Part III-1. Going over to Germany

After the breakfast in UK, we hopped on this empty plane to Frankfurt, Germany. Being the Christmas day and all, the plane was really empty.. people probably filled about 30%. It wasn't a huge plane, so my brother and I had the entire 6-seat row for ourselves. The flight didn't take that long, only about a couple of hours. The flight was at around 2 pm and landed just before 5 German time (Germany and UK has an hour time difference). During this comfy plane ride in a new Airbus 319, we were served a 'Christmas day cookie' by the flight attendants. It felt good, I must say. And this guy, from the row behind me came and sat by me complaining that the guy on his row was snoring. Our row had more than an extra seat, so we obviously let him sit, then I noticed his University of Nebraska shirt. So I asked him if he went there. He answered in obvious European accented English-but still good- that he studied there for a year. He was bald, looked to be late-20s, and was German (I asked him). He said he was from Munich, which was one of our stopovers, spoke French, German, English, and a little Spanish. He also said he worked at Gibraltar for this telecommunications company and was making good money. I told him that we got a hostel right near the main train station in Frankfurt, and he warned us that it is right in the middle of the red light district. ...but he also told us that the girls weren't too expensive, and he's visited there many times. I figured it's better to know some info about the place we'd never gone before.

As we landed in Frankfurt, the sun was already set, and we were hoping that my backpack would come out of quick so we can try to find our hostel. The airport was VERY empty like the plane ride and we were able to get through the customs pretty quickly. I've actually been in Frankfurt before, when I was coming back to the US after spending the summer in Korea in 2010. Then, I took the Korea-Japan-Singapore-India-Germany-NY-Atlanta route rather than Korea-Atlanta. Long story short, it was cheaper with Delta buddy passes, but took like 4 days. Anyway, the airport itself looked really different, probably because it wasn't packed like it was a couple years ago. As a result, there wasn't anyone at the baggage claim so I got my backpack right away and we started to look for the train station. Apparently we had to get to another terminal to get to the train station, and it took a while to figure that out. Finally we found the train station and went to the tickets office to validate our Eurail passes. 


If I haven't mentioned anything about Eurail passes in this blog, here's a quick info. About a month before our trip, I bought these Eurail 15-day Global pass Youth for $500+change each for me and my brother. They had the other options such as 3,4, or 5 country passes, or 10 day passes and such, but I thought this was the best deal. Youth is for those under 26 and this pass allows 'free' train rides in 22 countries (I hear there are more countries now). Youth pass means 2nd class and with Eurail passes, you can ride slow trains for free, but have to pay about 10~25 euros for fast trains. You have to have your passport at all times and it needed to be validated on the first day of travel. So, to ride the train from Flughafenbahnhof (airport train station) Frankfurt to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (central station) we needed to validate our passes. Luckily there was this nice lade who spoke good English at the tickets office and we were able to get answers like how many stations till Frankfurt Hbf., if we could ride for free, how to reserve other tickets (like 12/26 to Heidelberg), and etc. 


So, we went down to this really run-down platform and waited for this subway system (they called it S-Bahn). There were also some sketch homeless people walking (or sitting) around, so we were being very careful. The lady at the tickets office told us 3 stations, but the gap between the stations were pretty long and so we looked for the subway map as soon as we got in, after waiting about 5 minutes. And for some reason, we couldn't find what subway we were on, what station we got on at, and where Hbf was. And there was over 20 subway lined on that map. Luckily, there was this nice German gentleman who helped us get off at the Frankfurt Hbf (where everybody got off). The train was really run down too (the door was manual) and had some sketch people like this kid who sat in front of us with Beats by Dr. Dre headphones and kept staring at us nodding his head as he was listening some loud rap. He was white by the way, and we couldn't really find any African-European people in Germany in general. 


After we got off the train, we just followed the directions that I got from the hostelworld.com. It had detailed directions to the hostel turn by turn provided by the hostel itself. And.. this is what the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof looked like the day after. 

..And that's me walking. I should try to photoshop that pic so it'd look better. For whatever reason, we didn't take any picture from the plane ride until we got to the hostel. I think at the time we were pretty tired and were just focused on finding our hostel in the place where we didn't speak the native language. I guess somewhat it reminded me of my first day at Union Grove High School, when we focused on finding the right school bus to get us home. I'm counting about 22 pics for this next post coming up very soon. 

Sorry it took this long for this one, and few pics, I was busy writing personal statements and filling out resumes for med school. And although blogging takes time, I'm thinking I could take a break from studying and try not to forget English at the same time, so it's a win win. Wishing I was in the US watching the march madness--