Fleeting visit to Frankfurt
Monday, 6th November 2006 by Julie
After long, long months of drawing out the project I started on back in January 2005, the start of the global roll-out suddenly came upon us in a rush.
And because the London office is in the middle of a big office move, we’d decided to start with the German offices… and also persuaded the project manager that a couple of us should go along to ease in the transition. 
So Sunday evening found us on Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, a short 1.5 hour trip (+ the usual airport hoo-ha), and then a taxi ride to the hotel booked for us in the city.
The rooms were very chic. Spacious bed and a great shower. Not much more you could ask for in a hotel room. 
We managed to leave our street map behind when we left the next morning.
Fortunately, we knew the street name we were after, and that the office building was red with a very distinctive “Japanese-lantern” type roof…
After a good morning getting to know the small team that manages IT for the 300 or so German users, we had lunch at an Austrian restaurant nearby. Pumpkin soup, followed by interesting spinach dumplings on tomato ragut, topped with super-strong grated cheese.
Back to work, and an afternoon that didn’t come close to working off the lunch, then it was time to head out for dinner.
Our international IT trainer was the brilliant ideas man for our choice of evening meals. He recommended an Aussie bar-restaurant — wow, Aussie restaurants in Frankfurt?! — where we arrived just in time for happy hour.
I had an emu salad, but also partook of a large platter that others were sharing which came with emu, crocodile (!) and kangaroo. The crocodile meat was quite pale, curious texture, not unlike chicken in taste. The kangaroo was good, slightly stringy, with a strong flavour of game; and the emu could have passed for a regular steak, slightly on the well-done side of medium.
(Interesting note from the menu: emu has zero cholesterol.)
After eyeing the dessert menu, we elected to head off instead to the “best ice-cream shop in Frankfurt”. Directions and ice creams courtesy of our trainer.
I have to give a very definite thumbs-up to this little shop. Run by a friendly Italian woman, they have dozens of flavours and the ice cream meets all the necessary requisites for true greatness in terms of creaminess, texture and flavour. Drool!
(Unfortunately they close up shop for winter — seems daft but apparently the locals don’t really go for ice cream in winter — so definitely no holidays here for me and Tom before next Spring!)
Tuesday in the office was hectic. I like to think that we really did prove our usefulness that morning even if it stressed us out.
I say morning, because lunch (taken at a real German cafe nearby) seemed to have barely passed before we needed to head off to the airport for our 17h00 flight…!
The taxi-driver they got us appeared to have specialised in maniac driving; but figuring he must have some skill to still be walking and talking in his fifties, I tried to reassure myself that he probably wouldn’t kill us off on the way to the airport.
The airport was massive, complicated, intrusive (we each scored two complete friskings) and expensive (€3.50 for a bottle of water in the duty-free section) so we just walked through to the boarding gates area and whiled away the time with chatting and reading.
All in all – a good trip! And I’m glad that I don’t get sent abroad often enough that all this would stop being fun.
