He Says:
So we got on to our plane safely.
We had a flight to Frankfurt and from there a transit to Munich. We had an hour between transit. We knew that it was going to be a bit tight making our next flight to Munich, so you can imagine our relief when we found out we arrived at Frankfurt early. (by 3 minutes, according to the pilots) (and I sat there thinking, “Wow, talk about German precision, they have this thing down to a minute) (of course, they did not include the time needed to taxi to our gate, which by my rough estimation was around 10000km away) (or 200 pounds).
For all the *sic* planning that we’ve put in, we forgot to factor in a very important factor – the airport planners and security team at Frankfurt Airport have brains the size of peanuts.
Haha. I kid, of course. Anyone with brains the size of peanuts would not have the foresight to build their airport on what a layperson such as I would refer to as a blackhole. It was a LONG walk to the gate from which we are supposed to board our connecting flight. The walk was so long I think we passed though 5 different time zones and 2 hemisphere to get to our connecting gate. I believe nomadic tribes formed in the airport, looking for someone to lead them out. So, no, anyone with peanuts for brains would not have been able to come up with planning like this. Planning like this require boogers for brains.
Which brings us to another sore spot. The security. Frankfurt is the only airport I know that conducts security checks for travelers in transit. It’s as if travelers like us could pick up something on our nomadic track through the airport that would threaten the security of the aircraft. The options are limited, but using McGyver like technical know-how, I would say the airport is fraught with security threats that can be used to threaten the pilots to hijack a plane. Maybe a bar of soap from the airport toilet, or the 10 year old hot dog that is revolving in the oven of the airport cafeteria.
One thing to note. Frankfurt is the air hub of Germany. Nearly all international flights pass through Frankfurt before being rerouted to other places in Germany. You can only begin to imagine the lines at the security gates. It circled around 3 of the 5 time zones we walked past earlier. And this was at 5AM in the morning.
So there we were standing in our own pee (cause we were too afraid we would miss our flight for something so frivolous as a toilet break), as we watched the airport security go through detailed security searches on the people in front of us. We felt really safe due to the vigilance of the security staff at the airport who conducted detailed pat downs of high security threats such as the 70 year old lady in front of us and, I swear this is true… a pilot! What was he gonna do? Hijack the plane he is piloting??? The icing on top of the cake was when I saw the team trying to make a 3 year old child walk through the metal detector without the parents, seeing as how 3 year old kids are the most cooperative, and yet most terrifying terrorists this side of Barney.
No thanks to the security, we managed to make it onto our flight… but only by the skin of our teeth.
On a not altogether unrelated note, I shall now relate our first encounter with a Native.
We arrived in Munich, totally prepared to kick ass with our newly found understanding of Germain through a 1 hour audio course. (We can speak a really mean “Will you come with me”) (Insert your own childish joke here). Armed with this useful knowledge and references from a 10 minute scan of Lonely Planet just before arrival saw us standing dumbstruck in front of the train ticketing machine.
We had no idea how to purchase a ticket from the airport to the city, or which of the million and one tickets we should be buying. After a serious pow-wow, we decided that the last thing we should do is panic and go to any random German stranger to ask “Will you come with me?”
Our looks of distress must have been obvious, because we were soon approached by this little old lady at the ticketing machine. Using a variety of hand signals and language spoken as it is broken (on the part of the old lady, we could only gawk, cause we don’t have the skills to speak broken German), we (by we, I meant the Fiance) came to understand that she arrived at the airport with her sister in the morning and had 2 days from her 4 day pass still valid. She offered to sell us her ticket for half the price as she no longer required it to go back to her place.
Suspicion is an essential survival trait.
Being the Alpha Male in the relationship, and based on the essential information I can gather from anything she said containing the words “Will”, “You”, “Come”, “With” and “Me”, I gave my best look of wariness and alertness and said “Sure!”, all the while thinking… “We are so gonna get ripped off on our first encounter in Germany!”
This feeling was compounded by her offering to buy us some true Bavarian breakfast in order to break the 50 Euros that we have.
We managed to use the rail pass for the remaining 2 days, but that could be partly due to the fact that the German rail system uses a system of trust (they really should not do any business where we come from) and we were not checked for our rail passes for those 2 days.
To this day, I’m still wondering if we (by we, I meant I) were overly suspicious of a good Samaritan.
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