Teutonic Transfers (Frankfurt International Airport (FRA))

Name: gollygumdrops

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Product:	Frankfurt International Airport (FRA)
Date:	01/10/02 (1287 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I really like the word 'Teutonic'

Disadvantages: I hate sitting around at airports

I travel through Frankfurt Main pretty often. Flight schedules mean that it's not unusual for me to spend two or three hours kicking around with nothing to do. The quality of airport entertainment, catering and snoozing zones therefore becomes important. As I travel with Lufthansa I have grown to know and fear Terminal One.

Frankfurt has the annoying habit of loading and unloading little iddy diddy planes to/from Birmingham in the field. I know it looks good on news footage to see people walking down airplane steps and kissing the tarmac, but it's just plain irritating to have to get off the plane and on to a bus to trundle to the airport. I want to walk in one of those tube things (which you do get to use when flying across the Atlantic).

I don?t suppose it?s really fair to complain that it's always grey and rainy in Frankfurt, but I will anyway.

Walking into the Terminal you are confronted with a bank of monitors listing arrivals and departures. There's lots! Information throughout the airport is good with another departures board upstairs giving a total of around three hours worth of advance information. Signage is good in English and German to food, loos and gates.

Loos are less good. Whilst they are clean there are far too few for the traffic in the airport, and there are even fewer sinks available which is a pain when you want to splash a bit of water about to freshen up and brush your teeth.

Catering is OK, certainly nothing to write home about. There's a McDonalds with a permanent queue, but the upside of taking credit and debit cards as well as serving the full menu all day so you aren't just faced with breakfast choices when your body clock is telling you it's supper time. There's plenty of seating that allows you top watch the runways. There's also a McCafe if you just want sandwiches, pastries, beer or coffee.

There's a full blown fancy pants restau
rant which I haven't tried and a slightly more German style diner with toasted sandwiches, chicken dinners and the like at fairly reasonable prices. Expect to pay 4 to 10 Euros for a meal here, or 15 to 30 in the restaurant. Downstairs you'll find what looks excitingly like an oyster bar, but isn't, just more sandwiches pastries and booze.

There's a large duty free selection for booze, fags and smellies. Other shopping is rather limited. You'll find an optician, quality watch shop, and a delicatessen selling caviar, German necessities and 'gourmet steak sauce' that is in fact HP Brown Sauce with over developed self esteem.

There's two newsagents, both of the same brand and with the exact same stock, and a candy kiosk which is the only place to buy canned/bottled pop/water. If you are really bored there's a stamp machine and a post box so you can send postcards from the airport and save yourself a job later on.

Staff whiz around the airport on little old lady bicycles which can be a little disconcerting. You never get to forget that you are in Germany. Each time I?ve visited there?s been a small leak or structural problem. In Britain you?d see a bucket catching drips, in the US the whole area would be closed off to prevent ?slip and fall? litigation, but here in Frankfurt there?s always a huge Heath Robinson construction channelling water away from passenger areas or supporting errant tiles.

Rather meanly the catering areas do boast some rather comfy padded seats which are surrounded by signs declaring ?sleeping forbidden?. However, the gate areas are fairly spacious and if you head to the gate early you can quite comfortably snuggle down on a triple seat without fear of being moved on.

Security has tightened. You will be patted down and rubbed all over with a metal detector, including two swoops to check that the metal is just under-wiring! I've been through in four diffe
rent pairs of shoes this year after deciding that it was my 'travelling boots' that raised suspicions but each and every time I've been asked to take them off for checking. Fortunately for the most recent booty call they've added a chair for shoe removal.

Overall Frankfurt is a good choice for a transit airport. It's clean and it has the stores you absolutely need without excessive consumer temptation. It's spacious without requiring you to be the kind of international endurance athlete that Schipol demands for quick transfers. If I could improve one thing it would be to eliminate the bus shuttle.

Summary: