The Special Hell that is Frankfurt
Nothing was a bigger contrast from our wonderful flight than arriving at Frankfurt airport. This sorry excuse for an airport is arguably the worst major hub airport in the world. To make matters worse, Lufthansa operations changed our scheduled arrival gate and decided to park us close to Siberia, at Gate A69, the furthest gate away from civilization.
Mr. Hazmat leading us up to the Z level of terminal. Check out the gloves. And his Hello Kitty backpack. Yikes.
And away we go for the long, long, long trek to try to get into Germany for three hours, because Lufthansa's only open First Class Lounge is the one in the A concourse... in Germany. The A concourse may be directly underneath the Z concourse, but it may as well be in another time zone.
The terminal is dead with so few gates used that even McDonald's is closed. Even more bizarre that LH would park us at A69/Z69.
About 10 minutes later, we followed the Hello Kitty Hazmat guy down to immigration.
Despite assurances from a Lufthansa agent at the Lufthansa US First Class Hotline that we'd be able to enter Germany to visit the First Class Lounge, reality was a hard no. Officer was nice about the whole thing. He called his supervisor to check, then had another officer guide us back towards B. Another long trek, followed by a train, security and one more long trek. In retrospect I would have been far better off with Air France. At least we'd have had a personal assistant with us trekking around CDG.
And more walking. Yeah, I feel your pain.
Finally, some 45 minutes later, Gate B43 and the Business Class Lounge.
A far cry from the First Class Lounge, the Senator Lounge is pretty basic.
But at least it had a quiet room with lie flat beds, which is all Mrs. SFO777 wanted at the moment. And she slept for a good 3 hours.
While I went to check out the rest of the lounge.
The food and beverage area.
"Meal service" was a pathetic selections of anemic looking sandwiches, and a warm rice and chicken option.
I joined the queue for a shower and was alerted about 45 minutes later.
After a shower, off for a little work and a snack.
At 2:45pm the lounge dragon announced that the lounge would be closing at 3pm. Those with later departures are apparently SOL with Lufthansa.
And Lufthansa was not done playing games with us today, as our FRA-DBV gate was changed from nearby B47 to distant B22. Just to rub it in B22 is adjacent to the shutterred B First Class Lounge.
LOL.
