Frankfurt

I got to enjoy an unexpected Frankfurt trip at the beginning of the month.  A co-worker was dropping her trip the morning of departure, so it was a last minute pick up.  It was a weekday departure so the crew was pretty senior.

I spent the afternoon wandering around Mainz, the little town where we layover.  Fall was in the air and it was nice to see leaves changing color.  It seems that in Texas, we just go from green to brown.  As a bit of background, Mainz is located along the Rhine River and lies west of Frankfurt.  Even with a population of almost 200,000 it still has the sleepy feel of a little village.  Mainz managed to major avoid bombing during WWII, so much of the original construction of the city still stands.

The highlight of my day of sightseeing was a visit to St. Stephen's Cathedral.  The original structure dates back to 990.  St. Stephen's is the oldest Gothic style church in the region.  The neatest part of the church is the Chagall stained glass windows.  This summer, I was hoping to see some of Chagall's work in Israel, but the building with the stained glass was under renovation.  Now I finally got to catch a glimpse of his work.  The windows were created between 1978 and 1995 and use a brilliant blue color.  The images are from the Old Testament, to mark the common threads between Judaism and Christianity.

I also visited the Gutenberg Museum, highlighting the life of the man who invented the modern printing press.  They even had one of the original Gutenberg Bibles on display.  The museum did not allow photography, so I was not able to take any pictures.

I met up with the crew in the early evening at a local wine bar for a few glasses of good wine and then we made our way to a great restaurant that everyone goes to, specializing in schnitzel.  I had the chicken schnitzel with white asparagus and hollandaise sauce.  Very tasty, but the heartburn that came with it a few hours later was a little rough!

Short Call Out

Catching up on the blog, last month was my reserve rotation.  The third Saturday of the month, I was sitting around on ready reserve.  It was just about 7pm and I figured I was safe for the evening.  Ladyfriend had come up and we had just taken salmon out of the oven when the phone rang.  It was Crew Scheduling with a short call out for London, leaving in about two hours.  After scarfing down my dinner, I got packed up and made my way to the airport.  I remembered that my friend Ann had sent me a message a few weeks before letting me know she was working over there for a few months.  I dropped her a quick email to see if she would be free the next day to hang out.  She was on-line so she responded right away and said she would be free to meet up.

Our flight over was uneventful.  We did have a little tense moment in the elevator at LHR.  Once we got to the ground floor the elevator jammed and we were stuck for about 10 minutes.  Then the power went out, but we were finally rescued.

We got to the hotel and I changed clothes and ran over to Waitrose and Boots for some provisions before meeting up with Ann.

It was a cloudy day, but still fine for walking, so we headed over to the London Eye, the big Ferris wheel attraction along the Thames.  It takes about 1 hour to go around, giving you great views of the city.

We made our way along the bank of river and headed down towards the Tate.  The street is draped with street performers.  Some of them scare me, like the people who paint their faces silver and then stand very still til you give them money.  We saw a particularly badly dressed Elvis who no one was paying attention to.  I put in 5p, which wasn't enough to get even a smile out of the guy, but then Ann gave him a couple of pounds and he gave us a great show, including karate kicks.  He sang my favorite Elvis song, Suspicious Minds.

Our next stop was a little pub I had been too this summer that served a great Strawberry beer.  We sat outside and threw back a few pints and caught up.  I had not seen Ann since shortly after graduating from high school.  She lived in my neighborhood back in Temple Terrace, FL and was a few years behind me in school.

We decided on pub food since Ann had still not had fish and chips, so we set out to find a cool place to eat.  We stopped around St. Paul's at sunset. The nearby pub was out of fish and chips (it's that even allowed!) so we ended up heading to a pub near where Ann was staying in Islington and had dinner.

Yet another great London layover and great catching up with an old friend!