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Published: October 22nd 2017
Frankfurt Airport
The biggest and busiest airport in EuropeGeo: 50.0924, 8.68195
Sean here:
Despite my best efforts and desires, I do not like the flight to Europe. I know, I know, poor me . . . shouldn't I just be happy that I get the opportunity to travel to Europe in general? Well, I do harbor that appreciation, but the luster definitely wanes after 31 hours without sleep! Here's a little recap of Day 1.
We started out eager with anticipation as the alarm sounded at 4:45am. Compared to other trips, we actually had our packing and cleaning wrapped up for a decent bedtime of about 11pm so we had a good sleep base to start from. Danny showed up to take his role as wheelman followed shortly by fellow travelers T-Ball and J-Ball (as I like to call them anyway – they are actually Tony Ball, father, and Jared Ball, Compass High School junior and son of T-Ball). We rolled into the airport on schedule, checked bags and printed boarding passes at the counter, stripped down for security, and strolled up to our departure gate with about 30 minutes to spare before our departure time of 7:13am. Then, things got interesting.
The magical voice on the speaker explained that a massive
On the bus in Frankfurt
After arriving in Frankfurt, we're on the bus... weather front moving into Chicago would delay our departure time, "at least two and a half hours". So, there we were all dressed up with no place to go. Excitement remained high as we discussed all of the things we were eager to see and all of the preparation that had led up to this departure. I passed some time by queuing up a little “Deadliest Warrior” courtesy of free Wifi in the Boise airport (thank you U of I – you earn a little of my respect there) and Netflix. As time passed, however, the group began to get a little anxious thinking of the connecting flight to Frankfort we had to make in Chicago and hypothesizing about the problems it would cause if we did not make it. Finally, at about 9:20am, we were able to board the plane, and wheels left the ground at about 10am.
The three hour flight to Chicago passed quickly as I entertained myself with my new book and recently downloaded video game, and we soon descended into O'Hare. After entering the terminal, we truly found the chaos caused by the early morning storms as lines of distraught travelers waited at customer service desks trying to determine what the counter person was going to do to make things right in their travel world. That always makes me feel fortunate that I am not working an airline counter job! Luckily for us, our departing gate was only about 100 yards away and we had made it in time to catch our connecting flight to Germany. We made mad dashes to the restrooms and food counters, and within 30 minutes we were piling back on to a 777 for the next leg of our journey.
This is the leg in the journey that I am truly not a fan of. Again, I passed time reading, watching movies, and playing on my laptop. Due to our prompt turn around in Chicago, I was unable to retrieve some charge that was lost in our original leg and had to shut it down after about 40 minutes of play. These items brought me to my attention span limit of about 4 hours when I really start getting restless. I attempted to get some sleep knowing the world of hurt I would be in the next day, and thought I had a leg up this time compared to previous trips as I had splurged for a few more accessories in the forms of a new neck pillow (rated best in show by WSJ) and some sound cancelling headphones (Sony's because I was not willing to pony up for the Bose). Both items served me well, yet the unsolvable problem is physical comfort. I attempted my best efforts as a Yoga level contortionist by extending my legs under the seat, pulling them to my chest, crossing them atop each other, resting them on the chair in front of me, twisting to the left, twisting to the right, sitting normal with straight posture, and, ultimately, succumbing to no sleep.
I am open for suggestions, but I truly feel there is no way to gain comfort in the economy class section of an airplane. Despite all of the creature comforts I attempt to use, I always find the same problems. If I extend my legs forward, I feel I am going to slide off the chair entirely. If I prop my knees against the seat, the passenger in front of me inevitably jostles the chair just as I am reaching the delicate moment as you are wavering between reality and dreams. If I let my knee or elbow slightly relax towards the aisle, I am bumped by food or drink carts patrolling the aisles. I am strongly considering pursuing the pharmaceutical aides others in our group used to help them out. Either way, the last five hours of our flight greeted me with increasing fidgeting and angst as an awaited the chance to deboard the plane.
Ultimately, we landed at the largest airport in Europe (as explained to me by our guide, Manuel) in Frankfurt at approximately 5:40am. This is after watching the sun set and rise again in about 2 hours from our plane window. Like us, Manuel appeared a bit disheveled and explained that had just moved flats in London one day before he flew to Frankfu buying snacks and pulling some Euros from the ATM in preparation of our day. By 7:30, Ramona's group of 23 from South Carolina entered the terminal and we rushed outside to the bus to begin a full day of sight-seeing with me running on 0 hours of sleep over the last 18 hours of travel.
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Kristi
non-member comment
Sounds like a real adventure getting to Frankfurt. The storms here in Chicago the morning you came through were really something. I don't think we actually saw any sunlight until about 11a.m. We get some impressive storms here, and this wa
s right up there with the best of them. I think the temperature dropped almost 40 degrees from the day before.My own story getting to Frankfurt was about 3 weeks ago when I was traveling from San Francisco, through Frankfurt to Manchester City in the UK. We were delayed 5 hours leaving SF and then 3-4 hours into the flight, the man 2 seats over from me in first class began to have breathing problems. Both a doctor and nurse were on board, but despite their and the crew's best and extraordinary efforts, the situation worsened over about an hour, ultimately resulting in the man's death - very sad... We were diverting to land at Halifax, Canada to get him to a hospital, but aborted that after he died. About 15 minutes after this man died, another man collapsed in the business class lavatory and they had to tear the door off and pull him out and attend to him. We again began to circle before going out over the ocean, not knowing how the 2nd man would progress. Turned out he was stabilized pretty quickly and we went on to Frankfurt. We arrived to have the Frankfurt police, airport officials, customs, the US embassy and airline representatives greet the plane and the man's wife. United Airlines gets big points with me for how they handled everything. That said, we were now 7 hours late getting into Frankfurt and missed our connection to Manchester, my rebooked tickets were to the wrong city and had to be reworked. At this point we were now 25 hours from leaving the hotel the previous morning in San Francisco with several hours to go. In the end, we got to Manchester at 1:00 a.m. - 37 hours door to door and then 6 hours after that greeted clients to host them for a day at the Manchester United premier league championship game. Flew to London that night for meetings the rest of the week until the ash cloud from Iceland threatened so we headed back to the US a day early. t was a long trip.....Enjoy Europe in spite of the travel ordeal - there's always Tylenol PM to get you to sleep and give you a bit of new energy for the day ahead... its well worth it! Have fun! Love, Aunt Kristi