Day 1

Friday, June 6th, 1997

I took off from RDU airport in the morning of June 5th. A rough ride to Dulles airport at DC on a small transit plane, and barely had enough time to dash through the terminal to catch the flight to Frankfurt. 


The flight to Europe was smooth though, on a Boeing 777 where you have your personal TV screen on your seat.   The sky got dark quickly after takeoff but I never succeed to fall asleep.      I expect to see the continent emerging over the horizon when the plane approached Europe. Too bad it's cloudy all the way.





 Cologne Cathedral





 Europe is much more unified that I thought, as I got this first impression when I saw the two gates in the custom check with the signs of "European Citizens" and "non-European Citizens", instead of German/non-German.   The immigration check was quick and I spent no time making some DeutschMark changes (to operate lockers), validate my Eurorail pass and book a sleeping couchette on a overnight train from Frankfurt  to Paris.


The U-Bahn/S-Bahn (subway system of German cities) are right under the airport terminal.  I caught the next train to Frankfurt Main, which was actually a regional express to Vienna.  The railway system in Europe is so efficient that you can almost certainly find a train to your destination within 15 minutes, or in many cases within 5 minutes.


I got a 15 day Eurorail youth pass, which means I can exploit the railway system as much as I want within  half month--I can take any train as well as S-Bahn except that I need to pay an extra fee for a sleeping couchette or for some special express like EuroStar from Paris to London, or Thalys from Paris to Amsterdam.

Almost every train station in Europe looks like the same--huge vaulted grass roofs which allow efficient natural illumination during the day, supported by dark metal structures--just like those good old train stations before WWII, and I like them so much.   The major station are practically the hub of the city,  and you can almost do anything in the train station.  (The red-light district is always right out of the train station too. :))

OK, so I landed in the center of Frankfurt, and it's only 7:30 in the morning.  The most important thing I needed to do was go to the American Consulate in Frankfurt to get a visa back to the US.   No bag was allowed into the Consulate as my German friend Jochen told me so that I left everything I had in a locker except  the origional copies of all documents (there are another copy in the locker).   Jochen, by the way, has a strong feeling of unfairness when he had to apply for a US visa to go to Duke.  Can anyone tell him why American can go to Europe with just a US passport while the European have to apply for a US visa to go to the states?









The German Punks in front of the Cologne Train Station





To make sure I can arrive early enough at the Consulate I called a taxi, which was nice cuz all cabs in Germany are brand new Benz or BMW--just the opposite of those in the US.   
The man at the gate of the consulate told me to read a piece of paper on the wall carefully.  It   
said the rule had changed from May that anyone who's not a resident of Germany had to make appointment before the consulate can interview you for a visa--no walk-in anymore.  I had no choice but to write a letter of request and the man told me they will reply me by mail--they will send it to Jochen's address in Heidelberg.  

This totally changed my plan, as I had planned to have a short visit to Frankfurt in my first day in Europe (mainly for getting a visa) and take a trip through Paris, Brugges, Amsterdam, Cologne, Berlin, then go to the meeting in Friburg via Heidelberg.  But now I need to returned to Frankfurt few days later. To make it  worse I don't know exactly when my appointment will be until Jochen receive the letter from the Consulate.   I could not afford not getting a US visa well before my flight back to the US, otherwise I was in danger of ending up being sent back to China (which is good though if the transportation is free).


This upset, as well as the jet lag (6 hours) make the city Frankfurt even less attractive to me.  I was desperately in need of sleep and food when I left the consulate, dejected.    I managed to pull back to the main station by U-Bahn and have a MacDonald there, sent some postcards, and tried to figure out what to do.   I decided to go to the nearby city of Cologne, which was two hours away by train and was more appealing to me with it's famous twin towers.  

The Train ran quietly along the picturesque Rhine Valley.  Numerous ancient castles standed at both side of the Rhine river.   The scenerary outside the window is so beautiful that the two hour trip felt like minutes.    It's noon when I arrived at Cologne.  The huge Gothic cathedral  was right outside the Cologne train station.  There was a large group of German punks out there.  I took a picture of the them from far away using the powerful zoom of the new camera I just bought for the trip.  Climbing to the top of the cathedral along the narraw stairway almost a thousand years old was not a trivial effort.  I  used the last ounce of energy I had to walked across the steel bridge to take a few pictures of the cathedral across Rhine.  After that I took a little break and had some food in the old town, sent a few more postcards.  Then I was on my way back to Frankfurt.   I lingered around the train station, made a call to Jochen, and boarded the overnight train to Paris at midnight.  Exhausted, I felt asleep immediately.