Right now it's 4:30AM in Frankfurt, Germany. I didn't really end up getting much sleep on the planes yesterday. I probably slept for about 3 hrs in the 36hrs since we left Melbourne!
After the flight to London, where the inflight entertainment system did work thankfully, we killed a bit of time in the very crowded Heathrow airport. Then it was off for the final leg of the journey: London to Frankfurt. Like the flight to Sydney, it was practically over before it began. One hour and ten minutes sure go quickly when you're in the air!
Frankfort airport was disturbingly empty. Our baggage was already on the carousel by the time we got there, and our bikes followed shortly after. A quick glance inside the bike boxes revealed no major structural damage, but we won't really find out until we build them back up again. Disturbingly, there was no-one at all at the customs centre. I guess I could've brought along all of those exotic plant specimens after all:P
The next two hours were the toughest of the trip so far because it involved lugging our four bags, which equated to 60kg each, from the airport, on and off buses, trains and for a kilometre along the street. It didn't help matters that I made two navigational blunders, resulting us first going on a fruitless journey to what I thought was the Airport's train station (we were at the wrong terminal) and then getting us on a train that went the opposite direction to where we wanted to go! By the time we got back on the right train, it was peak hour, and we got quite a few annoyed glances by people who had to squeeze past our collection of luggage! But we retained our high (if tired) spirits
and adopted the mindset that since hauling all those bags was such hard work, it'd have to be good training!
Eventually we got to the youth hostel, checking in at 4:30 (approximately sundown), unloaded our stuff, had a chat with a nice German guy our age before falling asleep fully clothed at 6PM.
I'm surprised at how well I'm tolerating the weather here. It must've been approaching zero last night, because the rain that greeted us became snow as we were nearing the youth hostel. Despite only wearing three layers, I wasn't cold at all. Big difference to last year, where I was freezing my arse off even with two sets of thermals on even though the temperature was about the same.
We've got a stack of stuff to do today including a bit of shopping for the trip, getting train tickets to Madrid for Luke, rebuilding our bikes to make sure that they're ok before we disassemble them again to pack them into a cardboard box for the train trip and of course, just exploring this fine city.
Until next time, tschüss!
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