Lufthansa planes don't have a row 13! Well, okay. A lot of people don't like that number. But they also don't have row 17 (!!), because it's considered unlucky in Italy (and Brazil). It's weird that they didn't remove row 4 for the Chinese.

PS. Yet they park at gate 13 without any problems :)

I was really surprised to see barriers at the entrance to the pedestrian zone. There was nothing like that in Frankfurt before.

It seems terrorist attacks with vehicle rammings are making themselves known.

This time Lufthansa decided to play it safe and asked me to come early. There wasn't a huge crowd, but I actually did show up early :)

Germans being Germans, you know? They say they really care about the environment, so when planning trips, they try to pick destinations they can reach by train whenever possible. No planes, no cars.

Not all of them, but you'll definitely notice it.

Lucky for them they're right in the heart of Europe with everything at their doorstep. Though if you really want to go to, say, Greece, well, there's no way around it – you've gotta fly :)

In Germany, there's a law that if a child lives more than 2 km away from school, they get a free travel pass for all types of ground transport within their region.

You just write an application to the school and that's it. Sometimes officials are willing to work with you and approve it even if you live closer. A colleague submitted an application for his son even though the school is only 1.6 km away. It went through without any problems.

Germans really love playing the game of "who can squeeze more out of the state" (from tax refunds to little perks like this) :)

I specifically chose a flight without Sheremetyevo to avoid baggage issues. But Frankfurt Airport is putting all my plans at risk: 30,000 suitcases got stuck at the airport on September 28th and 20,000 still haven't left 🙈

I'm hoping my baggage will be fine :)

Made it to Frankfurt. Gonna hang out for a day: catch up with some former colleagues and head home.

Such a homey feeling when I come here :)

P.S. I took a bus from Amsterdam and it turned out to be the right call: the railways cancelled a bunch of trains because of fears of a hurricane that never really materialized. Everyone's complaining about Deutsche Bahn.