Susan Sentral: The children have arrived.

This past Monday David and I, along with our friend John, took a road trip to Frankfurt Germany to pick up some undergraduate students that will be spending their summer semester in Metz. We ended up seeing more of Frankfurt than we were expecting...

To start we got these cool t-shirts to identify us as the people that it is safe to go with.

Then, we got to ride on this cool bus all by ourselves. It seems like it would be a double-decker bus but that isn't the case. The driver and luggage space is below, and the passengers get to ride up high. As you can see, you took the really good seats. For most of the ride we all were reading our various Harry Potter books. (It's 3 hours both ways)

This is the rest of the bus...and because it isn't that interesting I will take the time now to tell you about why we spent more time in Frankfurt than we were expecting. As we were leaving Metz we noticed that the driver was following the signs to Luxembourg rather than Strasbourg (which takes you to Frankfurt more easily). But we didn't question because he is the driver.

Before long we found ourselves driving down a very small road...then into a very small town...then back out again and towards a gas station. At this point there was some concern that we were lost. We then stopped at the gas station and the driver got out. He went inside to ask someone directions. At this point it was confirmed, we were lost.

About 30 minutes later we found ourselves approaching an airport. I had just flow into Frankfurt after receiving my VISA so David asked me if any of this looked familiar. "No," I said. Written on the much too small airport we saw the name Frankfurt Hahn. This, in fact, is the regional airport of Frankfurt. Airlines such as RyanAir (similar to SouthWest in the US). Once we had walked into the airport and realized this we knew that there was noway international flights would fly here...so we went back out to the bus, explained this to the driver, who then proceeded to call his boss. After a brief phone call he told us "There are supposed to be students arriving here...you should go check all the flights inside." Why the bus driver would know this is mystery to me...but for some reason both he and his boss thought we had people to pick up at this airport.

After David and John spent a while in the airport...waking up some Asian guys that looked like they could have been GT students (Stanford instead...) they came back out and told the driver that "No...this is the wrong airport." Again, the driver called his boss to confirm the travel changes and we were finally on our way again...120 some kilometers in the wrong direction. We had to drive another hour and a half to get to Frankfurt International airport where we found 35 students and 2 angry professors waiting in the rain for their ride back to Metz. The bus was already 3 hours late. Why they all couldn't just hop on the train back to Metz (the same 3 hour trip) is also a mystery to me...but this is how it works for the undergrads.