My short flight passed over the Côte d’Azur, past the Pyrenees and northern Spain, then later on into the Alps as the sun set and a full moon was visible on the horizon. Quite a lovely trip.
I landed at around 18:00. in Frankfurt Hahn, which is the biggest gimmick Ryanair has going, since it is geographically closer to France than to Frankfurt, lying at a good hour and 45 minutes away by bus. Further confounding my arrival into Frankfurt-am-Main was the fact that no bus left until 20:15. Plenty of time to enjoy the welcoming ambiance of tiny Hahn airport and the cold outside. I did, however, become acquainted with a young Mexican couple from D.F., who were travelling throughout Europe, much like myself, for a month.
When the bus finally did leave, 18 minutes late (my first taste of German punctuality) we had a ways to go along backroads and the autobahn (I clocked our speed at approx. 130 kph on the limitless road), through Mainz and Frankfurt’s (real) international airport, before arriving, at around 22:15, at Hauptbahnhof, close to the seedy part of town.
Luckily, Tom was still waiting for me at the stop, but was becoming quite annoyed at an Albanian gastarbeiter (whose car was actually blocking the bus when it pulled up) and his young daughter, since the had the “Ketchup Song” (Aserejé) on repeat play and were dancing in the sidewalk.
We got ourselves into the Hauptbahnhof and made our way down to the U-bahn, after Tom negotiated the nighttime schedules and cantankerous farecard machines. Everyone in Frankfurt, very unlike Spain, is preoccupied with timetables, and they are published in large books that seem to be widely distributed.
As we neared the bottom of one escalator, we were chatting away, when Tom suddenly turned, yelled something in German, then ran on ahead. At first stunned, after some introspection I figured this meant we were probably about to miss a train, so I took off in like manner. Unfortunately, my luggage didn’t follow suit, instead sliding sideways at great speed into my legs, causing my knees to buckle and planting me face-down and sliding along the dirty platform (luckily, but very nearly, avoiding a nasty drop onto the tracks themselves – thus causing a “technical malfunction” in the U-bahn.) Needless to say, we missed the train.
Once we arrived in Seckbach landstrasse, we caught a bus up to Tom and Lynn’s flat in Atzelbergstrasse. Mom actually rang Tom’s mobile (“handy” in Germglish slang) right as we came to the door of his apartment building (thereby proving once again maternal instincts...she also ran McGuire’s pub in Limerick only minutes after I graced its doorstep), but as we had to maintain the deathly German silence of 11 p.m., we had to ring back.
Despite having an early start the next morning with Lufthansa, Lynn was up and it was great to see her and have a chat. It was quite comical to arrive in a German flat only to be greeted by a large Caribbean painting and to hear bachata music playing in the background, but that’s Lynn for you.
Tom and I stayed up into the wee hours as we caught up and set to our task of sampling a good many German pilsners. Then, reckoning we should probably call it a night before Lynn arose for work to find us around the same table as when she went to sleep, we collapsed on an inflatable mattress in his new room; he had only moved into the flat about a week earlier, hence the temporary accommodations.
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