We took our toddler to Germany and India last month, traveling with little more than a backpack, a carryon bag, and a daypack. We booked this trip months ago, then promptly forgot about it until a couple days before we left. Why? For completely self-inflicted reasons. The month of May was a conglomeration of backpacking and camping trips, and family visitors from out of town the week before we left. Then there was some unpleasant business with the visas that took a little time, effort, and expense (!) to sort out, which only subtracted from the trip excitement. We knew these months would be busy, but it didn’t hit us until the end that we were leaving in a couple of days on our big trip. Now, all of a sudden, we were excited, eager and ready to be off.
The evening of June 1st arrived and Ryan and I went to bed like little kids on Christmas Eve, too excited to sleep yet so eager for the morning’s excitement. We were about to see a new country! No one was looking forward to the long flight, especially with a squirmy toddler on our laps, but an exciting new experience awaited us on the other side and so we were anxious to get to Germany. We knew we couldn’t possibly “see it all” in just four days, so this took a lot of pressure off and we were ready to relax, simply explore, and have a good time.
FLYING WITH A TODDLER IN YOUR LAP
Our direct flight to Frankfurt took nine hours and thirty minutes. And it was rougher than we were expecting. Ryan’s high points were walking up and down the aisles with Johann, and exploring the aircraft with him. My high? The approximately ninety minutes of sleep I got while Johann also napped, which kept me mostly sane until our next official “bedtime” at Frankfurt thirty-six hours later. Johann’s favorite plane activity was running up and down the aisles. While seated, snacks were the biggest hits. His other highs included swapping smiles with strangers, enjoying many compliments from the same strangers on account of his “empirical” cuteness, making his captive audience laugh when he figured out pretend-sneezing during the first flight then doing it non-stop for the last thirty minutes, and playing on the floor beneath our seats. (We got over that one real quick, and while the thought of him playing on that filthy carpet beneath our legs was not appealing, he seemed pretty happy down there and he couldn’t get into too much trouble as long as he was close by.)
He played for a little while with the small pull-back cars we had brought for him – best purchase ever from the $1 bins at Target. Those, a couple of cheap wind-up toys from the local pharmacy, and snacks got us the most value for money. Other than that, he fussed for about half the time. Yes, truly. We didn’t know this then, but that first plane ride would be the worst one of the trip. By the time we got on our next flight, approximately ten hours from Frankfurt to Chennai, Johann had become more familiar with the iPad apps and understood the purpose of the headphones, and so figured out how to actually get something out of the combination of them. These things had been brand new to him on the first plane ride, and so he just kept ripping the headphones off his head, and mostly ignored the iPad. We had all the other usual stuff to distract him: stickers, crayons, paper, etc. but those were hit or miss. The second, third, and even last flight were dreamy in comparison.
By some miracle, on our second flight there ended up being an empty seat next to us. It made all the difference in the world, and we thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to sprawl out (especially considering we would never have paid the $1k+ for the extra seat).
Johann was quite comfortable stretched out on a seat all by himself, and napped like at home, for three hours straight.
At the end of the day, flying with a toddler is so much more work than flying with an infant. But still worth it.
FRANKFURT
We were expecting all commerce and steel. Boy, were we wrong! There was some of that, for sure, but there was also art, beauty, culture, and history. We really enjoyed Frankfurt, but felt that two days there was enough. The neighborhoods were compact and walkable, and it was easy to get around further by the U-bahn.
We arrived in Frankfurt around 8:30 a.m. the day after we left Seattle. This was both Ryan’s and my first time in Germany (not counting several airport transits) and we weren’t really sure what to expect. During the trip, we realized that Germany truly is beautiful, and just as we had imagined.
