So here we go. November 10th, 2014.
We had a short transit at Kuala Lumpur around 11.30ish local time just for about 15 minutes. Then we board into the airplane again, sat at the same seat as the trip to KL. It was quite a long journey, about 13 hours, but I managed to stay put. Actually I tried to sleep but I can't, but in the end, I slept for about 3 hours. We were served one meal, one snack (it was so-so), and was offered drinks twice (tea, coffee, water).
We arrived at Frankfurt Airport at 07.30, boy, it was still quite dark, seems like still 05.45 in the morning, and not to mention, freezing cold. Before we landed, we put on long john shirt, then when we landed Mom had us to put on "long john"s pants inside the jeans we were wearing, honestly I don't know what "long john"s actually meant. But it was warmer afterwards.
We were confused at first at finding our way to the baggage claim. Dad almost led us the wrong way (he was following the crowd of people towards somewhere I don't really notice), but we managed to find our way. Baggage claim was one level down, they had us going down the escalator near the exit from the boarding gates. It was quite easy to find actually. And we were one of the few people who were actually down there waiting for the baggage. It wasn't more than about 15 minutes that we had our luggage packed onto the trolley (we had to deposit 2 euros to use the trolley) and then headed to the exit to find the train towards Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (meaning Frankfurt Central Station). We had to go down one more level to the train area to "register" train tickets from the "DB" counter, then again down one level to wait for the train. All these time me and dad were trying to find sim card, but wasn't successful. Arriving at the train area, there was one train waiting to depart, but the doors were soon closed. We thought it was departing like in one second, so we thought the next train was okay. But it didn't depart until like 1 minute afterwards, and few people who came after us pushed the red button on the sides of the train door, and the door just opened. We were like "huh? The door can be opened?". We though it was like the train doors in Singapore, when it was shut, we should just back off from the door and wait for the next train to arrive. So that was epic. People in the train were like staring at us. Okay, I was quite embarrassed.
And so, we took the next train. Mom carried the big luggage, dad had 1 big and another small luggage, and I had 1 small luggage. Okay, it wasn't fair. Anyways. Haha. On the next train, mom made sure that we were on the right one. Then the train had some issues (I don't understand what they said in the announcement) that the train had to stop. After the announcement, people around us were like "what??" And some drop jaw, but we were like showing no expressions, just flat. Epic. We were soon on the way again after like 10-15 minutes and stopped in about 3-4 stations.
Okay, Frankfurt was freezing. It was like 7 or 8 degrees. Mom and I also put on those thick parachute-material jackets so my body was warm, but my fingers were like ice. We arrived at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, about 2 levels below ground. At ground level, the station was huge. My first impression was, "okay, this is like Harry Potter train station" and I imagined my friend, Cynthia's face. The station had around 20 platforms, McDonald's in one side, then one or two stop-by bakery/coffee shops, a book store, a confectionery store, etc. Like in the movies.
And so we headed to the hotel, we didn't think about finding our hotel in the map and so we were kind of lost in front of the station, but we found a small map of the central station with anything around I-don't-know km radius, and with my map skills (quite proud of myself), we were in the right way. We had to cross 3 streets, it took around 10 minutes to the hotel.
Hotel lobby was small, but it had all it needs for a lobby. Yes we were early (we arrived at 9am) and our room wasn't ready yet so the reception gave us a complimentary drink while we wait. And something happened, my eyes were uncomfortable and hurt so I had to go to the toilet to see what's wrong and took one pair of fresh softlens. Turned out that it was time to change them because after I changed them, my eyes were "relieved". When I got back to the reception area, mom was gone (as usual, she always wants to be the first, doesn't want to wait), only dad was waiting for me, with my bag and jacket.
We headed up to our room and boy we were relieved that we had arrived, safe and sound. But then we prepared our things to make a short (short as in 2 hour train) to Koln (or Cologne), mom said that there was a nice cathedral there and we would have lunch there as well. So we took of the next train (around 12 or 1pm), then arrived at Koln Dom to find that that day was Koln Carnival. We had two plates of roasted duck noodle, which turned out to be enough for the three of us. All people seemed to gather there dressed up in different costumes (sailors, nurses, Romans, football players, etc). We didn't realize it was Koln Carnival until my sister who was currently in Singapore, told us in Whatsapp. We weren't able to explore the inside of Koln Dom due to renovation if I'm not mistaken. So we just spent around 30 minutes then headed back to Frankfurt to rest to prepare for the 4-day Medica 2014 in Messe Nord, Dusseldorf.
