Day 2 of my travels.

Stuttgart Tree Huggers

Yesterday I arrived in Frankfurt after what was actually a pretty short flight from LAX. The flight, for the most part was pretty comfortable, the only slightly uncomfortable portion of the flight was when the guy in front of my was constantly trying to get his seat to recline further than it would go, smashing the seat into my knees. I honestly thought that he was going to break the reclining mechanism at any point and come slamming back into me. After the served dinner and a cocktail of your choice, they turned the lights out and requested all passengers to close their window shades. I fell asleep watching the in-flight movie (The Adjustment Bureau) which I actually had wanted to see. When I woke up I peeked out the window to a sea of white clouds, at least 15,000 feet below us, and a bright eastern sun. As the sun was in the east, I knew that we were already heading south towards Frankfurt. A quick peak at the location that was shown on the overhead displays confirmed my suspicions. We were only 1.5 hours out of Frankfurt.

Deplaning was one of the fastest and most efficient processes that I have ever seen at an airport. Each side of the aircraft had three jetways (2 for business and standard class, and one for the upper deck first class on each side. From the time that we pulled up to the terminal until I was off the plane and on my way to get my bag was less than 10 minutes. The Germans certainly know how to engineer efficiency, most impressive.

Getting through passport control and customs was a breeze.

Next was the greeting point. This was clustered full of people greeting their friends and family as they arrived...a bit difficult as there were some expectations here (CR)...but I powered right through it, put a smile on my face and reveled in the fact that "I AM IN EUROPE!!!!!"

The challenge came when it was time to get to the main hub of the Frankfurt train system so that I could get to my hotel, offload my bags, and go exploring. Finding the correct line was rather difficult, but with a few questions to the local people, I was off on the right train and direction. My hotel was extremely easy to find ( I selected it as it was directly on the East end of the Main train station. This would ensure 2 things;

1. I could get to my Hotel quickly once I arrived 
2. I could get to the train station quickly in the morning for my transit to Stuttgart. 

The hotel staff was extremely helpful and spoke English (a big plus for me as I know all of 2 words in German). After a few minutes I was checked in and off to my hotel room...and what a shocker that was. Hotels in the states are never really all that impressive, but this made a room at a Motel Six look like a luxory suite. Don't get me wrong , the room was neat and tidy, just really small. At first impression I didn't know if there was going to even be enough room for me to put my bag on the floor. Despite it's small size, there were some really nice things about it. The mini-bar was 100% free (and it had some really good beer in it), the shower, although small, was well thought out. The shower head was not a titling shower head that I am accustomed to, but it was affixed to a rod that you could adjust the height (perfect for me cause I would have had to bend over and touch my toes to wash my hair if it didn't move) . There were well placed shelves that folded down from the walls to place toiletries, and the mirror did not fog up.

After a few minutes of relaxing, I decided that I really was not all that tired, so it was time to venture out and explore the city of Frankfurt. When I am driving, I have a pretty good sense of direction. I can pick a visible fixture and figure out where I am in relation to it. Not so much here. I walked for several miles thinking that I was heading in the correct direction, and somehow managed to unintentionally wind up back where I started. I guess the good news is that I got lost to a point that I knew exactly where I was. At this point I was getting pretty hungry so I went down the street to a bar that was packed with people watching the Women's World Cup. Now this is a sport that is entertaining to watch, especially when you are surrounded by crazy drunk people from all parts of the world, dressed in togas and capes made from the flag of the country that they are supporting. The 2 craziest things that I saw:

A Japanese guy with what amounted to a very scary hat with Barbie dolls strapped around it. I don't know why, but I just found this really disturbing….
A group of guys dressed as Smurfs. There was Papa Smurf, Handy Smurf, and even Smurfette (and yes it was a guy). These guys took this to the extreme. They were wearing white little shoes and white pants, then painted from head to toe in blue body paint, completed by a white stocking cap

After some food and some beer I decided that it was time to retire for the night. The bed was surprisingly comfortable and I slept really well, until about 5:30 in the morning. Breakfast was really good, especially the coffee.

The coffee was fresh ground, strong, but not bitter, perfectly hot, but not scalding. Starbucks should take lessons from them.

After breakfast, I sat in the lobby of the Hotel, checked my email, responded to some messages, and proceeded to plan out my day. The p[lace that I had arranged to stay in Stuttgart had to cancel, so I am left with no definitive idea of where I am going to stay in Stuttgart. I attempted to book a Hostel, but there is a field in their database that is set to "cannot be null", but there are no values to select, so I cannot complete my reservation online. Kind of annoying. So I figure that I will just go to Stuttgart and figure it out from there. I have all day. Tomorrow morning I will check out the Porsche Museum and the Mercedes Museum, then head off to meet Wolfgang in Fussen.


'Til my next post...