enter the city for the Frankfurt sexperience. Dr Mueller's Sex Shop (complete with a movie theatre) has three locations in the Departure and Arrivals terminals, and Beate Uhse - Dr Mueller's mother company - has two smallish but exhaustive stores as well. Frankfurt's airport was the first in Germany (and quite possibly the world) to incorporate sex into transit.

But if you have a few hours to spare, catch the S-Bahn into the Hauptbahnhof and you'll find yourself at the steps of the Bahnhofsviertel, the area surrounding the train station where the heart of the city's Eros lies. While the airport's emporium is impressive, the Dr Mueller's on Kaiserstrasse is bigger and bluer and has deals galore. The merchandise is your standard fare - lots of red and black and plastic - but the magazine racks stock international publications and there are bucket loads of DVDs in various world languages.

As is the case in most red light centres, the gay scene in Frankfurt is pumping, with gay and lesbian bars and 'services' as available and popular as the heterosexual outlets that often become dark hangouts for leering, lonely men. Gay guides tout Frankfurt as a lively and even sophisticated stopover and inside the city several gay publications ('Fritz' is a leading one) and call lines direct explorers to the hot spots.

Former fighter pilot Beate Uhse is Germany's unlikely patron saint of porn

For the men, stores like Gayrein, New Man, and Jerome Kino and Shop are all within dancing distance of each other and offer a range of experiences, from the rowdy to the romantic. Alte Gasse and Schaefergasse are the gay hangout lanes, with a few men-only bars and venues for mixed (open) crowds. The only strictly-women bar, La Gata, is on Seehofstrasse, while Petra's Naomi on Bleichstrasse is a well-known lesbian scene.

And heterosexual women don't miss out entirely. Last year Frankfurt was the second city (after, yes, Hamburg) to celebrate the opening of Mae B, the women-friendly arm of Beate Uhse, designed by a couple of young Berlin art students and situated in the Karstadt department store on Zeilstrasse. While there is something a little precious about its location, the intention is to include sex products among shopping necessities and to provide a safe, clean environment for women to buy their silky handcuffs, waterproof vibrators, and late-night erotic listening.

Germany's sex industry has been seen as a model for initiative and success in a country that has been undergoing severe economic hardship since reunification began 16 years ago. Opening its first store in 1962, Beate Uhse is responsible for the majority of products and retail outlets in the country and in the final quarter of last year reached a gross of $62 million (EUR 48 million).

In 2001, Germany mourned the passing of the company's founder and namesake - an 88-year old woman who in wartime worked as a fighter pilot. A month later, press reports flashed news of the company's 76 percent increase in sales, while the country's economy slumped and other retailers suffered from sales stagnancy.

So it's fitting that Germany's adult entertainment industry would find a natural setting in Frankfurt, otherwise known as Bankfurt or Mainhattan. It was here, after all, that Beate Uhse became the first adult entertainment company to register on the country's stock exchange in 1999, a long 37 years after the first store opened in the Baltic town of Flensburg.

As Goethe, the city's most famous son, once pointed out, "Frankfurt is full of curiosities." It's not so curious, perhaps, that banking and sex go together after all.

[Copyright Expatica 2008]

Subject: Frankfurt, sex shops