We took the S-bahn from the airport to the main train station, and made our way to our hotel, which was just a block away. We fully expected to drop our bags and leave for a few hours until they could get our room ready, but they said they would check us in within one hour. What a blessing! We walked around the neighborhood a little bit trying to find a cafe while we waited for our room, and couldn’t help but notice that the environment was a little “odd.” We booked this hotel because it was cheap, being geared mostly towards business-travelers and that was fine by us. We also loved the location, knowing we’d need to come and go from the main train station for our day trips every day. The best of the reviews we read before booking described the hotel, and the neighborhood around the train station on the whole, as “slightly seedy.” Liars. What we didn’t know, and what became obvious while we were wandering around the streets behind our hotel, with our toddler son at 9:30 a.m. looking for breakfast, was that we were smack-dab in the middle of the sex district. At least the open doors had closed curtains and we could only imagine that not all of the drug activities were happening out in the open streets. Yes, this was at 9:30 a.m. Walking as fast as we could while carrying little Johann, we beelined for the “better” side, back on the main road, and immediately stumbled upon a quiet coffee shop. The cafe was perfect, and had a large empty room in the back just for Johann – who was completely wired and functioning quite well on less than three hours of sleep over the past twenty-four hours, jet lag shmet lag. What a morning. In hindsight, isn’t this the kind of stuff that the best family travel memories are made of?
The hotel itself was great. One of the highlights of our fifth-floor room was floor-to-ceiling windows that opened out onto a balcony. We sat out there after Johann went to bed, and decompressed from the long days, enjoying the balmy breeze, sunset glows and skyscraper views. Another highlight was that we got a free full breakfast every day, and it was a huge spread. Johann gorged on all the fresh fruit, yogurt, eggs, and German pretzels he wanted to, and we didn’t have to bother with ordering a variety of local fare because it was all right there in front of us. We fueled up every morning before heading out for the day. The only real lows were that Ryan’s allergies kicked into high-gear the minute we arrived in Frankfurt, and this area of Germany started experiencing a heatwave the same day that we arrived, which made our room on the fifth floor stifling. No air-conditioning, either. This meant that the windows were open a lot, the room got very dusty and rendered the daily housekeeping completely useless.
But we were here now, and ready to see Germany.
HEIDELBERG
Right after breakfast on our second day, we hopped a train to Heidelberg. It was a one hour trip, and we enjoyed the scenery. Heidelberg is a charming city, and home to Germany’s oldest university. Another interesting thing is that the city was almost completely spared during the Allied bombings of World War II, so we didn’t see the reconstruction and restoration that we saw in a lot of places across Frankfurt and Würzburg.
Our first stop was the ruins of Heidelberg Castle, the world famous Schloss.
The castle grounds were a great place for Johann to do some solid running.
The castle above ground was beautiful, but so were the dark wine cellars down below.
After we left the castle, we enjoyed walking around the compact Altstadt (old town), crossed the bridge to the other side and back, and saw a number of churches. At one particular church, Johann discovered pews and what fun it was to run through them and come out on the other side.
All this while Ryan and I were marveling at the medieval history and sheer age of these places. Toddlers don’t quite appreciate these things the same way, I guess. But, at the end of the day, on our way back through town to catch the bus back to the train station, we stopped at a playground. This was our first playground stop in Germany and it looked to be tailor made for toddlers. There was a large sand pit, and all sorts of other cool stuff. Johann was in heaven! He quickly made a friend named Luca, and we enjoyed chatting with Luca’s mom while the boys played.
Everyone we met in Germany was nice to us, but we particularly enjoyed talking to this local family. Sometimes, simply being a parent is all one needs in order to find common ground that spans cultures. Kids are really the same, no matter where in the world you are. If Johann could talk, he would probably say that playing in that park with the boy named Luca was one of the highlights of the trip. It truly was “down time” and quite relaxing. We were also in the shade here, which was a nice break from the high eighties Fahrenheit we had been walking around in!
With a full day behind us, we caught our train back to Frankfurt and grabbed some pretzel sandwiches from a self-serve cafe at the station to eat for dinner back at our hotel room. Johann hadn’t napped much during the day, so he crashed in the Ergo on the less-than-ten minute walk from the train station to our hotel.
Yep. He was completely worn out. But he was pretty happy to wake up to shower, eat dinner, and to do some reading before bedtime. We were having a wonderful time!
Next up: Würzburg, more about Frankfurt, and onwards to India!