Europe Trip #1 – April 1, 2022 – Planes, Trains, and the  Frankfurt Airport Sucks

If things don’t go smoothly on a trip, that makes for a better story after some time has passed.

Our flight got rescheduled from a direct to Munich to a flight to Frankfurt, then  hop from Frankfurt to Munich with an hour in between. That’s a little extra stress but nothing we couldn’t handle.

We got off the plane in Frankfurt and followed the signs “A1-19” off to the right to get to the Munich flight (A13!). A quarter mile down the way we suddenly lost the thread. The blue arrowed signs we’d been following now read  A20-40 ahead and no sign of A1-19. Had we missed it?

Back we turned, finally finding a sign saying gates A1-40 ⬅️. The sign was down at the other end, about 400 meters past our original disembarking gate. This was also the moment we realized we’d need to go through customs at this first Germany stop, even though we were transferring to another German flight.

There was only one agent working and a very long line of people. We had 30 minutes until our flight began boarding. Then Buster noticed the sign that used to say “Gates A1-40” now read Gates A20-40.

Buds heads back down the way to hunt for A1-19 while I hold position in the scrum. Our youths are scattered in three directions coping with their own exhaustion. Finally, a call. Buds has found the gate again back in the direction we started in.

Turns out the gate direction signs weren’t static signs as we expected but were video monitors and the directions had been changing out from under our weary eyes.

Images arise…

• Three card monte, the cup is lifted, the ball is gone.
• Charlie Brown runs up to kick the football and…
• A flaming pit and the airport administrators roasting above it.

We’re not fans of being the ball in airport ping-pong but after we got through customs, we were deposited close to our gate and boarding was just about to start.