Frankfurt

2014/07/18

Arrived painlessly in Frankfurt (from Dublin, Ireland), flight was delayed a little as the incoming one was late so got here about 20min late. Was the 1st airport I’ve seen that has a runway the other side of the motorway/freeway … weird. I found out that it is a dedicated landing runway, you then taxi over the road to the terminal building. When we were taxiing I saw the German Soccer World Cup plane arriving, it had dropped the team off in Berlin and then guessed headed onwards.

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Got through passport control OK and then my bag was one of 1st few to come out, so was cool. Made my way on the shuttle bus from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 and then got my SBahn ticket and headed for HBF. Once there found my way easily to my accommodation (which is great).

Frankfurt has enough to see in a day or 2 max for sightseeing. I wandered all over the city. I did a bit of shopping as well as I needed a new pair of shorts as my zip had come apart on my 1 pair of shorts so managed to get some replacement ones I liked, was going to look for new strops on the 2nd day as well, I recall seeing some for a good price on the 1st day but then couldn’t remember where and any others were way more expensive, mine are still perfectly OK for now. While here I also bought a Telekom (previously T-Mobile) Pre-paid SIM for my phone. Was E10 and includes 200mb data at full speed, thereafter you still have data but it is slowed (guy said to an unusable unacceptable type ISDN speed), it didn’t have any credit for calls/SMS but didn’t want that only wanted some data to keep in contact etc. when out and about. I am here for 1.5 weeks so made sense to get something. I went up the Main Tower which was really cool to do, was super high and quite a few of the pics later on were taken from up there.

I arranged and met up with Jochen who I had met at the Novell TTP conferences in Bergamo, Italy and Riga, Latvia. We met up and sat outside a place called Main Nizza on the grass banks next to The Main River which was cool to just relax and talk about all sorts of odds and ends.

While wandering I found this Audi A3 e-tron exhibition, I’ll write a separate post about that as it was pretty cool.

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Apple Store (kinda just have to find it to see it, and to use free Wifi and check in with people)

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Apple Store Stairs

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Modern Bridge

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Modern Bridge

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Oldest bridge in Frankfurt

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Locks on the bridge

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Römer

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Römer

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Römer (from the Main Tower)

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Bockenheimerwarte

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Bourse with Bear & Bull

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German flags hanging all over the place

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The Main Tower I went up (this pic was taken from the Samsung Store which had a nice viewing deck) is the 2nd tallest building (as it appears) in this photo, the one on the right with the red and white aerial at the top

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HauptBahnHof

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Spot the small Spiderman in the bottom of the pic

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Zoom in of Spiderman

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I was staying in the red/brown building in the center below the one with what looks like black and white windows (not the red one in the middle of frame to the right)

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Main Shopping area

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My Zeil Shopping Mall

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Eschenheimer Turm

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Westhafen Tower

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Opera

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Skyline

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Skyline and old bridge

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Building going on everywhere

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Commerzbank Arena

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Goethe Universitat

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Geese with babies

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Geese

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Bunny Rabbit

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Baa Baa Blue Sheep Have You Any Wool

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Beer Mugs

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Boat you can hire on the river

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Main River

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Sipping on a few feers next to Main River

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Party Boat

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Lego Shop where you can buy just the blocks you want

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Coffee Bean taking a coffee break

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Lamborghini that went past, WOW the sound.

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You even need to sort your glass colours here for recycling

Left my accommodation early to get to the station in ample time for my 7:50am train to Mannheim. Bought a Cappuccino and a cheese pretzel for breakfast both of which were damn nice.

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Train was running late and we only left at 8am, which is fine as I have ample time on the other end to get to my accommodation at the agreed upon time. The train is pretty fancy, one of the white ICE ones, will go lank fast I expect, and it did !! REALLY looking forward to my Hockenheim experience.