Hong Kong airport was rather impressive, and probably deserving of its rating as second best airport in the world. Terminal 1 had eighty international departure gates - needless to say it did take some time to walk to our gate.
The Lufthansa Boeing 747-400 was disappointing after the previous Air New Zealand flight. It was old, rickety and creaked a lot. There were no adjustable air conditioning fans so waiting for take of was excruciating. No on-demand entertainment (we were prepared for that though), with the entertainment being provided by 14 inch CRT televisions, each serving about 8 rows of passengers - so from where we were sitting it was difficult to see. Luckily, the netbook turned out to be an excellent toy for the flight (I am writing this on the plane), and some episodes of Gossip Girl and a movie helped pass the time well. With it power saving features enabled, the netbook looks like it will get around 5 ½ hours of battery life while constantly playing video, which is very good (almost 3 times what our ordinary laptop gets!)
Arriving in Frankfurt was the most relaxed thus far. No arrival cards, no swine flu forms or temperature checks were required, just hand over your passport, get a stamp and away we go. This was the fourth country in a row that we have been to that had a non-existent customs. No bag scanners or forms, just a sign that said customs and an exit for “nothing to declare”. We could not even see an aisle if you did have something to declare, not that we would have any idea what needed to be declared as there were no signs. Despite it being around 7:30pm, the temperature was at 28 degrees Celsius, which believe it or not, felt quite comfortable.
The first thing we bought in Europe was a 500ml bottle of coke at approximately NZ$5.00. This does not bode well for Europe. We also noticed that all the locals were all speaking German.
We overnighted in the Hotel Ibis Frankfurt Airport, which was not a great hotel, but sufficient for our purpose of trying to get a good night’s rest. The staff member seemed to get grumpy when I asked them for a second towel, as our room only had one.
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