We are both up and about around 06:30. Lana had a long period during the night where she could not sleep as well as me, but at least I got about six hours sleep for the first time during my trip. Overcast and coolish morning in Copenhagen. Our Lufthansa flight from Copenhagen airport to Frankfurt am Main is scheduled to take off at 11:55 AM. We decide to leave our Airbnb apartment by 09:30 as it is only about a 30 minute trip via M3 subway/M2 rail to the airport.
We had some excellent news this morning from our real estate agent that the buyers did their own walkabout home "inspection" and all is good. By Monday, their agent should have the deposit cheque in his hands, therefore, our condo sale would be confirmed and time to celebrate! Huge weight lifted off our shoulders. Given the current climate with real estate in Vancouver, the potential further rising of interest rates and sheer uncertainty of our economic drivers we believe our timing was good. We will not need bridge financing and have a better idea of what our new mortgage will total. We have not had a mortgage on our home properties for about fifteen years so that will be new.
Lana's sister Marilyn shared a YouTube video about Copenhagen which is brilliant and captures the vibe of this city. For those who have not been to Copenhagen and/or Denmark we would totally recommend this as a travel destination. We can see why it is always in the top 3 of the world for "happiness" index. I text our host Ole to confirm the time we are departing as he has a maid that comes in to clean up. We always leave our Airbnb rentals in at least the same condition it was if not cleaner than when we arrived. Thankfully we have a great rating on Airbnb so that helps with being able to book places we see and like. We drop the key through the mail slot on our way out.
Uneventful commute to Copenhagen International Airport. Our first stop in Departures is Lufthansa. We were not expecting this airport to be as large as it is and as busy as it is. We get in the Star Alliance Gold/Business Class queue in order to have our boarding passes printed and Lana needs to get credit for this flight for her Aeroplan account. Although we are first in line the group of eight persons in front of us take forever with the agent. Lana obtains a Fast Track status so she can speed pass everyone at Security. We believe that I will be able to follow her no problem like we do everywhere else. We are wrong.
You need to scan your ticket code on the machine and in her case her gate opens quickly and closes. When I scan my pass the gate won't open. We try her code from the other side and that does not work. I get in the regular initial Security line where you scan your passes only. Once I am in I scoot under the tape to join Lana in the Fast Track Security line.
Security was pretty fast and neither of us had any problems. We discover we have no gate # on our boarding passes. No problem as according to the monitors in about 40 minutes we will know our gate #. About 20 minutes later while sitting in the SAS lounge they confirm our gate #A14. We have no idea where that gate must be? In gaining entrance into the lounge we have learned from our previous experience in Security. As soon as Lana scans her boarding pass (Star Alliance Gold) I race in behind her and that works.
The SAS lounge is gigantic and is on two floors. Pretty good food and drink choices. We get to have more of that brilliant rye bread with some cheese, cold cuts, jams and more. I can't fill my water bottle though. Boarding for our 11:55 flight is 11:25 and we are fortunate we leave early as our gate happens to be at the opposite end of the airport! The gate is full of flyers and hard to find a seat. Our flight is delayed. One reason there are not many seats is there are many "man spreaders" so you have to squish yourself in to accommodate the fact these guys have their legs and knees all over the place. We have Zone 1 boarding privileges per Lana's AC status.
As we are going through the gate check on way to our seats Lana is stopped by the agent and asked to see if her luggage will fit in size checker gizmo and it doesn't. She is forced to hand over her luggage and we need to pick it up at Baggage Claim. We are both in Row 7, but Lana has the aisle seat and I have the window seat and no one in the middle seat so lots of space. We lift off the runway at 12:20 and land in Frankfurt am Main 13:26 so a pretty quick flight.
Well this is where the explosion takes place. We are given free small water bottles by the attendants. Lana doesn't finish her bottle and it is flat water. Lana had filled up my water bottle in the lounge and it was carbonated. I did not know that. When we landed I decided to top up my bottle with Lana's bottle while sitting in my window seat. As I screwed the lid off my bottle it exploded out of my hand and actually injured my finger! It made quite a loud explosion (popping sound) and many persons on the plane were looking at me. My finger hurt for about two hours afterwards.
We now have to head to baggage claim to get Lana's bag. It is the fourth bag off the conveyor! Yeh! We are now walking towards Car Rental signs and that is quite a while. We find the Hertz counter and nobody ahead of us! Quite a long production as our agent had to physically to get a number of keys and then return to us. After another long walk we are at our parking area and discover our Audi Quattro full-size vehicle. We think it is more than full-size as it is an SUV. I am not used to driving a vehicle that large. We ensured Lana has the ability to drive it as well and that cost us about 95Euro. I can get carried away wine tasting sometimes. In the case of German Weinguts they always have generous pours.
Our rental car. Lots of room in the trunk for our future three suitcases and the back seat for our wine purchases! Air conditioning and the latest technology. Remote starter key and it rides so well on the open road. Great acceleration and handling as well.
