Attractive opposites

"We're an international company. It's common for us to communicate in English," says Frank Kutschera, who works in the international client area of Deutsche Bank.

Urbanity is par for the course when you are working for a company with 80,000 employees in 1,700 locations worldwide.

Lunchtime in downtown Frankfurt; Kutschera stirs the foam on his latte macchiato. He is wearing a suit, shirt, and tie. He has black hair and a good tan.

Large foreign population

"What's true for Deutsche Bank is generally true for Frankfurt as a whole," he says. "Because of all the banks here, this is a very international city."

His friends are not only Germans. They are Italians, Swiss, Americans, and more. The mixture makes Frankfurt unique among German cities. And its not something that just relates to Kutschera’s friends. In Frankfurt, a quarter of the population comes from some other country.

Kutschera says he likes the city's metropolitan flair. "Frankfurt has a lot of good museums, a lot of theater, and star performers often stop here while they are touring Europe," he says.

Then he laughs, and says: "Frankfurt has another advantage - you can get out of town quickly because the airport is so close." It's a convenience that can't be underestimated, considering how often the banker travels for work.

The 'other' Hesse

The Rhine-Main area is the economic motor of the state, with its airport and the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as machinery and automaking plants.

But just a few kilometers outside the city lines, the other Hesse starts to show its face. This is the Hesse of picturesque villages and small, walkable cities. Kutschera lives with his wife and children on the edge of the city, in a little village called Oberursel. Nature is plentiful, and the air smells of fields and grasses. And Kutschera is only a half-hour commute from his job.

"A lot of the little villages in Hesse are historical," Kutschera said. Take Marburg, for example. Kutschera grew up there. In 1527, a university was founded there, and two years later, the reformers Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwinigly met there for religious discussions, which dealt with church politics in the throes of the Reformation.

Marbug and university life

Even today, the university is an important institution in the life of Marburg. In the Marburg old town, the streets are lined with cozy cafes and bookstores. Throngs of students - there are 20,000 at the university - ride their bikes along the narrow cobbled streets around Schlossberg Castle. In the alleyways, life continues at its unhurried pace.

In Frankfurt, though, things are different. Downtown, businesspeople run from one meeting to the next, from the office to a business lunch and back again.

"There are a lot of bars, restaurants and discos aimed overwhelmingly at young bankers," Kutschera says. "They're young, and they earn a lot of money. They're easy to find - you just have to go out at night."