Day 13: Frankfurt
I’ve hit that point where I think it’s day 13, but it just might not be. I’m not completely sure what day it is, but am pretty sure I spent most of it either getting to or wandering around Frankfurt.
The flight in was good, premium economy on the Singapore airlines A380 is pretty comfy, the seats have an okay recline and a decent amount of space. First movie was South Korean, “Hit and Run Squad”, full of drama, some explosions, and lots of car chases.
As the last two stops of this tour are Krakow and Frankfurt, I thought that possibly one of the most memed movies of the last 20 years “The Downfall” would be a good movie, because why not? I’m still in two minds about going back to Auschwitz-Birkenau: on one hand it’s a hugely significant and important site, and vital that we as a species keep going there to remind ourselves on something that can never be allowed to happen again. On the other, I have already been, and didn’t enjoy it for both the right and wrong reasons. The right reasons, because what was allowed to happen was a total obscenity to any sense of decency. But between taking a bus ride there with a bunch of hungover Australians who were far more interested in talking loudly about how much they drank the night before, and the site itself with a number of what I think were young Israeli men wearing the flag of Israel as capes running around, really just made me sad at us as a species. Some fuckers just don’t get shit and possibly deserve to be chained to the tracks in front of Birkenau and beaten with a clue stick in a vain hope of getting it through to them. So will I go back, so I can see how stupidly insensitive some people can be? I don’t know.
As I had almost 11 hours between flights, I had been thinking about a side trip to Koln. There’s a really fast train that can do the trip in an hour, but without prebooking it’s a bit pricey. Instead I went to have a quick look around Frankfurt. Once I’d worked out how to get a ticket, of course.
In preparation for this trip I’ve been doing a bit of language learning, if that’s what 20 minutes a night on the duolingo app is. Mostly Spanish, with mixed results in Cuba (and New York), a little German, and a little Polish. With the German, I mostly got bogged down in the various accusative cases, and the 43 definitive articles, and with the Polish I was lucky to get away with learning milk, water, and bread (which I was pronouncing wrong). But at least I can say thank you in both, and please in German, too, but right now there’s still a lot of Spanish running through my head making it anyone’s guess which word will come out of my mouth in which language.
To my poor, long suffering reader(s), be thankful I’ve only learnt to type in English.
If you go back and read the above two paragraphs two or three times, you’ll probably still be back here in less time that it took me to get a train ticket. And it wasn’t all about the language, either, a lot was to do with how ticketing systems work everywhere: you may know the language, but if you don’t the geography, well you can just go to hell (if you know how to spell it, and you don’t mistakenly take an express train that doesn’t stop in Hell, it just goes straight to Liverpool).
But I made it to Frankfurt (HBF), which is how they TLA central station in GER. I got a simple map in the tourist info place, and headed towards the old town to get something to eat. Along the way, I found out that I’d arrived 3 months early to see David Hasselhoff, and that there are too many Australian-themed places in the world. Let’s be honest, one is one too many.
I settled in at a place offering sausages and potatoes, and that sounded good to me. Also beer, so the three basic German food groups it was. And they were all good, some Schofferhofer weizen, and a big plate of sausages and thick cut chips and mustard. I did try to get the wifi password, but as it had numbers other than 1,2,3 I failed.
As I’m back in Frankfurt in a few days, and will be hanging with L’s cousins — getting a local tour, I didn’t really do much in my few hours here. It was also a bit warm, so I figured I’d spare whoever was unlucky enough to get the seat next to me the experience of my sweatiness. I did for the first time get a starbucks coffee as I needed the toilet.
Then it was back to the airport, where I could skip the check-in as the wonderful SIA person at JFK had already sorted that. Through the security checks with no issues, and then a bit or waiting. Most of the praise that Frankfurt airport gets is of the faint variety, in that at least it’s not LAX, and I think this is warranted. It’s not a great airport, is bland, and lacks any German efficiency so there’s a lot of walking.
The flight was about 30 minutes late boarding, but as it’s only a short hop, I was in Krakow in no time.