Germany is a beautiful fly-over – it looks a lot like the Winona area from the air, except there are a zillion small towns separated by sometimes just a couple of miles of farm fields. I’m not staying here, but I had an eventful four hours at the Frankfurt Airport today. I learned that the food in their airport delis is beautiful – so, so beautiful, and I lamented the fact that my stomach is the size of an apricot right now. Also, in Germany they sell splits of wine and cans of beer from their mini-convenience stores, and it’s cheap, unlike US airports where you have to mortgage your house to have a sandwich.
I had a little split of Pinot Grigio while I waited for my flight, but after an absolutely miserable overnight flight with about 30 minutes of sleep total, and my whole stomach thing, that little bit of wine made me pretty lightheaded. I also learned today that not all Germans speak English, even workers at the airport, but I apparently look German, because a lot of people spoke German to me along my wanderings through this massive, massive airport. It seems like knowing a word or two of German is important, especially if you’re in Germany. And guess what? German security people don’t like the looks of a carryon full of camera gear – it earned me the full treatment for probably 20 minutes, after which they just handed a crate full of my stuff back to me and made me stand there and repack it. At one point a gate agent started speaking German to me, and I panicked and started answering in Spanish. Guess what? They don’t speak Spanish either. This was, of course, after the split of wine. Better take it easy on that stuff. So anyway, I made it, and I am sitting on the plane now waiting for my flight to Portugal. And there is a German kid sitting next to me, and when I sneezed, he didn’t even say gazuntite – I was really disappointed. Oops, closing the doors…The adventure begins, or, er, continues.
