Day 1: Transit – Singapore – Frankfurt
There’s a line by Mick Thomas in a Weddings Parties Anything song that goes, “There’s no point writing postcards on your bad days” and I quote it a bit. I’m gonna tweak it a little today, and turn it into: there’s no point writing long postcards on you long days; and with today being a long long long day, I’ll try to keep it short.
Wasn’t the bet flight into Singapore, there were several small people around where I was sitting, and they haven’t yet got to the point of enjoying flying. One poor cherub must have screamed for 90 minutes straight, I didn’t ee what their parent’s were doing to console them, but whatever it was just wasn’t working. Combined with having the middle seat in the row, on a red-eye flight, and then came the medical emergency maybe a dozen rows ahead in the last 90 minutes of the flight, I doubt I got more than an hour of sleep. I did watch the Korean movie, Confidential Assignment 2, and thought it was pretty good, as it had three protagonists: a South Korean, a North Korean, and an American Korean.
Changi airport is still probably the best airport in the world, but it’s currently a shadow of the amazing centre of awesome it was in 2019. Terminal 2 appears to be opening up further, which is a start, but there are still a lot of empty shops, and in places it feels rundown — there were only 2 working touchscreens in the upstairs food court working this morning.
Then came the 12ish hour long haul to Frankfurt, and I haven’t done one of these for a few years. Managed to doze a little, and took in a few european movies: a French movie about a guy who falls in love with a drag queen, which had some fun drag moments but also had that French movie thing where everyone had to be seriously dysfunctional and uncommunicative (I think it was called Three Nights a Week). There was another French movie, a detective crime one, that again had just balls of dysfunction trying to solve a crime (I can’t remember the title, something about 12?). There was a German movie about an actor who goes a bit loopy and finds himself hanging out with a post-genderist-post-feminist art collective (again the name escapes me).
Got into Frankfurt ok, made it through customs with no issues, my luggage also went to Frankfurt, then it was the quick train ride to the station and a quick walk to my hotel that is basically opposite. Having stayed around here for a night back in 2019, it seemed like a little run down end of town, but nothing seriously criminal. This time it does seem to have declined, judging by about the most common word I heard spoken around a couple of adjacent intersections was “hashish”. If everybody saying it was selling it, there were almost as many dealers as potential buyers (if you categorise every passerby as a potential customer). I didn’t actually see a lot, if any, actual dealing taking place, but my response to these kind of areas to to walk a little straighter, make myself a little bigger, don’t make eye contact, and don’t appear too interested in what’s going on. It’s worked fine so far.
A bit of an unpack/decompress in the hote, then it was a search for a legit looking atm and some food. The atm search took me a bit further than I intended, and by this stage hunger drove me to a Brewdog Pub, where I had a decent burger, pommes, a Trappist tripel, and a house barleywine. The tripel was delightful, malty sweet and balanced; the barleywine was good but it was the US style so a bit more hopped and carbonated than I’d haver preferred.
Tomorrow is catching up with L’s cousins, where a 4 year old will school me on how schlect my German is.