Tuesday 11 August 1998

Slideshow Pictures

Arrived in Frankfurt in the late afternoon and checked into the Novotel again. This time we had a better room. At least our view wasn’t the recycling station. We had a quiet dinner at the hotel. The restaurant was empty. The only living thing around was the mechanical piano player dressed in a tuxedo. Rita ordered some herring. She was brought two halves of herring on a piece of rye bread and nothing else. She thought it was a joke. Well, she did order herring didn’t she? She didn’t order cold potatoes or a piece of parsley with it did she?

The waiter spoke quite good English, he also had been to Vancouver. A lot of waiters in Europe have been to Vancouver it seems. After dinner we went to bed and had a real good night’s sleep. We were getting exhausted with all the travelling.

Had breakfast at the hotel, as usual. I wished we would have stayed in Hamburg. Packed our bags for the trip back to Vancouver, checked out of the hotel, and since our flight wasn’t leaving until 7:30 p.m., we decided to explore Frankfurt.

We drove into the center of the city. As we approached the center we noticed electric signs indicating the number of empty parking spots left at different parking lots. There was quite a traffic jam so we decided to park at the nearest one. Parked our car, and went for a walk. Only then did we realize that we were in the seedier part of Frankfurt.

We walked towards the shopping district, hoping to pick up some interesting presents for our relatives back in Canada. Saw a "Henkle" knife store and went in. We bought some very useful items. For Raija and Ken, we bought a set of cocktail skewers topped by an elephant with an elephant holder. For Eija, we bought a set of cocktail skewers topped by an elephant with an elephant holder. And we would have continued to buy cocktail skewers topped by an elephant with an elephant holder but the store was out of them by this time.

Stopped at an outdoor restaurant and had beers, Rachel of course had coke.

Walked down a pedestrian street and looked in a lot of stores.

But to my delight, there were no more sets of cocktail skewers topped by an elephant with an elephant holder, left in Frankfurt. Furthermore there were no more coins left in our pockets.

Walked through an underground crosswalk, and as in Budapest, there was a shopping center with all kinds of stores.

Then we headed back to our car. A half a block away from the parking lot we noticed a bunch of people hanging around on the sidewalk. A lady had her pants down and a gentleman was examining her.  She was mooning us and it was quite the sight. We stepped up our pace, retrieved our car and got the hell out of there.

It was time to head for the airport. We made a few wrong turns but eventually ended up at the airport. We didn’t know which terminal we were supposed to return the car to. Of course we went to the wrong one. After we looked around and discovered where we were supposed to go, we got back into our car and drove to the right terminal.

We returned the car. It had 16,000 kilometers on it. We had covered 10,000 kilometers in 45 days. At the terminal we checked in our luggage. It was only 40 kilograms over. We only had to pay $200 dollars extra. Plus a ton of carry-on, the handbags including the wicker basket for Tina.

We went to a restaurant in the airport to have something to drink. The beer came in tall glasses and as the waiter was placing the first glass of beer in front of Rita, he spilled the second glass, which was still on his tray, in her lap. The restaurant manager came and offered to pay for the dry cleaning and after some thought decided not to charge us for the beers. I thought this was a great deal, Rita was not impressed. We boarded the air plane and were off to Vancouver.

Air-Transat #925

As we tried to arrange the carryon bags we ran into some real difficulties. The plane was full, unlike the flight to Europe, and the overhead compartments filled in a hurry. Most of our luggage, including the wicker basket which Rita had been clutching, ended up at our feet. This was not so bad for Rita and Rachel, but I ended up with my knees beside my ears.

The plane took off on schedule and soon we were over Greenland. I was happy we weren’t carrying Surstömming but still considered jumping because my ears were getting sore from my knees rubbing against them.

Arrived in Vancouver at around 8:30 p.m.. Went through customs. We were asked what we had brought back. We had filled out our declaration forms and had declared that we had brought back more alcohol than we were allowed. The customs officer looked at the forms and decided to let us go without a fine. I guess she was just happy that we weren’t smuggling Surstömming.

Rick and Dean were there to meet us. We loaded up the car, and managed somehow, to get five people into the sedan. Drove to the Skyline hotel, where Rick had left the Jeep, and came home. Tina was waiting for us at home with Joshua and had prepared dinner.

It was a wonderful trip but it was nice to be home.