Grüße aus Deutschland

I am staying with friends in Germany this week. The main reason for the visit is I'm going to see In Extremo at Halle 101 in Speyer on Wednesday and Thursday. I saw them a year ago almost to the day at the Capitol in Mannheim and they saw tremendous so here I am again. I was also going to watch 1.FC Kaiserslautern play Schalke 04 on Saturday afternoon.

I arrived on Saturday morning after a godawful flight. Normally flights from Heathrow to Frankfurt pass without a murmur. Unless of course British Airways decide to do you a favour for showing up early and put you on an earlier flight than the one you're booked on but because you check in within half an hour of your new departure time, your luggage doesn't get on a flight until much later, which is what happened to me after last December's visit. But I digress.

Anyway I was on the 07:05 Lufthansa flight so I left the house at in time to catch the 4:30am airport bus. At 4:35 one bearing a bright orange "Sorry coach full" sign barrelled past me and the two others waiting at the Headington stop without so much as slowing. Ten minutes later another bus materialised which did stop and we rolled up pretty much on schedule, though I remain unimpressed that it took five minutes more than the alloted seventy at the sort of hour most people only hear rumours about and when the motorways were deserted.

Before I even entered Terminal 2 I could see the building was absolutely rammed. The queue for the Lufthansa check-in desks snaked back on itself five times and along with similar joys awaiting anyone travelling on Austrian Airlines it occupied most of the hall. Marvellous. I noted the Heathrow staff's advice to listen for announcements and took my place in the queue, glumly contemplating little apparent prospect of catching the flight. But no. The queue moved at a respectable lick by airport check-in standards and some while later passenger for the 7:05 to Frankfurt were summoned to a separate desk where we were checked in without further delay.

Once on the plane 7:05 came and went with people trickling on slowly until the plane was full. Then the captain cheerfully announced that we had to wait another half an hour before commencing takeoff, due to inclement weather in Frankfurt. The flight proceeded with a regular stream of bi-lingual announcements regarding connexions to a dazzling array of onward destinations. Just as I was thinking it must be about time to begin the descent into Frankfurt the captain piped up and told us we were over Koblenz where would be spending the next twenty minutes in a holding pattern. Sigh. I was beginning to wonder whether I was going to get to Kaiserslautern in time for a 3:30pm kickoff, with the inevitable interminable wait for my bag still to look forward to. Not that I had any confidence that my bag had made it onto the plane.

At least there was the diversion of chatting with the very cute Australian chick next to me who was doing plenty of fretting of her own. She had to find a transit check-in desk at Frankfurt. She was going to Cambodia via a connecting flight at noon to Singapore for which she was not yet checked in due to earlier problems. She feared missing this and arriving late in Singapore since there's only one flight into Cambodia every two days. I asked how long she was going to be in Cambodia. To my amazement she said "only a few days". It was a side trip to use up some air miles en route to Melbourne for Christmas. Coming back for New Year though, if you can believe it. All the way to Australia and back, via Cambodia, and she was only going to be home for nine days. Madness, if you ask me.

At Frankfurt I swiftly found myself in the baggage hall giving Belt 14 one of Paddington Bear's trademark Hard Stares in the hope that it would spring to life immediately. To my surprise it did and for the first time ever, my bag was among the first five out. This welcome stroke of fortune was tempered by the realisation thirty seconds earlier that I'd left my laptop on the plane. What kind of a knucklehead leaves a laptop on a plane, especially when carrying no other hand luggage? Well, this one, apparently. Bag in hand I retreated up to the departures hall, where after a short search for unoccupied Lufthansa staff I was directed to the cabin found property desk. Thank Christ for German efficiency. Based on previous experience I shudder to ponder my prospects of getting it back if I'd flown British Airways. The Lufthansa lady was quite calm and located the thing without any trouble. She told me it would take about half an hour to get it to this desk (it took less than twenty minutes), allowing me time to cease having a myocardial infarction, reduce sweating a little and phone Eric to tell him I would be at Kaiserslautern about two hours late due to a combination of flight delays and including my brain among checked baggage. Oh, and I wasn't the only cretin there - someone else had left an IBM laptop on the same flight.

Eventually I pitched up in Kaiserslautern pretty much bang on time according to the Deutsche Bahn timetable. The train was eight minutes late at Frankfurt Airport but made up a few minutes getting to Mannheim and my connexion left on time. German railways - you can't beat them. Every time I've ever taken a train in Germany it's either been right on time or near as dammit. As for missing connexions - pah! There's a lesson on how to run a railway somewhere. I'm thinking of you, Virgin Trains, among others allegedly running train services on this beknighted isle.