As my flight touched down at Frankfurt airport, there was almost a sense of déjà vu. Bright sunshine reflected off the humongous metallic building. It seemed for a moment that I was at the Hyderabad airport. (Bummer! :D) But that sense quickly disappeared as the size of the airport dawned upon me. The flight bays were there far & wide into the distance. As I marveled at the sheer scale of things, the lack of creativity, colour and focus on function over form was also immediately apparent. A 7-foot-tall police officer then stopped me (being one of the very few non-German/non-EU looking people coming out) and checked my visa and waved me on. Traveling without check-in baggage was a huge bonus as I was out of the airport in less than 15 minutes.
My pickup was waiting for me and it was a nice and BIG Audi with a pleasant driver. We were on the Autobahn towards Basel in no time, and the car zipped along at 150+ km/hr without the slightest complaint from the engine or the suspension.
A right turn to Darmstadt off of the Autobahn and the ride was over in less than 20 minutes.
There was time to kill till the evening and I had a drink and went for a walk. The city was quite minimalistic with hardly any people around, and some rather boring looking buildings. I walked up to the central ‘platz’, as squares, I took it, are called in Germany. When you look at some of these squares in Germany you feel as though they really didn’t have any space constraints when they built them. Very unlike Bombay, and quite similar in fact to New Delhi.
Dinner & jet-lag induced sleep and early wake-up later, the next two days of meeting went by in no time.
On an evening walk on the 2nd day, I stumbled upon the railway station and promptly booked my ticket to Munich! Oktoberfest awaited! :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment