Mainz to Frankfurt, Leaving Germany...

0800 woke up and got ready
0940 why it takes so much for me to get ready!?
and we finally went down to have breakfast in the ground floor. it was not really "lecker" (delicious)...just an ordinary continental breakfast, i.e., cold meal. cucumber and tomatos were a little dried and not really fresh...i liked their interior design in that dining room, though...one side of the wall was all mirror, the ceiling was pale pink, and the other walls and decoration was a noble offwhite.
10:00 Na-chan (Nacchan) talked to the lady clerk, busy organizing things in the buffet...and she said it was until 10:00a.m. that they served their breakfast....gosh, we didn't know that....i mean i must have forgot that...oh, yeah, the frontman told me it was from 7:00 to 10:00...i thought it was until 10:30!!! just as the hotel we used at Koeln.
so we had to finish up as soon as we could!
10:30 checked out and went to the Mainz Hauptbahnhof (central station) as we planned(!).
11:02 it's great in Germany trains come just ON TIME as in the timetable!


車窓から見たライン川の風景。観光名所である「ライン川下り」は退屈する人も多いみたい。
列車から十分眺められるよ。でも、気持ちよさそうだから実際に川下りもしてみたいかも。

11:25 got to Frankfurt Airport and took our baggage to the Baggage Room
12:20 left there
13:05 arrived at Frankfurt, took bus to the Staedel Museum
13:15 arrived at the Museum finally...The Museum's shop did not have goods that caught my eyes...we were not really interested in the paintings there, either. They were all kurai (gloomy?) and i imagined the owner of the gallery must been a depressed person...(well, i don't know yet...) The Wallraf-Richarz Museum in Köln (Cologne) were doing great job!
13:35 left for Hauptwache, Frankfurt--the shopping area--on foot. walked along the River Main...the river side was messy with trash...but you know we are in the middle of one of the biggest city in Germany, why not.

Zeil通り。写真ではわかりにくいけれど、すごい混みよう。
原宿の表参道に、竹下通りの人々をもぶっちゃけたような感じ。

13:55 browsed the Zeil Street which is said to be a main shopping street for young people. had lunch--borshech? kind of Russian food, i guess--it was very good. i was amazed even to vegetable soup Germany people put sausage in! See the pink things in the soup. It was very interesting.

from 2:30 to 4:30 we browsed the Zeil Street and two department stores. Things there were not really new to me. the goods and price there seemed almost the same as those in Japan. Apparently they have the same fashion trend in Europe as in Japan, too. i did not know that and the fact WAS amazing to me! i saw a lot of people wearing pop bright colored clothing in the street.

I bought nothing but several accessories in the street. Na-chan said we should have known nice stores there, and that we saw a lot of nice things in Duesseldolf because our host family knew where to go. We had no idea where to go here to buy nice things. Too bad we did not find any in Zeil...

4:55 arrived at the Frankfurt Airport.
5:05 went to in front of the Baggage Room just to find we could not go in there...tapes of red and white between the poles the police located. Three police people. one tall big scary guy was standing along the tape inside the zone. the other were small guy and a lady searching for something. i saw a small truck with a steal box in the backside. and then they told us the big crowd to step aside to the back more. we did. and they taped larger zone now. and there came a police dog. what did they find???!

we were worried about our flight schedule...and worried imagining that all those big crowd would be going to make the long line to get their own baggage....

and thirty minites later, finally all the police and their dog and the truck were gone and right away we started kind of dashing up to the room really quickly...just to find only us and the other retired Canadian man were waiting for the baggage! Man! All other people were just crowd watching "it" happening or waiting for their guest or family to come from the Entrance beside the room!

We worried too much...but we could go through it safely.
18:05 the cool tall African airport guy who seemed to speak perfect American English (Was he American?) opened the room's shutter for us and handed us our baggage at last. 13 euros or something. the baggage room old guy did not come back after all (all the clerks in the stores nearby the incident which might have been a bomb had to go away for the possibility of terrorist attack)

19:15 we boarded the airplane to Narita, Japan...

Oh, and Korean Air was good. All the clerks were very nice and they served healthy tasty meals.