Riding the rails...

I'm in Germany now, riding the train on a four hour journey.

The long flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt was surprisingly quick, we had a huge tailwind which cut an hour off the long flight.

Along with those outside Paris and London, Frankfurt's airport is one of the primary gateways for international arrivals and departures in Europe and it's also one of the largest and busiest. Inside, besides the usual restaurants and shops, there's also a movie theatre, casino, dry cleaners, hairdresser and more.

It's interesting to look around the other gates and see other flights arriving from or departing to to other destinations that one doesn't see in our own airport.

There is not one, but two train stations here at the Frankfurt airport, and these aren't light rail metro stations either. These are multi-track stations with trains arriving and departing every few minutes from all over the continent. For those familiar with the Marta station at the Atlanta airport, just put those thoughts out of your head. There is no comparison.

My flight arrived at 0740 and my train was scheduled to leave at 0852. I obviously had to clear customs, and whatever other security checkpoints they had, so I needed to hurry to figure out where I needed to be.


Needless to say, I undertook a mad dash to find the correct platform (Gleis) and right train. The Frankfurt airport is huge and unfamiliar, and even though I have passed through here several times before, I haven't been here recently enough to remember it very well. This is also the first time I'm catching a connecting train, rather than another flight.


I also had a bit of uncertainty because even though my German is ok, I obviously don't get to practice it much. I had booked all my rail travel through the Bahn.de website. There's an English portal, but the actual booking engine is all German. I breathed a sigh of relief once I boarded the train and found seat with only minutes to spare. German trains are almost always punctual, and if I missed this train, I would have had to purchase a whole new ticket at much higher expense and then wait for the next train.

I'm excited to be here. Except for the airport, it's the first time I've been back in Germany since I was an exchange student too many years ago.


If I can figure out how to get the USB port to work on this computer, I will add a photo or two later.

Next stop, Berlin.