Germany Preview: Frankfurt International Airport

October 22, 2006 - As I mentioned in my last post, I'm currently doing research for my upcoming Europe trip. It's pretty cool - not only am I learning a lot about these foreign cities, but it's also neat to see how advance they are in terms of their infrastructure and city planning. So throughout the next couple of weeks, I'm going to try to write about some of the large scale infrastructure projects in Germany and Austria that caught my attention. The first one on my list: Frankfurt International Airport - where I will begin my trip in 12 days :)

Frankfurt International Airport, or Flughafen Frankfurt am Main (in German), is the largest airport in Germany and one of the largest in the world. Each year, over 52 million passengers go through Frankfurt airport (compare to Toronto's 29 million), making it one of the key gateways to Europe and to Africa (through flight connections). The airport is also the hub of Lufthansa, the German airline.

The airport features an entire shopping mall (not the typical airport retail stores that you find at Pearson, but like an entire mall). There's a 24 hour supermarket, brand new stores (both European and American brand names), dental and doctor offices, health clubs and spas, an even an adult video and book store (for those really long flights I guess?). The airport also has a wide range of restaurants offering everything from sushi to traditional German food. And if you're really bored, there's also a casino within the airport. I guess if I have to be stuck at an airport, this is probably one of the better ones to be at.

The airport is connected to the city by the S-bahn (sorta like the GO Train, except the S-bahn runs every half hour and runs everyday) and is only 2 stops away from Frankfurt Main Station.

What I like most about the airport is its incredibly sleek and modern architecture and design. The airport is also currently preparing for the arrival of the new airbus A380 (the double decker plane). They even put a video on its website describing its process.

The airport itself is considered to be a tourist attraction in Frankfurt (they even have airport tours!) - so Jason and I will be spending some time exploring the terminals before we check into our hotel (since we have so much time to kill anyway). Since I'll get the chance to visit five different airports on this trip (Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, and of course Toronto's new Terminal 1), I will for sure write a blog about my airport experiences alone when I get back.