Kids’ Doc in Jos

Barb and I headed home over the weekend, she from Oxford and I from Wisconsin. We were to meet back at the airport in Frankfurt and fly from there to Abuja. I made the overnight flight from Chicago all right, but her flight from London was at least an hour late. She still might have made it to the Abuja gate, but being Frankfurt, she had to deplane on the tarmac, wait for other passengers to board the shuttle bus, take the bus to the terminal, and then start trying to find the connecting flight in the Frankfurt maze.

I decided to wait for Barb, as we hadn’t discussed this contingency, so we were both stuck. Lufthansa, reasonably enough, was willing to pay for Barb’s hotel and a new flight the next day on KLM, but wouldn’t pay for me and wouldn’t let me transfer my ticket to KLM. They also charged me $200 to rebook my flight. So, instead of leaving the next morning, we had to stay 2 nights in Frankfurt since Lufthansa doesn’t make the trip on Monday.

It was an expensive hassle, but once we got over the price shock we actually had a restful time. We stayed the first night in the hotel where Lufthansa puts up their passengers, and enjoyed really great dinner and breakfast buffets. The second night, with dinner since there was nowhere else around to eat, would have cost us $260 (!) so I found a much cheaper hotel on Priceline and booked there.

That one, the Albatros Airport Hotel, was delightful with more of a family atmosphere. I’d recommend it for anyone needing overnight accommodation near the airport, when your airline isn’t making the arrangements and footing the bill. It’s clean and friendly, located in a quiet, mixed residential/commercial area, and you can easily walk to grocery stores, bakeries or a couple of eateries. The breakfast buffet was quite nice, if not as spectacular as that in the more expensive hotel.

We spent Tuesday afternoon wandering around the shopping areas, having a snack, and buying our supper: wonderful, dark German bread, Camembert cheese, fruit yogurt, apples, and sparkling water. We had a fun and satisfying meal for under $10 for the two of us.

Having caught up on sleep and overcome the main part of jet lag, we arrived in Abuja last night and in Jos this morning. Luke was so excited to see us, he couldn’t stop talking. Tonight we unpacked our luggage … maybe I’ll touch on that in my next post.

Photo by Flickr user Otzberg

You really want to avoid the Frankfurt airport if you can. If you can’t avoid it, then be sure you arrive well rested and alert. It’s unlike any other airport we’ve seen—a confusing maze of terminals and concourses without any detectable pattern or symmetry, at least from the inside. We arrived from DC at 7:30 this morning at gate B20. Our flight to Abuja was supposed to leave from A56, so we followed the signs that direction. Up the elevator, down a long bridge-walkway, around the corner, to where we saw a departure notice board: it showed our flight as being “B” with no number, and it wasn’t clear if that meant Concourse B in an unknown location or what, so we continued toward A56.

Up another elevator to a tram platform where you have to leave your baggage cart behind, then 200 yards on the tram, down stairs again, and – what? – security check! If you start from the tram, you can get onto your flights in Concourse B without going through security, but to get into A you have to go through security again. Go figure. I had felt cheated at Dulles because the inspectors didn’t query any items in our carry-on bags, but the Germans didn’t let us down: they opened Barb’s bag and found the packages of 5/16” light-duty staples. The first inspector wasn’t sure those were ok, so she had to check with someone else, but fortunately they were allowed. Who would have guessed.

We were finally in the right place, about half an hour after we had arrived. There was no information person around at the moment so we rested a while and changed clothes. Then I found a Lufthansa agent and asked about the gate number for the Abuja flight. She looked it up on her paper – B30. I told her our boarding passes said A56, so she checked with whoever it is who really knows, and said it had been changed again, now to B43.

It took only 15 minutes to get back to B concourse now that we knew where we were going and, as I said, we didn’t have to go through security again. We were really thirsty and started looking for a drinking fountain. Nowhere. Hmm, what about in the little rest area? Yes, if you have to go through Frankfurt and have a layover, you can try to get a chair in the rest area on the top floor of the B terminal. They have showers, too, if you want to pay something over $10 for a shower. Alas, there wasn’t a drinking fountain. Perhaps a pay drinking fountain even? Didn’t see one.

We did see, though, that you could buy bottles of water for only 3 euros for about a pint bottle. Let’s see, that comes to, 3 euros is about $5, a pint is an eighth of a gallon, so about $40/gallon. Looked at another way, it’s only five cents per teaspoon, not bad considering it’s bottled water in an airport, but we really needed a lot of teaspoons.

We finally discovered McDonalds, where we found we could buy large tropical delight drinks for only 1.50 euro. That was pretty good for thirst, but I still needed more water. I had noticed in one bathroom (but not another) a sign that said “drinking water,” so I carried my MacDonalds cup inside, filled it up, and chugalugged. I don’t think the other travelers in there were too used to people coming in to drink the water

A large, multi-lingual sign proclaims that this is indeed drinking water. Photo by Vicky van Santen

[As I was writing this, and looking for pictures on Flickr, I found one of a drinking fountain at Frankfurt airport! Perhaps it is still there somewhere. If anyone knows the location, we can post it here!]

By now it was getting near boarding time and we went in to the gate area to wait. Surprisingly few people were waiting for the flight (I guess others know about Frankfurt, too). There was the usual announcement about preparing to board, except that they said we’d take a shuttle bus to the plane. Then not 5 minutes later the gate agent was shooing us all out the door–I barely had time to shut down the computer.

The best surprise was the last: we got on this little tram and drove and drove, past the various concourses we had already been walking around, beyond all the concourses, beyond the fuel depot, and to the air cargo section. Then we de-trammed, walked across the tarmac, waited at the bottom of the stairs gazing at the engine that must have been a good 10-12 feet high, and finally boarded. We realized, too, that no one had checked our passports or visas the entire time we were in Frankfurt.

Maybe this whole boarding procedure doesn’t seem unusual for you more seasoned travelers, but it seemed a bit strange to me. How did we even know we were getting on the right plane? And at the cargo area? Maybe they had said, hey, we’re booked light today, let’s let the passenger crew have a day off and we’ll just send these people with the cargo plane? Or, was it some kind of reverse hijacking, where we were all going to be flown to some strange destination? Reality TV? (OK, I didn’t think of that one at the time, not having lived in the US long enough).

Naturally, all went perfectly well and, I’m sure, it was all routine. We had a great flight, nice food, and arrived in Abuja half-an-hour early.

Final thought: fill up your water container (if you’re allowed to have one) on the plane before you land in Frankfurt.