Arrrrrrival!

Well, we made it! We’re here!

See, at first I thought we were flying out at 10:00 am, so with an hour BART ride to the airport, and having to be there two hours in advance, that would have meant… oh, dear! As it was, the plane actually left at 2:00 in the afternoon, and I figured that out not long after I got to Amy’s place late “last” night (Friday night).

So we had a mellow time of it, sleeping in, me recovering from year-end crunch and, oh yeah, the company I work for being sold, and her from her year end crunch and general jobbiness. Then a quick call to my bruvver, and we had a ride to BART, he had a car for the next 10 days, and I had a place to stash my wheels- win all around! We breezed through check in (neither full-body scanner nor courtesy make-outs from TSA! Another lawsuit dodged!), had a very tasty lunch in the duty free area, and then realized that boarding had started. We hastily disposed of the rest of lunch, got on the damn plane and winged it to Germany! Well, there was a minor hitch with the flight crew deciding the plane was too full and demanding all wheelie luggage be checked, which rightfully pissed off Amy, but not for long.

Customs were easy, the checked baggage all showed up, and then we got lost in the airport looking for the local train. We found the train, made a complete hash of the ticketing machine, then found the schedule, made a hash of that, went back to the ticketing machine, figured out we could search by city name (something about reading the screen- I’m not so good at it), and figured out that yes, we did in fact have the right train tickets. The train arrived slightly late, but it did arrive, and we whisked off to the Hauptbahnhof.

Allow me to digress for a moment about German trains. Local trains are somewhat akin, in theory, to the San Francisco BART system. They’re people movers for all walks of life, cheap, with limited seats, run on electricity (BART on a third rail, these on overhead cables) and generally look and behave a lot like the MUNI light rail in San Francisco or the light rail system in Sacramento.

The big difference is how amazingly quiet they are. Not only could we speak at a normal volume, but we had to all but whisper to feel like we weren’t blaring our conversation to the whole car. And we could clearly understand each other.

Well, we got to the Hauptbahnhof, and started off for the hotel. It was a balmy 34 degrees F out (1 degree C), and was precipitating ever so slightly. If you held still and looked up at a dark façade, you could see minuscule ice crystals wafting down. Yeah, it was a bit chilly, but overall fairly dry. We took a few wrong turns, and then figured out that the blocks here were not just smaller than we were used to, but much, much smaller. We walked in an inward spiral, but finally found our hotel.

The 25 Hour Hotel by Levis (yes, it’s a bluejeans themed hotel) is nothing short of awesome. It’s clearly aimed broadside at people like us- young (very mellow, the dude at the counter had a nose ring), tech enabled (you can borrow iPod touches to access the internet or to plug into the dock in the room, and they rent iPads), and stylish or like to think of themselves as stylish. This place drips design- blue walls with a weave pattern, orange and purple accents, geometric star wallpaper in shades of orange, a glass-enclosed shower, a picture of a naked Frank Zappa sitting on a toilet above, well, the toilet… I could go on, but just check out the website. We’re staying on the 70’s floor. So far, I haven’t let Amy take a picture of me emulating Mr. Zappa’s pose, and hopefully it’ll stay that way.

So now I’m here, freshly showered (it was a 10 hour flight, after all!) and enjoying the free, blazing fast internet. Amy’s conked out for “a short nap, not really sleeping,” and we’ll probably venture forth into the wintery Frankfurt later tonight in search of some decent Grub. Frankfurt is really just another metropolis, and no worse than the rest of them. Our hotel, and the train station, are both in a light industrial area, so not a lot of culture around here. Naturally, “not a lot of culture” is a bit different in a country where history is a native species, but still. Lots of steel and glass structures, keycard entries, loading docks, the works.

Tomorrow: Munich!