Just arrived

I just arrived in Frankfurt:) I got to Melb Airport super early (would´ve been even earlier if I hadn´t checked my ticket - for some reason I thought it was at 1pm not 3:40) to give myself time to get through the scary airport security. I kept having an irrational fear that I´d be taken aside by the border patrol and be interrogated for so long that I´d miss my flight. When I handed my passport and green ´leaving Australia´card (which claimed that my occupation was ´Merchant banker´), I was inventing ranty dialogs that I´d spew at the bumbling officers. They obviously don´t hire clairvoyants though, because I went through without a hitch.

The plane trip was kind of fun for the first 8 hours. I got through Transformers (not a fan), Moving McCalister (new fave film) and part of Stardust (weird), which was a good warmup for my neglected german skills. After that I was dying for a chance to stretch my legs, so I was glad we had a 3:00 stopover in Malaysia.

I exchanged 5 euros for some RMs and was amazed at how much it got me. I bought some Malaysian Pringles (they don´t fill the packet up properly:s), some wasabi seaweed (awesome) and some strange kind of tea in can, which was so disgustingly sweet that I through it out after 2 sips. They have some veryy strange flavours of drinks there lol.

My flight left at 2am AEST and after 5 hours sleep the night before, I was feeling pretty tired. Didn´t really get much sleep though, probably about 4 hours. We had a bit of turbulence on the way over, but it was a pretty smooth flight overall. I was surprised to see that the plane flew over Afghanistan and very close to Turkmenistan on the way over - seems kind of risky to me.

As we landed in Frankfurt at 5:40 frankfurt time, all the german passengers clapped, which I found quite amusing. I like it though, I´m gonna do it on the way back;P As we landed, I started feeling properly excited for the first time. The whole time I´ve been organising this trip, I´ve kind of had a feeling lurking in the back of my mind that maybe it won´t happen. Maybe I won´t raise enough money in time, maybe there will be no free flights and a million other nagging concerns. Touching down, I felt all of those worries dissipate - I´m actually in Germany now!

There was no-one else in the terminal, so I got my luggage fairly quickly with everything intact. I went and put my thermals on before leaving the comfort of the airport (which was warmer than Kuala Lumpar even though it was 30 degrees cooler outside=s). It was -2 degrees outside but it didn´t feel cold at first. I stayed in my t-shirt for about 30 minutes. That might´ve explained some of the funny looks I was getting:P

I didn´t really know what to do once I landed in Frankfurt. I knew I wanted to get to the actual city, so I could dump my stuff at the youth hostel and go shopping, etc. but hadn´t actually figured out how to achieve that. So I did a bit of zen navigation and followed a few people from my flight onto a bus that led to the train station and bought a one way ticket to Frankfurt. I hopped on a train, which turned out to be the wrong one. I had thought this a very probable outcome, because I really do not know this city at all lol. Luckily a ticket inspector stopped me from ending up in Wurzburg and after misinterpreting the instructions he flung over his shoulder the first time, I got on the right train and arrived at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. Needing directions, I scouted out an internet cafe and that´s where I am now, watching the sun rise and remaining clueless about how to type the át´ symbol with german keyboards.

Time to go and find my youth hostel!