Ten years. That’s how long it’s been since I emigrated to Ireland. In these ten years, employers changed, as did friends and apartments. I experienced some of the greatest triumphs of my life in those ten years, while at the same time suffering failures and experiencing the most devastating loss of my life. Through all these ups and downs, Cork has become my home, and I’m both thankful and happy to be here!
However, there was a life before Ireland. For ten years, from my involuntary departure from Austria in the summer of 2002 to that fateful day in August 2012, Frankfurt and the surrounding Rhine-Main area was my home. It was there that I had my first apartment, landed my first paying full-time job, and generally learned to stand on my own two feet. However, despite all of this, I never really warmed up to Frankfurt. It was a place that lacked a certain something for me, never being outright repulsive, but also never really growing on me. Still, the city left an impression on me, and even after emigrating, I was never fully able to elude its grasp. Every visit to my parents inevitably had to be done via Frankfurt, by virtue of that city‘s airport and rail connections. And even though the regular visits to my parents always had priority, something that would turn out to be quite prophetic given the events that would transpire in the second half of 2017, I never quite gave up on the idea of going back to Frankfurt one day.
A chance for that visit finally revealed itself in March of 2023. Germany had lifted the last remaining COVID-19 restrictions, I had money left over for a change, needed to get out, and for the first time ever, there were direct flights between Cork and Frankfurt, courtesy of Lufthansa CityLine. However, there was also another reason, one that was altogether more personal. After six years, a job change, and a certain pandemic, I finally wanted to visit my parents‘ grave in Speyer, something that the aforementioned events, together with my own mental health, had scuppered time and time again. So, with a combination of direct flights, a civilised departure time, and a city centre hotel in Frankfurt, it was finally time to hit the road on the last day of April!
April 30th
One of the advantages of not flying KLM for a change is that my departure time is actually in the late afternoon. This then again means that I don‘t need to spend money on a taxi and can just take a bus to the airport. Not that this goes smoothly, this is Cork after all. But to be fair, the turbulences this time around aren‘t the fault of Bus Éireann for a change. My trip to the airport coincides with the GAA‘s Hurling semi-finals game between Waterford and Cork, which is being played at Cork‘s Páirc Ui Chaoimh and has resulted in the entire city being inundated with Hurling fans, most of them wearing the red & white colours of the Rebel County. Still, I make it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.
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| The airport was thankfully a lot busier than in this archive shot taken during the pandemic. So busy in fact that I forgot to snap a picture. |
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| Seeing Lufthansa over the Check-In counters at Cork Airport still seems weird to me. |
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| The Aspire Lounge in Cork is a welcome respite from the hubbub in the departure area. Shame about the lack of airside views though. |
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| Lufthansa, Aer Lingus and KLM at Cork Airport, with Ryanair out of shot on the right. Not too long ago, Aer Lingus and Ryanair would have been the only game in town. |
At the airport, things are back to their pre-pandemic normal, and it‘s pretty obvious that the airport well on the way to exceeding even the pre-pandemic passenger numbers. I do shave to say that it is bloody weird seeing Lufthansa‘s yellow logo with the stylised crane at Cork Airport. I could have used that seven years ago! Either way, after a bit of waiting, I‘m able to drop off my trolley and make my way airside through the security screening, which, while fast, is awfully busy. Once airside, and with a couple of hours to kill before departure, I head to the Aspire Lounge. Whilst it isn‘t the largest lounge by any standard, and whilst it lacks any real airside views, it is still a welcome refuge from the bustle of the terminal.
Before long though, it‘s time to board, which is unfortunately a bit of an uncomfortable affair. Given that the aircraft Lufthansa is using on the Cork-Frankfurt route can‘t dock with jetways, boarding consists of climbing down stairs to the apron and then boarding the aircraft via its own stairs. Those stairs are part of the problem, since they are probably the worst fold-out aircraft stairs I‘ve ever used. They‘re steep, narrow, with equally narrow steps and a slippery handrail, that is also way too short. I guess it‘s part of the CRJ-900‘s business jet heritage but that doesn‘t make it any more palatable for people who are suffering from leg problems, as I Sam thanks to my accident and surgery last year. The inside isn‘t really much better. I can just about barely stand in the middle aisle and the seats seem to be even narrower than on Ryanair, although the legroom is just about bearable for someone my size. Still, I‘m glad that I splurged for the business class ticket and as such, have a free seat next to me. The thought of being squeezed in between the cabin wall and another person is enough to make me shiver.
