Adventures in Europe: Frankfurt, Germany

Yesterday morning I awoke in my castle and breakfasted in its basement.

Then I headed south along the highway between the Rhine and the hills, including two more hilltop castles. 

Terrorists had attacked Paris overnight, with well over a hundred people dead, so that was disconcerting, but did not seem to be having any serious impacts on the Frankfurt area.

I returned the car to the original Enterprise location.  Much to my relief, they did not notice the scratches/dent on the bumper, which had looked more and more minor by the day.  I had put just over 1600 kilometres on the car.

This time I simply rode the tram the whole way from Enterprise to the central train station, where I checked into my hotel.  The Frankfurt Hostel did not have a room, so I had booked a couple blocks away at the Hotel Carlton.  Roughly a block or two from the train station, the neighborhood around these accommodations is really sketchy.  I think it is officially Frankfurt's red light district, but as unsavoury as this aspect is, it is the blatant hard drug use on the sidewalks all around that disturbs me far more.  Nonetheless, my "favourite" Turkish restaurant is just down the street from the worst of it, and I went there for iskender, my favourite dish as a child in Turkey. Amazingly, it was as delicious as I remembered from the last time I ate it, twenty years ago.

I didn't do much that afternoon, except for shop for advent calendars for my little nieces.  It seemed almost every store had their own versions, so there were nearly countless options.

Everything seemed business as usual as I walked around, but in front of the "euro" monument there were a couple of undercover security guys, with the largest bulletproof vests I'd ever seen, and large guns.  

As dusk fell the train station was lit up in the French tricolour, and this attracted an awful lot of attention from passers-by.

Meanwhile, in front of my hotel, four or five or even six cop vehicles pulled up, shut down all but one lane, and began stopping cars as they were going through.

It looked like it might have been just a routine weekend check stop, but it crossed my mind that it might have been connected to Paris too, since police were conducting raids in Brussels and Munich, and maybe elsewhere, simultaneously.

I had a light dinner from the grocery store across the street, including some of the famous apple wine.

This morning after breakfast I packed up and caught the S-bahn to the airport for my Icelandair flight to Reykjavik.  This time as we landed there was still daylight, which allowed for a spectacular view of the island.  I did not have a window seat, but made sure to lean as far as I could to take in the view.  "Iceland" seemed a very apt name for the land I was seeing, but it was very beautiful.

It made me regret I that I had not booked one of the "free stopovers" Icelandair advertises.  Next time

Then again, once in the airport, the price of my grilled cheese sandwich, bottle of beer, and bottle of water (~$17) made me glad I had been traveling in the land of four euro donairs.