How a trip tarnished Germany’s image

I was in Italy last week, sponsored by Assomac Servizi to attend the Simac/Tanning Tech fair, and technical reports will follow in the October issues of S&V African Leather and S&V Footwear & Leather Goods.

My indelible memory of this trip isn’t of the fair, however. It is the apparent affirmation of the grumbles I’ve heard in recent years by Germans – most, not all, living in SA – about the ‘deterioration’ of Germany, which I’ve always put it down to a generational thing – the older you get, the better ‘the good old days’ seem.

But for 3 of us from SA – Keith Lyons of Strayz Footwear, Colin Parker of Paul Moeller & Co., and I – the return trip seemed to highlight real dysfunction at Frankfurt International Airport – Germany’s “main international airport by passenger numbers”, according to Wikipedia.

The trip started very badly. Our flight from Milan to Frankfurt was late, so we missed our connection to Johannesburg, and Keith seriously injured his knee when he was pushed shortly after landing. Colin wrote a blow-by-blow account of our experience for the people who handled our bookings, but I offer just the most surprising moments of a surreal experience:

• Close to 6 hours at the airport, trying to find a wheelchair, book another flight, get our luggage, catch a taxi to a hotel (no luck with the booking or getting the luggage).
• Watching mice/rats scavenging from bins alongside a food area INSIDE the airport building.
• Cigarette butts lining the hundreds of metres of the taxi ranks (in GERMANY).
• Waiting 3 HOURS to get a taxi.
• The utter disorganisation, unhelpfulness, rudeness, and theft – yes, theft – of the taxi drivers. The one who finally took us demanded cash AND the voucher Lufthansa had given us, then took us for a 20-minute drive to a hotel we discovered the next day was 5 minutes from the airport.
• The helplessness of the senior Lufthansa official who told us it was illegal for taxi drivers to refuse custom, and who suggested WE CALL THE POLICE to ask them to force a taxi to take us.
• The same official who said the airline used to have its own wheelchairs, but that now all wheelchairs for the airport were controlled by a separate entity (which clearly didn’t have staff working late).
• The same official who suggested, if we couldn’t get a taxi, getting a room at a 5-star hotel across the road – not covered by the Lufthansa vouchers – and suing Lufthansa later to get our money back.
• At Germany’s busiest airport, ALL shops, restaurants, and lounges shut some time before midnight, so sleeping on benches at the airport was an even less attractive option. (We couldn’t manage the vending machines, and we weren’t the only ones – after aborting an attempt to buy an item, we got more back than we’d put in.)

By the time we got to the hotel, our formerly lofty opinions of Germany (and Lufthansa) had taken a beating.

The hotel didn’t have a wheelchair, but an enterprising staff member produced an office chair on castors, and there were some slapstick moments negotiating carpets and lift entrances, but overall, it was a welcome return to normality.

The next day, Assomac’s travel team had rerouted us via Emirates, direct to Durban, with Keith in business class, and 48 hours after setting off from the hotel in Milan, we landed.

We can laugh about it now, but speaking for myself, I’m in no hurry to travel overseas again.