The flight on Lufthansa was pleasant -- we seemed to have more room than on ordinary flights, and the service was wonderful. The flight attendants spoke both German and English (and probably several other languages); I practiced my bad German on them. Frankfurt airport is immense, and a trip from any place in the airport to any other place is like an adventure to an alien land. We got off the plane and were escorted to buses, which then took a full 20 minutes to wind through various buildings to the place where we could pick up our luggage. Getting to the rental car place was another long hike.
I was far too amused to find out that "rental car place" in German is "mietwagen"...which I promptly mangled into "meat wagon." Our "meat wagon" is a huge Mercedes SUV with all the bells and whistles. It's a rather intimidating beast, and the gear shift is very different from American cars.
At any rate, having acquired our personal "Meat Wagon", we fired up the GPS (another interesting experience since it's not a brand we use) and headed to Gelnhausen, the place where I spent about 4 years of my childhood.
It has changed considerably. I remember the drive being through farmland, where everyone farmed the land up to the edge of the road. Now it looks more like America, with a grassy strip between the farmland and the Iroad. When I lived there, the only high school was in Frankfurt, an hour's trip one way. It's still an hour's drive from Frankfurt to Gelnhausen but the drive has changed. It's no longer a small 4 lane highway bordered by farms, but a very large 6 lane highway with concrete walls separating small towns from the roads, and a lot of graffiti. It looks less tidy.
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