My Many Adventures, Mishaps, and Musings: " We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment" -Hilaire Belloc

It has always been my experience that layovers between flights suck. Three hours in the St. Paul, Minnesota airport was certainly less than exhilarating. So, of course, when I was trying to book my flight to Athens and the only two flights available both had insane layovers, I was not thrilled. However, the cheaper of the two (“cheaper” being a relative term), had a nine hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany. I have a few friends who always tell me how wonderful Germany is, and another friend who routinely has massive layovers, which she uses as a chance to get a bonus trip, so I decided to take my cue from them, and spent a few hours exploring Frankfurt. Here is what I learned:

1. German is a language with far too many consonants. Many of the words are actually very similar to their English counterparts, just with random Ws, Xs, Hs, and Zs, thrown in. As a result, German sounds very harsh, and the speakers seem somewhat angry. Really, I think they are just tired from using so many unnecessary letters.

2. Nine hours was all I really needed to see Frankfurt. It is not a huge city, and since it was a Sunday, very little was open, so the short amount of time I had allowed me to explore the city without feeling too rushed, but also from getting bored or tempted to do too much.

3. Everyone really does speak English. My friend who lived there for two years had told me this ahead of time, but I thought he was exaggerating. But really, everyone there spoke English and I had no trouble communicating or getting help when I needed it. Even the homeless woman who helped me find my way spoke fluent English! I hope this doesn’t make me an annoying American tourist, but this was a comforting discovery.

4. There are a surprising amount of Roman ruins in Frankfurt. I couldn’t believe all the old remains I saw, or how beautiful the Roman part of the city is.

5. Frankfurt is very clean! There was little graffiti, the city felt entirely safe, there weren’t any vagrants, and everyone was friendly. Maybe it’s because I just wrote a paper on the Holocaust, but I was expecting a very cold, hostile, ugly place, but I was pleasantly surprised.

I really needed some time away from London and school and stress and everything, and just some time to be by myself and not have to worry too much about anything, so this was a great way to start off my trip and I was so grateful for the opportunity.

Since I was traveling alone, I could not take pictures of myself, and I have heard too many stories of people having their cameras stolen by seemingly nice people offering to take their picture. Still, I didn’t just want to have boring scenery pictures that look the same as everyone else’s who has been to Frankfurt, so I took along Mr. Chick, a little stuffed chick I found on sale at a store in London, and enlisted him to be my model for the pictures.