The plane flight over was long but utterly bearable.

I had two delightful row-mates - Sean, who looks to

be around 24, leaving the US for the first time to

go hang with a buddy in Florence, and Elizabeth

(pronounced el-EYE-zah-beth), going to a university

near Frankfurt to do chemistry research as part of

her PhD in chemistry at Stanford. While the seating

was cramped, spirits were high, and somehow sipping

champagne, eating fine cheese and tasty grapes, and

bits of sweet Tobler chocolate made the whole trip

pretty acceptable. :)

On the flight I met the CEO of Zimbra, whose architect

had been at my house the prior weekend, and a man by

the name of Sasha who reads my blog periodically. What

a small world! I convinced Sasha to not try and catch

an earlier connecting flight to Stockholm (where he's

moving to work as a GPS engineer), but to come out with

me and see Frankfurt with Konstantin.

Konstantin was there at the gate with a big "David E.

Weekly" sign; I had my matching "Konstantin Koll"

sign up and we smiled to meet for the first time. The

three of us got daypasses and set out to hit up the

town.

Frankfurt was cold (I was just in a shortsleeve shirt!

My coat was checked through to Tunisia), but beautiful.

It reminded me a lot of Fall in Boston, with crisp

leaves and bright colors. The skyscrapers and most of

the architecture were just stunning - tall, elegant

steel and glass structures that put San Francisco's

skyline to shame. We stopped off for lunch at a place

just a bit out of the way of the standard tourist

traffic and I had a delicious venison cream soup and

bratwurst-on-sauerkraut lunch. We split an apple

strudel for dessert, that came on this scrumptious

vanilla cream. Of course, I had a pint of Christmas

beer to go with. So nice to have sausages & beer in

Germany. :)

There were people in funny costumes cheering outside

as a man on a crane set up lights on a big tree;

apparently today is the start of some kind of big

celebration that goes back to the middle ages. I was

a little fuzzy on the details.

We went warwalking around Frankfurt. Much fun. More

on that later.

We're meeting up with Paul Dale in half an hour to

see where else in Frankfurt we should check out. For

right now, we're hanging out at an ice cream shop.

I'm full, but I think Konstantin's got a sweet tooth.

;) I'm starting to feel the time - after all, it's

in the wee hours of the night for me - maybe 5am? I

can't do the math. Off we go to meet Paul!