Hello from Frankfurt

Day Trip in Frankfurt, Germany


Hello from Frankfurt, Germany! I can’t get a wireless connection without paying T-Mobile so this will be a delayed post. But hello nonetheless!

We landed in Frankfurt this morning for a layover of about 12.5 hours. I was really looking forward to it. We had never been to Frankfurt before and this would give us a chance to get out of the airport and into the city. I’m generally not a big fan of layovers, especially not those that are around 4 hours or so; the time drags while you’re sitting in the airport and never seems to end, but it’s too short to really leave the airport to go sightseeing (especially in the States with how long security seems to take!). 12 hours seemed like a good amount of time to get out, get into the city, have a good meal and make it back to the airport with time to spare.

Perhaps we were overzealous as we had hit just about everything on my list by 3 pm and then started feeling very, very, very sleepy while walking the streets near Hauptwache. This was probably due to the fact that the flight had a few characteristics that made it challenging for sleeping. First, it was hot. I was wearing a sleeveless shirt the entire time on board, no blanket, no coat, and I was really hot. Many times that I woke up it was because the plane was too hot. Second, the lights weren’t off. When we took off, the lights were off. But about an hour or so into the flight, they turned the lights on for “dinner service.” (Please note that this was about 10:15 pm local time). And it took over an hour for them to get dinner out to everyone. (Alvin ordered a special meal so his came in the first round. His was finished off well before they even got mine to me). The lights were bright (and hot) and especially bright for the window seat, so I made a makeshift eye mask which didn’t help much. Third, it was pretty cramped. My last flight was on JetBlue, so I’m getting used to this more legroom thing and sadly, this didn’t have it.

The service was generally good and the in-flight entertainment was awesome (Alvin and I played Battleship against one another and I got to listen to a Shinhwa CD through on-demand audio as I tried to sleep), but it was so hard to sleep on the flight so we were really exhausted after walking around Frankfurt for hours.

Anyway, back to our exciting trip to Frankfurt. We saw lots of sights and walked down lots of streets for hours (how… descriptive). We tested out the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn and concluded that the public transportation system was quite efficient and quiet. (I aim to try the public transportation in every city I go to. HK is still my favorite). We went to the Galeria Kaufhof, a department store, and almost fell asleep in the chairs (this was where the fatigue started to hit). We walked across the Main River to Sachsenhausen and had a good schnitzel lunch with apfelwein at Adolf Wagner. We marveled at how the train station platforms in Frankfurt contained recycling bins for glass, plastic and paper and wondered why that couldn’t be done at home. We went to the store at the ECB to look at the Euro collections and I took a picture with the giant Euro symbol. We followed the red dots all over the street for the Der Kaisermacher exhibits that were all over the city. Alvin took German in high school, but I learned some new German vocabulary words (“ausgang” was the first). And after a long day of hard work, we decided to come back to the airport a little early and settled in for a nap on a really empty train straight from Hauptbahnhof to the airport.

Leaving for Singapore tonight. Hopefully there will be entrees without broccoli unlike the last flight. And hopefully, with all of this walking around all day, I will be able to sleep this time. Hope you’re doing well!

Photos: (from top) Alvin and I at Romer; me with the Euro; lunch at Adolf Wagner; on the river on the way to Sachsenhausen.