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The alarm sounded at the appointed awful hour of 05:30. Munich Airport is a long way from the city centre, something close to 50 kilometres away judging by a map I looked at. The way to get there is by the S-bahn, which left from the Hauptbahnhof, right by our hotel. I thought we might have to walk an extra block, but it turned out there was an underground S-bahn entrance right outside the door of the hotel. We gladly took this to avoid walking on the streets in the 10°C morning. It took us into a network of tunnels that eventually led to the S-bahn station.
We found escalators going down to platforms, flanked by ticket validation machines. I didn't see anywhere to buy tickets, and guessed there may be machines on the platform, so we went down, but there were none down there. I left M. with the bags and dashed back upstairs to see if I could find tickets. Coming up the escalator I spotted the ticket machines across the tunnel. I went over and fiddled with the machine to buy two tickets to the airport. While doing this, a young man approached, speaking Hindi I think, with barely a word of English. He seemed to want help using the ticket machine, and used his phone to translate from Hindi to English. The English that came out was pretty broken and it wasn't entirely clear, but it seemed he wanted to buy train tickets to Frankfurt. I was trying to get my own tickets and back down to M. as fast as possible, so really didn't want to deal with this. Then he translate some more stuff on his phone and the message I got was that he wanted me to buy tickets for him, and he would transfer money to me somehow. At this point I figured this for some sort of scam, grabbed the tickets I'd just printed out for myself, and said sorry and ran off.
I returned to M. on the platform after validating our tickets and just in time. The next train to the airport pulled in as we walked down to check the departures sign. It said "Flughafen" on the illuminated sign on the front of the train as it approached, and the sign on the platform also indicated it went to the airport. We climbed on board and got seats.
However, once on board I checked the TV screen showing upcoming stations as it cycled between listing them. I didn't see the airport on the listed stops. The last stop was a place called Friesing. I checked the network map on the poster inside the train and saw that the S1 line we were on split just before the airport and the other branch led to Friesing. So it looked like this train wasn't going to the airport after all. Now I saw on the TV screen that there was an arrow indicating the split on the station listing, two stops before Friesing, with this train apparently taking the Friesing branch. I thought we might have t get off at the station before the line split and wait there for the next train to the airport.
But then I noticed a few people on board with large luggage, as though they were heading to the airport. I went up to an older couple with luggage and asked in German if they spoke English. The wife indicated to her husband, who said "a little". I asked him if this train went to the airport and they both indicated enthusiastically that yes, it did. Then at the next stop, more people with luggage got on.
Looking at the TV screen again, I noticed further information. Where the line split was marked in the station listing was also a small legend saying in German and English that the train splits, and looking carefully I could see on a diagram of the train an aeroplane icon marked on some carriages. Okay, so that kind of explained things a bit, but which half of the train were we in? And why did the sign seem to indicate we were going to Friesing and not the airport?
Then at the next stop a pilot in Lufthansa uniform got on board our carriage. We took this as a good sign! Looking at the TV screen yet again, I noticed yet another tiny piece of information that wasn't obvious at first glance. Marked on the train splitting diagram was a little red "you are here" pin, in one of the carriages marked with the aeroplane icon. So that seemed to make sense. But why still did the last two stations after the split show the Friesing branch and not the airport?
As we got closer, more people with luggage got on. And then at one point the TV screen suddenly changed and instead of showing the Friesing branch after the train split, it switched to showing the airport branch, and the final destination title changed for Friesing to München Flughafen. Now all of the ducks were lined up and it seemed we were fine. But whoever designed this user interface had messed up by making it very unclear for most of the way.
The train stopped at the station before the split and a PA announcement explained that the train was splitting and would take a couple of minutes. After a short delay we were underway again and a few minutes later pulled into Munich Airport at about 06:50. There were two exits from the station, leading to different terminals. We had no idea which terminal we needed so chose the closest one. Wrong choice. We landed in Terminal 1, and checking a departure board there we saw that all of the Lufthansa flights to Frankfurt left from Terminal 2. So we had to walk out and across a large plaza to Terminal 2.
