Frankfurt - Kuala Lumpur

We woke up in the morning to a magical surprise - it had snowed overnight - on our last night in Germany!

Here's what the view out our hotel window looked like the day before:

Here's what it looked like the morning after (yes it was pretty early, but the snow ploughs had already been through clearing roads and paths):

We packed up and caught a taxi to the airport. We weren't sure how much snow would ground planes, so were half prepared to not go anywhere, but thankfully it wasn't blizzardous, so the planes were still flying. Breakfast was McDonalds - classy.

Once we were on the plane they used a high pressure hose filled with something to hose down the aeroplane's wings so it was safe to take off. The whole time we were thinking how much our son would love to see that!

The trip to Kuala Lumpur was pretty much like any flight. Food average, not much sleep, wishing we were finally home...

Nürnberg - Frankfurt

The next morning we found our car, which we had left and ignored for two days, and it was covered in ice. We then managed to negotiate our way out of Nürnberg (I always felt this was a big achievement, being the navigator, and not understanding German, and therefore not really comprehending the street signs) and headed for Frankfurt.

It was a rather uneventful journey, where we spent most of the time skipping between relatively awful radio stations. We must mention the radio stations here: they seemed to have a fascination with Dido, and we heard the same songs over and over again. One station also had a particularly annoying jingle that they played everytime it was time to ring up for the current competition.

As we neared Frankfurt we needed to gauge where it was best to refill the car with diesel, as we needed to return the car with a full tank. We managed to locate the rental car entrance to the airport, returned the car unharmed (apart from a tiny chip in the windscreen, which the guy checking the car immediately noticed - probably mainly because the car had been brand new when we got it - it had been driven from Flensburg, up near Denmark, where it was registered, straight to Frankfurt, we reckoned).

We caught a taxi from the airport into the city, to the Marriott, where we were staying in luxury for our final night. This was the view from our hotel room:

We found a post office to post the fire helmet back home - it ended up taking up too much room in Tim's luggage - and then for something to do we caught the train into the city to the shopping district and had a wander.

We had dinner that evening in one of the three hotel dining rooms, along with some business men, and three American ladies who worked for Avon and seemed to be in Germany for a conference. We kept being given free courses by the waitresses (it was a bit weird) including a small plate of venison: "Excuse me, I didn't order this." "Oh no, that's a complementary dish".

We retired for the evening to watch tv - a novelty we hadn't seen since Possenhofen. This included a German movie that was actually set in Western Australia, but everyone spoke German, including the obligatory Australian Aborigine.

Kuala Lumpur - Frankfurt - Mainz

The flight from KL was a much smaller plane, and to our great delight there were only about 40 people on the plane. Once we had taken off we were able to spread out and I was able to sleep lying along 4 seats. There was no one travelling in business class, and only one person in 1st class.

I watched movies, and slept in between, for about 5 hours in total - arguably the most and best sleep I have ever had on a plane!

We arrived in Frankfurt just before dawn at about 6:30am, where it was snowing as we landed. There were great long lines of snow ploughs along the outer tarmacs, all with orange blinking lights on. We managed to clear customs without actually picking up our luggage (a number of people did this, still not sure how!) We then had to find someone to let us back in to pick up our luggage, and then waited in a queue for ages for "Nothing to Declare", while passengers had their bags quite thoroughly searched. Because of our mishap with the luggage, we were almost the last in the queue, even behind the cabin crew. When we finally got to the check I hauled my bag onto the counter, and I was asked if I spoke Deutsch, to which I replied no. I was then asked where I had come from, and once we said "Australia" they said "that's ok, you can go." We still don't really understand why - perhaps Australian customs has a pretty tough reputation?!

We found the car hire place, where we requested winter tyres for our car. As the original car we had hired didn't have them (an Opel Astra), we fluked an upgrade to a Mercedes C Class!

When we got to the car we sat in it for quite a while, trying to find the hand brake, headlights, windscreen wipers etc. Once Tim finally got up the courage to drive (I decided I wouldn't drive - not confident enough to negotiate the wrong side of the road, from the wrong side of the vehicle!) we set out, with Tim finding it difficult to get used to positioning the car in the middle of the lane, rather than almost driving me up the gutter! Thankfully by this time it had stopped snowing (Welcome to Germany, please drive on the left hand side of the road, whilst negotiating snow falling in your face - aaaarrghhh!). After a few wrong turns, and a few short excursions onto the incorrect side of the road (oops!) we finally made it onto a dual carriage way, taking us in the direction of Mainz.

Some building in Mainz - it looks nice, and shows you it is cold and snowy!

We got a bit confused about which turn off to take - there seemed to be an awful lot of turn-off signs starting with "Mainz" but eventually we worked out that these were for suburbs of Mainz. We finally got into Mainz proper, and then realised we had no idea where the Youth Hostel was, so eventually found a place to pull over, to locate the address, which we had helpfully put in the boot. Unfortunately that didn't help, and neither did our Lonely Planet guide which only had a map with an arrow pointing off the side of the page with "YHA → 2km". After missing turn offs many times, not seeing lanes clearly because of the snow, and almost going around a roundabout the wrong way we finally ended up 2km away from the YHA, but still none-the-wiser as to where it was. After stopping at a petrol station to ask, we discovered it was just down the road, around the corner. We finally got there at 10:20am.

As it was a very stressful drive for Tim, we decided that we would go for a walk, though I had a shower first to freshen up, and briefly thought I had left my wallet on the plane (though it was eventually found in the car - phew!)

We walked through a park beside the youth hostel, where there were lots of families with young kids, tobogganing down slopes. We discovered that our shoes didn't have very ice-friendly soles, and spent a lot of time almost slipping over. We walked and walked and eventually ended up in the main shopping area, with pedestrian malls and cobbled streets. The sales were on, so we bought a new beanie to better cover Tim's ears. We also bought bratwurst on rolls for lunch (a common lunch option in Germany, from street stalls). We got lost walking back to the youth hostel, though eventually found our way.

The slippery park, devoid of tobogganing families.

We filled in time until dinner, which bore absolutely no resemblance to the weekly menu stated meal, and was accompanied by raspberry tea (great to tone our uteruses with!). Early to bed - jetlag.