FRANZISKA OUT AND ABOUT

What can you learn from looking back at your archives? The key conclusions for me: I have since improved on putting together an outfit. I have since improved on my make-up skills. I have since improved my skills to crossdress (aka emulating a woman’s appearance and behavior). How wonderful! All these three skills need practice. Putting together an outfit and learning how to apply make-up is what cis girls learn when they are in their early teens. And doing it daily, builds these skills quickly. A crossdresser like me, who leaves the house en femme just once a month, however, will take years (if ever) to reach the same level. On the other hand, quite a few cis girls never seem to learn the skills of putting together a proper outfit. Or as my wife puts it: the fashion industry continues to miserably fail on its purpose. Another conclusion is: my photographic skills improved as well. The wig I am wearing in these 2017 pictures is synthetic. I bought it 10 years back in Shanghai for around...

Long blond hair, a skimpy pink dress, high heels, and big boobs have a certain allure to the common crossdresser, and I am the first one to admit that. But sometimes, I just want to take on a more moderate look, less flashy, less risky (if you happen to care more for passing than for humiliation), but no less feminine that is.   On this day in April 2024, Franziska picked her brunette wig, a lovely and unobtrusive knee-length, cottony dress with covered shoulders, and some nicely color-matched wedge sandals, with moderate heel. And off she went to enjoy a day out on the town with a little highlight and new experience in the evening. Portraits of the day At the local bus stop, having asked a fellow passenger to take a photo. Again, this is one of my earlier CDH contributions. Franzi’s public pictures at CDH tend to cover the most recent outing, weeks or months before I am able to cover the whole day and story here in my blog. You can find a link to the most recent contribution as th...

This is the evening of an already fun-filled and culinarily valuable day, as you will surely agree if you have read the previous posting. This featherlight black silk dress, worn with strappy black high-heeled sandals, is so much fun to wear. It was only recently that I learned about a small basement theater on the northern bank of the river Main, close to the city center, for which I booked a ticket for that evening. As there was a little time to kill, I walked around the city center and had a glass of wine. While I strutted past a Spanish restaurant, I heard the waitress say out loud “Uih uih uih Señorita!,” after which I heard some whistles from the guys that were sitting outside the restaurant. I ignored them all, but it put a smile on my face. “Señorita,” I thought, correctly tagged. Some more photos along my regular path: The  large metal rear entrance of “Kaiserdom St. Bartholomäus,“ that you have seen before and a statue of Friedrich Stolze. He was born in Frankfurt in 1816...

Today, I am going to take you into the wilds of culinary Frankfurt and along with Franzi on a long and fun-filled day en femme. The day started out as so often on “Saturdays out and about,” my wife being out with a friend, Franzi home alone, enjoying the transformation process. I work with a check list – don’t laugh, I am an engineer and I love check lists. I have often forgotten certain things or aspects during preparation, such as fake lashes or earrings or blush or my debit card. That is why I developed a two-page long check list, page one covering the preparatory steps that can be taken the evening before and page two detailing the step-by-step transformation. One fun aspect in Franzi’s preparation and an early entry on page two of my check list is “girly music.” Lately, I have been listening to an Apple music play list called “Girl Power” during my transformation. Portrait of the day In the late morning, Franziska left home and took the bus from the bus stop around the corner to F...

The first church of the day, “Paulskirche” (St. Paul's Church), right in historic downtown, is not used for church services anymore. Originally built between 1789 and 1833, it served as a protestant church until 1944, before being converted (no pun intended) into an assembly hall. One of the most significant current uses is for the award ceremony of the “Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels” (Peace price of the German book trade). Recipients of this price range from Max Tau in 1950 to Salman Rushdie in 2023.  Franziska, taking seat in the audience. Unfortunately, there was no event that day to attend. The speaker’s desk Paulskirche in Frankfurt also has high significance for Germany’s democratic development. It served as assembly hall for the first ever democratic convention on German ground, the Frankfurter Nationalversammlung, which took place in 1848/49. On display in the main hall of Paulskirche, you find the German national flag (above Franzi) and the flags of the 16 states...

I have had this dress for a number of years and it remains to be one of my most favorite ones, if not  the  most favorite (“Lieblingskleid”) and regular readers of this blog have seen it before. It is fairly short and as it is very light and silky, the lightest wind makes it move about or up, making me somewhat self-conscious wearing it. But I simply love it, especially when worn with very thin 5 or 7 denier nylons. The blazer goes very well with it (I think), also as it provides for a certain level of modesty – and I tend to wear flats with this dress.  Portrait of the day As the weather was fantastic, I walked from home to downtown Frankfurt, crossing the “Old Bridge.” Wikipedia knew to tell me that it was first mentioned in writing in 1222 and that it had been destroyed and rebuilt at least 18 times since. Its current form was opened in 1926 by mayor Ludwig Landmann and it is built from local red sandstone. In the background on the left, you see Frankfurt’s skyline, wh...

Today is an important day to all who are into carnival. In Germany (and maybe elsewhere as well), 11.11 at 11.11 a.m. is the kick-off of the carnival season, the so-called "fifth season," which ends on Ash Wednesday, which - in 2024 - happens to be on Valentin's day. What a cosmic concidence !!! Carnival, as you know, is a large dress-up as somebody or something else party and doing crazy things. Hence, today is a perfect day for Franziska to resurface, even though I  doubt  that there will be many carnevalists out in Frankfurt today and I  hope  that Franziska will be anything but viewed as one of them. In any case, Franziska is getting ready for a day out and about at that very moment this post is published. I still owe you a posting on Franziska’s year-end 2022 evening as her brunette self. After an enjoyable day out and about in Frankfurt, Franziska headed home to get ready for the evening. From downtown Frankfurt that is just a 20-minute walk or a 5-minute ride ...