Frankfurt Layover
Now what??? It’s 5:30am. The Admirals Club isn’t open for another hour and a half so no shower for now. Heck, most of the coffee stands in the airport aren’t even open yet! It’s too early to head into the city – plus if I did that I’d want to store my bags at the AC instead of lugging them around. So, I found a nice quiet spot on one of the balcony levels to work on this trip report. Sadly, there is no free wifi so actual posting of it will have to wait.
About 6:45 am I wander over the Admirals Club as it opens at 7am and I want a shower ASAP. Sadly, they had opened the doors already and I’m on the waiting list. Time to check email and have some OJ. By 7:20, I’m called for one of the two shower rooms. It’s nothing to compare to the ones available at Terminal 5 @ LHR or even the Cathay Lounge in LHR, but it will do the trick to make me feel human once again.
After I’m done, I ask about the possibility of leaving luggage at the club while wandering the airport or the city. “I’m afraid it’s not possible since we’re before security,” the club agent responds. I totally understand although it makes my plans to buy a couple of bottles of wine and wander around Frankfurt more difficult.
About 9am, I decide to seek out the Frankfurt Airport Supermarket. Yes, they really have one. It’s not in the terminal itself, but in the building across from it containing the Sheraton hotel and parking garage and accessible by walkway. It wasn’t too difficult to find – basically right across from the “C” hall. The store, “Tegut”, has quite a good selection of items and good prices – especially compared to stores in the airport. I buy two bottles of wine and a pack of chocolate which I immediately repack into my luggage and head over to the AA counters to check-in.
I get the expected odd look from the security person when I say I already have my boarding passes and that my stay has been only 6 hours. When I say “mileage”, she understands.. at least as much as she can probably having heard it many times before. With my bag tagged and security questions asked, I’m free to go for the next 5 hours. I decide to take the S-bahn into Frankfurt just to wander around the city for a while with my laptop bag.
The trip from Frankfurt airport to the center city is quite easy: 4 stops and (theoretically) 11 minutes. However, my train is running about 7 minutes late to start and seems to take about twice as long as it should to get to Hauptbahnhof. Surprisingly, we arrive on one of the main tracks, not the underground S-bahn tracks about 5 minutes before 10. Reading some signs with my limited German, it seems there is track work this weekend reducing frequency and resulting in a split service east and west of the main train station.
I plan to walk east from the station over to the Dom-Romer area (city hall) then back down along the river to the train station. It’s a cool Sunday morning and I’m glad I have my leather jacket. Being Sunday, the city is very quiet with few store open. Getting lost slightly, I find my way back on course and back to the station to catch the 11:17 train back to the airport – although again it’s running late.
Making it back to the airport, I head back to the Admiral’s Club to have some snacks and beverages. They have put out a tureen of cream of pumpkin soup (not my thing), some meatballs and pretzels and rolls. About 12:45, I start to get board. With boarding scheduled to begin at 1:25, I decide to head through passport control and security.
Passport control takes about 15 minutes and I find that FRA now does security within each group of gates as opposed to a centralized point like I’m used to. Duty free offers nothing to get excited about and a wander down the C concourse to see if you could access any of the other air-side OneWorld lounges proves futile as it ends in a checkpoint for the higher-end “C” gates. A previous trip report indicated you could reach the D/E concourses, but that appears to be no longer the case.
By 1:20, I reach the security area for our flight. It’s quite simple of a process. Shoes stay on (yay!), belts come off. I then enter the sterile boarding area with little other than chairs, TV monitors and a water fountain. 1:25 comes and goes before boarding actually starts about 1:40pm