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| The CRJ-900's business jet legacy is pretty obvious when you look at it. Still, it's a new type for my log, and a T tail at that. |
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| The cabin is very much on the small side, and those seats are concerningly narrow. I get that the economics of this aircraft type make sense, but that doesn't make it any more comfortable. |
My aircraft for this flight would be D-ACNP, a twelve-year-old Bombardier CRJ-900 that had first been delivered to Eurowings in December 2010. In 2017, it was handed over to Lufthansa in one of the company‘s many reorganisations, and they in turn passed it on to Lufthansa CityLine. One of the advantages of flying with a small regional jet like the CRJ-900 is that boarding tends to be over pretty quickly, and indeed, we close the cabin doors and push back a few minutes before our scheduled departure time to taxi to our runway, Runway 34. Take-off is to the north and surprisingly contradictory. Initial accelerations is impressive, you can effectively feel a „kick up the backside“ as the brakes are released. However, despite this rapid acceleration, the take-off roll is surprisingly long and the climb-out out of Cork airport is pretty slow, almost anemic. Even the fully laden Boeing 737-MAX8 that carried me across the Atlantic had a better climb-performance than this little jet.
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| The food was really good though, once I grasped what was what. |
The rest of the flight is pretty nice though, despite the cramped cabin. More importantly, it is smooth as heck, without even a hint of turbulence, despite the aircraft being a pretty „direct“ model that transmits pretty much every bump straight into the cabin. And that‘s before talking about the cabin crew, who are simply amazing. Seriously, I can‘t praise them highly enough! As for the onboard food, this is pretty good, although I do have some problems identifying some of the individual components of the menu, which carries the wonderfully bizarre bilingual portmanteau of „Tasting Heimat“. As its name implies, this aims to be a modern reinterpretation of traditional southern German cuisine.
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| Seeing Cork from the air never gets old! |
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| Our descent leads us over the hills of the Eifel, Germany's last somewhat active volcanic region. |
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| On extended final for Runway 07L at Frankfurt. It's been years since I've seen this sight! |
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| Those air stairs aren't the easiest to negotiate, even with an intact knee... |
We’re far away from that part of Germany and indeed still over Belgium when we start our descent into Frankfurt. We’ll be landing from the west and thus, we spend a long time over the Eifel, with a number of the region’s characteristic crater lakes clearly visible. The final approach is from the west, with a landing on Runway 07L, the newest runway at Frankfurt airport. The landing is surprisingly robust, almost as if the aircraft transition from aerodynamic flight into free fall a few meters over the runway. To top it all off, you really feel every runway light, every seem between concrete slabs as well as every pothole and imperfection in the runway and taxiway surface. The CRJ-900 is definitely a very direct aircraft. Once at our stand, de-boarding is more than a little awkward thanks to the aircraft’s previously mentioned foldable air stairs. A bus is waiting to take us to the terminal, as we are parked at the extreme western end of the airfield. So we get an airport tour thrown in for good measure. Once inside the terminal, the fun really kicks up a notch, as the way from the drop-off point to passport control and baggage claim is labyrinthine, and that’s putting it mildly. My knee, which at this point is still not fully recovered, is not impressed. And to top it all off, the automatic passport control checkpoints refuse to accept my brand-new German passport.
Once back in possession of my suitcase, which is waiting on the belt when I get there, and back out in the public parts of the terminal, things get somewhat easier. I manage to catch the S-Bahn train to Frankfurt Central Station with quite a bit of time to spare, as I missed an earlier train whilst I was trying to find the correct platform. At Frankfurt Central, I run into another unwelcome surprise, as the transfer level linking the mainline station with the underground and S-Bahn platforms is closed for a major reconstruction effort. I do make my way to the tram stop that I need to get to via a series of detours and stairs, but it’s not fun. Eventually though, I make it to my hotel, the Motel One Frankfurt Römer.
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| The Motel One Frankfurt Römer occupies a rather unique site in the city centre, although the tram stop right outside the door is certainly a major advantage. |
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| The site is wedged in between Bethmannstraße and the entrance to the Theatertunnel, and the hotel occupies part of the area of the former Federal Accounting Office of Germany. |
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| The rooms are simple but stylish. You always know what you get with Motel One. |
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| Thankfully, they've updated the TVs to a newer model. The ambient music and fish tank as the default setting are still present though. |
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| Well, I asked for a view of the skyline. Looks like I got that! |
I’ve been a fan of Motel One for a decade at this point, going all the way back to 2013. Whether it’s Vienna, Hamburg, London, or now Frankfurt, these hotels have time and again turned out to be comfortable, stylish and affordable. This one here in Frankfurt is no exception, and the architects and designers did a pretty good job in dealing with what is a pretty awkward site sandwiched in between a road tunnel entrance and a tram line. The interior designers did an equally good job and whilst the rooms are pretty plain for the most part, the lobby and lounge make up for that. Unfortunately, on this night, the hotel is also populated by the same type of people that made my decision to emigrate so easy all those years ago. It’s mainly early retirees or pensioners who seem to have never seen anything more sophisticated than a takeaway bratwurst stand. As such, my plans to spend the evening in the lounge quickly go out the window and I retreat to my room.
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