The Unexpected Chaos of The Frankfurt Airport

Having never stepped foot on European soil before, I had high expectations as I landed into Frankfurt after a transatlantic flight from Toronto.  Arriving into Frankfurt around 6:00am, I had a 1.5 hour layover before my connecting flight to Madrid. 

Prior to setting foot on German soil, I had this image in my mind of a clean, tidy, and organized country.  How much have we heard about the punctuality and efficiencies of German trains?  I was anticipating and expecting the airport to be just as organized and efficient.

Upon landing, we were ushered onto a bus which took us to the airport entrance and from there, I was completely hit with shock.  It was only 6:00am and yet the airport was packed with noisy and frustrated customers.  I made my way up an escalator and through a long tunnel towards my gate, and aside from not understanding why so many people were at the airport at this hour, everything was still okay.  We arrived at our gate shortly after and we still had quite a bit of time before boarding, so we were all just sitting around and relaxing when someone noticed that our gate seemed to have changed.  We tracked down the most current information and made our way towards the new gate, which turned out to be about a 20 minute walk away.  Thank goodness we noticed with ample time before boarding was to begin.

Once we were at the new gate, we sat around waiting for boarding when things around us seemed oddly quiet.  It was about 5-10 minutes before boarding but yet there was no one around.  Turns out the gate had changed again and we were once again clueless.  I’m really not sure if it was because it was too early in the morning for any of us to be thinking straight or whether they only announced the changes in German (which seem unlikely), but none of us heard either gate change announced and couldn’t seem to get any help from the airport staff. 

Thankfully the (second) new gate wasn’t too far from the (first) new gate and we all made it onto the plane for our flight to Madrid, but after this experience, my opinion of German organization has now somewhat changed.