As usual it takes at least ten minutes for our Garmin GPS car unit to recognize the European satellites. We park our car and wait for the GPS to be ready for our German destination which will be Trier. Overall, our GPS unit works pretty good, but we do have instances where it goes completely bonkers! This happens more than once on this drive. Fortunately, I have a good navigator being my lovely wife Lana.
The German drivers are pretty good. Some observations while driving:
- we had forgotten the huge number of wind turbines that exist in this part of Deutschland
- so many semi trucks on the road due to the fact that there is the absence of good railroad system for freight
- our GPS got confused and had us in the fields according to the screen many times this afternoon
- on the Autobahn sections you only get in the left hand lane briefly to pass and then move back into the middle lane as there will be a car driving like a rocket right up on your rear bumper
- lots of road construction and when that occurs you drive in very tight corridors where you have to be very careful steering your vehicle as you could side-swipe another car or truck quite easily
The driving distance from Frankfurt am Main to Trier near the French border is about 200 km or 2 hours and 15 minutes duration. It is mostly freeway type driving and in our case it involved a slight detour through Wiesbaden due to a wrong turn. Overall, we do quite well in making it to Trier and relatively fast. It is a beautiful sunny and hot day. Our a/c is working very well!
Our Airbnb apartment is in the south area of Trier and our GPS unit works very well in finding our apartment. Dedicated parking across the small lane. It was not easy finding the entrance to building 22 and then we realize the second floor in Deutschland really means on the second level. Good instructions for the lock box. Our apartment is huge! Two bedrooms, large living room/dining room, kitchen massive and our bathroom has a bathtub for Lana! We open the windows to get a fresh breeze and discover the noise of the passing passenger trains with the train tracks that run right beside the building.
Given we have arrived around 17:00 our priority will be dinner. Lana finds an authentic German restaurant within walking distance so that makes sense. We walk in the heat to this German restaurant located up the hill from us and on the other side of the rails. Every few minutes it seems a passenger train rips by our apartment as we are that close to the tracks. When booking via Airbnb I had no idea of this situation. Oh well, they are moving so fast that with the windows closed it may be OK.
We did get a good walk uphill getting to the restaurant and it is quite hot. Orchards full of ripe fruit in the area as you can tell this is pretty good wine grape growing country. For certain, we are in a more blue-collar neighbourhood with many young families. This is not a foreign tourist area. Our Airbnb host Sandra communicates only in Deutsch.
Online picture of Alte Brauhaus Trier. Lana found it via Google and it was highly rated and very German. The exterior doesn't do it justice. In the rear of the restaurant is a courtyard full of greenery and many dining tables. We did not eat outside as the one server who spoke some English warned us about insects such as Wasps. I am not copying the website link as it is Facebook and all in German.
Glass of a Riesling Halbtrocken style. This is our first glass of Riesling of this specific trip. Halbtrocken style means semi-dry. Another great glass of a Mosel Riesling. Most casual wine drinkers believe all Riesling are super sweet. So wrong, but it leaves more Riesling for us! ;-)
The bill for our meal totals Euro 40.20 so a much better deal than in Denmark. We consider German good comfort food. There is nothing pretentious about their cuisine and it simply satisfies your appetite and is welcomed by your stomach. In Deutschland you don't leave a tip, but you can round up and that goes to the server. Given we were basically ghosted by the one server who does not speak English we were not inclined to even round up. Fortunately, one of the servers spoke decent English. Normally, we can do a pretty good job in a restaurant with our German and know how to order. The one server never gave us that chance though.
Easier walk downhill to our apartment. We need to make contact with our Frankfurt friend Markus in regards to getting tickets to a Bundesliga match on September 10th in Frankfurt. Markus' friend Christian has season tickets and willing to see them for 70 Euro. I make contact with Markus by phone tonight to confirm the logistics for the ticket handover and our paying Markus in cash. Good to talk with Markus again.
Also, we need to visit REWE to purchase groceries for our four nights/three full days stay in Trier. This is a popular grocery store in Deutschland. When we were temporarily living in Heidelberg we used a REWE for most of our purchases. We will need to drive. Lana will use her iPhone to Google Map us to the nearest location. We did notice a REWE when we drove into town earlier. Where the heck is this different location REWE? We drive by it twice apparently, but cannot see it. We will discover after circling more than once it is in a pedestrian mall and the entrance is on the other side of the building that faces the side streets. We park our car and walk to the store. We get to use our Euros! We buy some bottled water, fruit and other supplies. We will not buy any pastries as we will get those at a German bakery tomorrow.
Time to get to bed as it is already almost 22:30! We are both tired. Just checked my email and found our real estate agent's confirmation email in my Junk folder. The email confirms our deal is in place and there is a deposit cheque with the agent. We have officially sold our apartment! Yeh! Too late to celebrate though.
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