Oh, Mother where art thou? I: YVR-FRA

I am sooooo glad I'm leaving today.

Farcical Potus just tweeted that a North Korean nuclear threat just vanished because he showed his fat face in Singapore.   And the news are reporting it.   Life in the West felt strangely surreal and fake before but now it has reached a new level.  Watching the news is like watching a reality TV show.  And let's not forget that Trump threatened small African FIFA countries with political consequences if they voted for Morocco instead of Mexico/US/Canada for the 2026 World soccer championship.  And the threat worked.  Another reason to not watch the soccer championship that starts tomorrow.  There is also a personal aspect for me to ignore soccer.  Two supposedly good friends, one a HUGE soccer fan, just came into town for two days and couldn't be bothered to contact me.  ts Ts TS.

It's 12 degrees and raining.  I have the only room in this hotel with a balcony but it's flooded, LOL.

Carlos managed to get me a late check-out.  1 pm, 2 hours later than standard.

Gracias, amigo !



That gives me ample time to have a tiny breakfast at Denny's and to return the rental car.  
When check-out time approaches, Carlos is almost ready to go home, so we agree to head to Cafe Crepe for lunch.  
OMG, my previous refuge from bad food has fallen from grace and joined the Vancouver mediocrity.  They have changed the menu and taken my favourite off the menu.   The Shrimp & Chorizo Crepe contains exactly ZERO shrimp and has too many raw green peppers in it. NOT really the French way !  
Out of 5 white and rose wines listed in the menu, only ONE is available.  And it sucks.

Depressing, because it's the usual Vancouver story.  You find a place that you like, and within a short time it either closes or starts going down-hill.  I've been suffering through that for 30 years now....

Enough whining about Cafe Crepe, I'm still glad to have gone to lunch with Carlos.  He is the nicest guy, but has a lousy ill-paid job and a mediocre boss.  He shares a 1-bed room apartment with two other parties.  At first I couldn't believe that but as the Georgia Straight article shows, that has become a common story in Vancouver.   

The rather sad advertising on the water-spotted wall of the City Centre SkyTrain station

View through the SkyTrain front window  ;-(

4 pm.
Time for the last cigarette before going through security. This is when I notice the HUGE boulders that appeared very recently on the sidewalk close to the smoking area at YVR.  Look at their shape!  They're FAKE boulders.  And probably NOT cheap.

Security is more unorganized than I have ever seen it.  The line-up before the metal-detector gate is SO LONG that the boarding-pass-scanning guy even leaves his post to walk over to the gate to wave people through.  The fact that the gate blinks red for half the people doesn't seem to have an impact.  Just go Go GO !  The whole thing is turning into a farce.  

17:00
The plane is supposed to take off in 30 minutes but they haven't even started boarding those with mobility issues yet.   Could we be late ? <smirk>

I finally watch Avatar from beginning to end for the very first time, LOL, and manage to sleep around 4 hours of the 10 hour flight.  

And I get to buy a carton of Winston cigarettes for 29 Euros.  Let's call that CAD$ 45, which means I just saved CAD$ 45 just by buying these on the plane and not in Germany.  Compared to the price in Canada, I just saved CAD$ 115.  Or my plane ticket just dropped in price by 19% ;-)





Finally in Frankfurt.  The Regional Train Station is CLOSED today because of 'technical difficulties', so that the regional trains now leave from the long-distance train station.  Grand confusion.  


15:00 I've arrived in my 'Guesthouse'.  Still expensive but about half what they would charge in Frankfurt right now.
The first thing I notice is that the internet simply WORKS.  No longer do I have to curse at my laptop and no longer do I have to re-connect every 5 minutes or hope that the connection will re-establish itself.  Peace of mind ;-)

17:00 I'm awake again, even without an alarm.  Time to take a shower, go shopping, and eat some Viet food ;-) 

Lidl is the usual cheap stuff in boxes in shelves and I secure some wine, instant coffee, Nivea, as well as breakfast stuff.

Now I'm moderately awake and quite hungry.  Hoa Mai Vietnamese Restaurant. The have Ban xeo (shrimpn& pork pancake) but I go for Mu'c xao (fried squid) in curry sauce.  While I wait, I enjoy hearing that staccato language again.  Funny how Germans are livid about new Arab refugees not 'integrating'.  These restaurant owners are here since presumably 1975 and thankfully still speak tieng Viet and cook Vietnamese food and no one seems to care.  Germans just got used to Asians.  Let's hope they'll get used to Africans SOON!

The waitress/cook/owner brings the food and points out another little pot she brought:  Spicy sauce !  I probably use too much of that sauce because after 5 minutes of eating I'm sweating.  But my taste buds are finally happy again. 

No, they don't manage that intricate balancing of 5 flavours that the restaurant in MomTown created, but it's a refreshing change from bland Gulag food (blame the British) or the binge-on-pig cuisine of the Fatherland.

courtyard smoking area of the hotel ;-)