Bum fights and crack pipes

After a gruelling 13-hour flight, in which I managed to steal a few hours of sleep (I believe) it was strange to arrive at 7am. Flying for 13 hours in complete darkness, leaving at midnight and only just arriving at sunrise was an interesting feeling. This will truly test my resistance to jet lag. To make things worse, I have a 15-hour stop over and another late arrival in Rome, before a trip to Florence. Looking to the positives I spend 5 nights in Florence to give me a chance to relax and calm down after a busy few days travelling around.

When I got off my flight, my first impressions of Frankfurt were interesting to say the least. Despite most people speaking English, the signage regarding train station and such was confusing. To mitigate this, I bought a random ticket to a random train and hoped for the best. I was relying on my capacity to play the dumb tourist card if I got pulled up about it. Either way it wasn't necessary, and I made it to Frankfurt. This is where it gets very interesting. During the 5-minute walk from the station I witnessed two homeless people fighting, millions of cigarette buts, and an old man smoking a suspicious looking pipe. I was very close to turning around and getting on a train back to the airport. But I figured I would head south and get across the river and out of the city. When I did, things improved massively. I was shocked at the number of people walking around and riding bikes - at 10am on a Monday of all times - I was questioning what they did for work to be honest. But it was a huge change to the first impression I got. Every corner seemed to maintain the old style of architecture and road design that made it a beautiful place to walk through. It seemed very quintessentially German in some parts. I really did little more than walk around for hours in Frankfurt and saw so much cool stuff. In the end I had done so much walking that the 2pm free tour was too much for my feet to be able to handle and I headed back to the train station early.

On a positive note, I learnt, through a very funny conversation with the clerk, that the alcohol you can buy at the stalls at the airport can be happily consumed anywhere in the terminal. This saves me lots of money from buying beer from a restaurant when I can buy 500mL cans and take them to somewhere comfy near my gate. Although I wish I learned this yesterday, better late than never. The rest of my afternoon essentially consisted of public intoxication to try and improve my chances of getting some sleep during my short 2-hour flight to Rome.Читать далее