Day 3
We all realise that resilience is the key to survive long haul flights, but it was quite a surprise for us to discover that it can also be required on much shorter jaunts.
We had just arrived in Frankfurt after a 13 hour flight from Singapore, feeling shattered and grumpy. When Gray suggested we ‘hop on a train’ to get to Mainz, I thought he had completely lost his marbles. I refused to trundle our luggage to the railway platform so headed out to the taxi rank and joined the queue.
After a few moments we were approached by a guy asking where we were wanting to go. His eyes lit up when we said Mainz. “Come with me – the taxi is over there.”
We hesitated for a moment then, looked at the long queue waiting for taxis, we decided to follow him. He didn’t head for the taxi rank so alarm bells started ringing in fuzzy, jet-lagged brains. He had our bags and, rather than taking us to a taxi he was heading to his car, which was parked in a public area. As he put our bags in his boot, we both spotted that his car had no signage. Oh no! Should we panic?
“This doesn’t look like a taxi to me,” Gray announced. Are you an Uber? “No, no” he assured us – loading the bags.
“But there is no taxi sign!”
“I had to remove my signs because I don’t have a permit to collect passengers from this airport stand. I had a passenger to drop off and was hoping to find someone who wanted to go back to my town. I live near Mainz” he explained.
We looked at each other. It sounded plausible enough and we were exhausted.
We headed out of the car park to the security barrier where the car was stopped. I guess he didn’t have a taxi permit to let him out. After some hectic ‘chat’ with the security guy and some coins changing hands, we headed out of the carpark. The driver asked the name of our hotel. I read it off the printout I had, but obviously my kiwi accent hindered his understanding. “Let me see,” he said and put his hand back to gather the paper.
The next several seconds were unbelievable. We were hurtling down the motorway on ramp into the evening traffic, heaven knows at what speed, as the driver is typing the address into his GPS!!!
We were wide awake now! Maybe the train hadn’t been such a silly option.
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The journey did calm down once he knew exactly where we were heading and he chatted to us quite easily. He was friendly and offered hints for sights to see while we were in Mainz. He took us right into the hotel car park and up to the entrance. The hotel was a welcome sight after far too many hours to count, since we left Singapore.