April 23, 2019
Day 36: Frankfurt to Seattle
Breakfast at the hotel Himalaya turned out to be just fine, a five jammer though it had only packaged jam. The reason is that the ultra budget building we were in is just an annex to their slightly higher scale operation. It's clearly a family business, and it was pleasant to interact with some Tibetan people. Without too much direct evidence, we feel there is a decent Tibetan community in Frankfurt.
To walk back to the train station we tried a "short cut". Much like shortcuts tried in Nepal and other places, this did not actually get us there any faster or easier. But we did get a different view angle for some Frankfurt high rise construction.
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Yesterday in the DB ticket sales office we were told we could not get a ticket to the airport until the day of travel. So today we were back in there. Actually, I get parked safely outside, and told to "stay". This gives a chance to look around and absorb the ambiance.
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Dodie came out after a while, slightly red eyed. The ticket agent had started right off shouting at her for not understanding German (enough). He carried right on, causing Dodie to go complain to a supervisor. She got an apology and he got a talking to. It's not something you would expect in the main station in probably Germany's most international city.
The trick was to descend two levels, to hop on the S-Bahn, which is a regional train, analogous to the RER in Paris. To exactly find the S-Bahn we asked two very kindly DB agents, strategically placed just to field such inquiries.
Our airline, Condor, is a vacation travel operator, part of Thomas Cook, and a major player in Germany. They definitely came up with the cheapest fairly short notice ticket to the West Coast, though it was to Seattle. But, we happen to know a certain little family in Seattle!
As often happens with a budget or vacation carrier, the Gate was way far away - #61. So that's a 61 gate walk. "Fortunately", it was not a straight shot, so we got to make several turns and also ride an elevator. We got lost twice and asked for directions. For one of these, Dodie suddenly veered off and headed for an Ethiopian Airlines gate agent. "No, no, not there", I thought (too hot!).
On long walks like this, we are still conditioned to worry about Dodie's knees. In the past it would have been a matter or canes and/or flagging down an electric cart. But no more! We arrived at gate 61 with hours to spare, and time to not only write this, but to observe the passing parade.
There was one Lufthansa flight to Cancun that knew it was missing people. They made several announcements and an agent even went to canvass people lined up at a coffee shop to see if they were bound for Cancun. About ten minutes after this excitement, along came a couple, with a baby in a backpack, pushing a stroller. Obviously Gate 61 had defeated them. The flight had not yet left (actually, the shuttle bus to the flight had gone, but the gate staff was still here), but the couple was not allowed to proceed. We thought they could have gone with the gate staff. The lady did a lot of shouting - "Let us go!" and there was much debate as to exactly why they had not made it here earlier. A little later I went to the gate agent with a small question, and found her red eyed as well. Travellers and agents are not having such a good day today!
I will post this now, because it will be hours and hours before we finally surface in a house in Seattle. I will go now and line up at that coffee shop, but hopefully hear any passing agent calling "Seattle".
The story continues:
Eventually, of course, our flight came up.
We immediately noticed that our economy seats on Condor were at least 3 inches wider than what we had on Air Transat when we flew Montreal to Paris. On an 11 hour flight, those few inches can be critical. Any airline will sell you more inches for more money, but the base seat width is a key to the value proposition that they are offering. It also turned out that, without paying a seat selection fee, we had a pair of seats on their own - window and aisle - on the side of the plane. All that promoted the wiggle-ability that is needed to avoid extreme tail bone pain!
Condor also provided two creditable free meals during the flight. And something I like - they followed the cart carrying the meals directly with one offering drinks. Too many times you choke down the food and then wait for the needed drink.
Condor did fall down by trying to gouge on the entertainment. They did have the excellent tablet based system in front of each seat, carrying a broad range of movies and such, but only two were free. The others were something like 11 euros each.
One of the free bits of video was a history of the Condor company. Before booking we had actually never heard of them, and were a little leery on that account. But Condor has operated out of Germany for 60 years, starting as an affiliate of Lufthansa. We need to research their routes a bit more, but they have the advantage of flying to many German cities, while Transat has abandoned what had been its only German route, to Frankfurt. We think that Condor may service Vancouver, which would be great.
As it was, we were flying into Seattle. This is good, because of our family there. But Seattle is also in the USA, and we could feel the authoritarian atmosphere at immigration and customs. This was no doubt more imagined than real. However a sniffer dog did trigger a search of our carry on stuff, not for drugs but for contraband food. The dog had detected the mozzarella and tomato sandwich we had bought at Frankfurt train station and stored in our bag, But ha ha, we had eaten that long ago. Tough luck paranoid department of Agriculture!
Our observations after this are not very reliable, because of so long without sleep. How much harder it must be to fly from somewhere like New Zealand! We were glad to be reunited with the family, and Dodie gave Avi and Violet the little gifts we had brought. These were a Czech garnet necklace, and a book of legends from the Jewish community from Prague.
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4 years ago
Your travel back to Canada seemed most challenging. I hope all will be fine when you arrive back home and that will be able to complete your well planned journey very soon.
4 years ago