Imanuel and Brenda's Travel Blog

We were up at 4:00 am this morning. At least we got 5 good hours of sleep. After yesterday's long flight and chaotic airport experience, this is an accomplishment. As you can see, I was finally able to upload some photos. Here's a photo of the security line at the airport yesterday so you can see what we went through. Notice how far away the entrance to the terminal is and that was when we were more than halfway through!

Our first day in Europe was a success! We arrived at Frankfurt early in the morning and soon discovered that we had packed way too much. Some of it is due to the fact that we'll be living in the camper for a time. We planned to ship some of the stuff but did not have time. All the baggage meant that we had to take a Taxi to the hotel (one that was a minivan as the cars would not take us). In the end it wasn't too bad since it was just a 25 euro ride and we did not have to figure out how to buy tickets for the train from the machine (more on that later).

I was surprised at the speeds our cab driver was doing on the way to the hotel. I was expecting to see aggressive driving in Italy but not so much in Germany. At one point I saw him going up to 160 Km/h in the highway. We arrived at the hotel too early and our room was not ready, so we went for a walk. The hotel is in a very trendy neighborhood and there are many funky hotels and bars around. Without knowing, we wandered into the main train station, which is the hub of activity in Frankfurt. It is not only a station but also a mall and an arcade. We roamed the shops for a while looking for a place to have lunch and sit for a while. BTW: The food here is wonderful and very cheap! We had a couple of bratwurst and a soda and I think we paid less than 5 euros. Later that night, we had a home cooked German meal for 10 euros. (There was a 2 euro deposit to make sure we brought the plate back!)

Feeling tired and jet-lagged, we headed back for the hotel around noon hoping that our room was ready. (And it was!) We went up to our room which was small (bigger than most rooms in New York City, though) but quite cozy and stylish:




We woke up around 3:00 pm and decided to go looking for a place to have dinner and walk around. We asked at the front desk and they told us that everything was near the historic center so we went back to the station. We were told that the U2 would take us directly there but using the machine to buy tickets proved more challenging than we though. After long periods of staring at the machine like idiots and a couple of trips to the information desk, we finally had our tickets. After all that work we were surprised to learn that the transport seems to run mostly on the honor system since we were never challenged for our tickets. At the city center, we were greeted by a fairy tale scene of half-timbered houses and domed buildings around a cobblestone plaza. Exploring further down the street, we came onto the city's main shopping area where upscale department stores and boutiques flanked a street where stalls selling traditional fare and German beer were mixed in with small corrals containing handfuls of farm animals. (I still don't know what the animals were for.) There were also stalls with portable wood-burning ovens where fresh bread was being baked as well as a street-corner preacher shouting loudly in German while holding a sign with the name Jesus in bold red letters. We had dinner in outside by one of the stalls served by a German lady who spoke "poquito" Spanish. In fact, we were amazed at the large number of Spanish-speakers we heard in the streets. And it wasn’t only Spaniards but people from all over the Spanish-speaking world, many of who looked like residents and not tourists. After dinner we browsed the shops until closing time at 8:00 pm. Brenda, always the fashionista, was impressed by the selection and quality of the clothes in the stores. All in all it was a great first day!

Here are some more pictures of the area around the town center:





PS: I'm writing only in English today because I have not time and this turned out to be a long one.

-Imanuel