We departed San Diego about 9:30am bound for Dallas, Texas, where we had a two-hour layover before departing for Frankfurt, Germany. Before our plane took off from Dallas the captain came on the speaker and said that during his walkaround he discovered a leaking brake pad that needed replacing and was told it would take about 45-minutes. The 45-minutes soon became two-hours before we departed. We arrived in Frankfurt about 11:00am local time after our nine-and one-half hour flight. 

Once in Frankfurt we needed to clear the customs hall which was not too long of a wait and then on to collect our bags. We struggled to find the local train connection at the airport as we were in a terminal that did not connect with the train and had to take a transfer bus to another terminal (#1) to find the train station. After dragging our bags down several sets of stairs we finally found the correct track for our short ride into central Frankfurt. 

We are staying at the Victoria Hotel located a three-minute walk from what I call the red-light district. The neighboring streets are lined with sex shops, people sleeping on the streets and most likely dealing drugs by the look of some of the people on the street. The hotel itself is clean and the staff are friendly. We had stayed at this hotel in 2018 so we are familiar with the location close to the train station and easy to meet our past students who studied at San Diego State University. 

After a lovely lunch at a nearby traditional restaurant and beer garden called Klosterhof. We returned to the hotel where we had a short rest before meeting Jochen. Jochen is one of the students we had from the Tutor Mentor program at SDSU in back in 2005 and 2006. He is living between Munster, where he went to school, and Xanten, Germany, where his parents live. He works with his family marketing a cosmetics line online that they package and ship around the world, but mostly in Germany. 

We walked a short distance to the old center of Frankfurt with Jochen where we dined and caught up over dinner at an Italian Restaurant. We returned to our hotel exhausted but glad that we had arrived safely. We are grateful to have the opportunity to see the world and to catch up with old friends in person.