October 3 - Arrival

Well, we are on our way. Overnight we traveled from Toronto to Nuremberg Germany. The flight was generally smooth and surprisingly the meal was actually tasty.

We landed at the Frankfurt Airport which is massive. It's one of the largest and busiest airports in Europe. It is about 28 square kilometers, making it larger than many small towns. It has 4 major runways, each around 4 kilometers long. There are two enormous main terminals with Terminal 3 under construction to expand its capacity. It is designed to handle 65 million passengers annually, serving 330 destinations across five continents, the most direct routes of any airport globally.

Of course, Air Canada always gets the short end of the stick, and we had to be picked up by a bus to be transported to Terminal 2. From there we easily got our 1,000 steps in going through customs and finding our suitcases. Just once on an international flight with Air Canada, I would love to get a loading dock close to the main foyer of the airport.

One of the myths of travel is that European rail system is wonderful. With our experiences, it has generally been a nightmare. Usually, we encounter labour problems with strikes or work to rule actions screwing up our schedules. But the German rail system takes top spot for frustration!

It started at the Frankfurt airport. We should have been able to catch a direct train to Nuremberg from the train station at the airport. How silly of us to believe it could be that simple. The airport signage and the directions supplied by airport staff had us walking around in circles, up and down multiple escalators and elevators before we finally arrived at main railway concourse.  

Train station in Frankfurt Airport

On the train we had hoped to catch, you couldn’t reserve a seat, so it was first come – first serve for this train. It was over an hour late arriving at the station, but there were seats available.

When we booked the tickets, the agent told us that there would be no transfers required to get to Nuremberg. Wrong! This train took us into downtown Frankfurt, 15 minutes duration, and stopped there. We then had to transfer to another train, which of course arrived 45 minutes late.

Now this is last weekend of Octoberfest, and this train was going to Munich. So, you can imagine how crowded this train was when it pulled into Frankfurt station. We did manage to find 2 seats in the same car, but not together.

Finally, 3 hours later than we had hoped, we arrived at our hotel in Nuremberg. We are staying at the Scandic Hotel, which is a very nice modern hotel close to the train station.

For supper we went a restaurant called the Tucher-Bräu am Opernhaus. There we had a wonderful German meal. Our waiter was very excited when he found out we were from Canada, because he was a big fan of Justin Bieber. I thought he was going to pass out when Marg told him that she had seen him, when he was playing at London shopping mall.

It was dark when we went to the restaurant, and it appears that it is located on the walls of moat that surrounds what must have been the village at some point in time.

So, all is well that ends well.