Once there we found a Lufthansa check-in area. We went to see someone there and explained that we had a connecting flight from Frankfurt to Singapore, with just 75 minutes transit time, and we were wondering if we could get our seats moved to one of the earlier Frankfurt flights to give us more time to make the connection. The woman at the desk said she couldn't make that change and we needed to go to the Lufthansa service counter, a short walk away. We went there, and explained the same thing to the woman at the reception desk. She said that a flight to Frankfurt had been cancelled and a lot of people were waiting to have their flights rescheduled. She asked us when our scheduled flight was and we said 10:00 (almost three hours away still), and she said we might have enough time and gave us a ticket with a printed number and told us to go inside and wait. We went inside the barrier and saw a dozen or more people waiting. The tickets being called were in the 40s. Our ticket was 65. We waited about five minutes and no other tickets were called.
M. decided to go for a walk while I waited and see if she could find something to eat. While she was gone, a few tickets began to be called. I overheard one staff member ask a passenger if they already had a boarding pass, and I realised we should have actually checked in and got our boarding passes before coming here, to make sure we had plenty of time to get them sorted. M. returned a few minutes later with a coffee and a couple of pain au chocolat for us to eat. We still had 15 tickets to wait, so I suggested we go back to the check-in counter and get boarding passes and then return here. So we did that, and a different woman at check-in issued us boarding passes all the way through Frankfurt to Singapore and Sydney. Armed with these, we returned to wait at the service counters, where our number was still a dozen away.
But then, for some reason unclear to me, our number was called next, skipping ahead of all the others. We didn't look a gift horse in the mouth and went to the counter, whee we explained our situation again to the next Lufthansa woman there. She was sympathetic, but said that because the flights had all been issued on one ticket, she couldn't change one leg of the trip. I asked if she thought we'd have enough time to transfer at Frankfurt and she looked at our boarding passes, which had a gate number listed for the Frankfurt-Singapore flight. She said it was a good gate to have, relatively easy to get to, and we should have enough time, if we didn't go too slowly. She said she'd worked at Frankfurt Airport for 25 years and knew it like the back of her hand, and when we got there to go quickly and we should be able to make the next flight. She was extremely sorry she couldn't help with moving us to an earlier flight and wished us luck.
So now we still had over two hours to wait for our 10:00 flight. We walked towards the assigned gate and remembered we had Star Alliance lounge access, and there was a Lufthansa/Star Alliance lounge not too far from our gate. So we went in there and found some comfortable and quiet seats to sit and wait. We also took advantage of the free food there to have a more substantial breakfast, with some muesli and fruit and yoghurt for me.
At boarding time we went to the gate and boarded the plane. The plane was very empty. All the seats in the half-rows in front and behind us, and also across the aisle from us were empty. Boarding was completed very quickly and we departed a few minutes early, which was good. Munich to Frankfurt is a very short flight and we landed 42 minutes after take-off, a few minutes ahead of schedule, giving us more time to get to our Singapore flight.
Now the fun started. Frankfurt is a very big airport. Our plane had pulled in at a far gate along one of the terminal arms, so we had a long walk, several hundred metres, to get to a central hub. The time we'd missed a connection here we'd had to catch a train to transfer to a different terminal. But we knew our gate number and found signs leading towards it and after maybe 10 or 15 minutes of walking we reached the correct arm of the terminal without having to use the train. Here was a passport control area, obviously because gates on this arm of the terminal were used for international departures. Fortunately the queue was short and we were through in just a few minutes. From here our gate wasn't too much further and we arrived with some time to spare.
There was also a Lufthansa lounge right next to the gate here, so we went in mostly just to get comfortable seats away from the crowds for a few minutes. M. found they had mini ice creams on a stick, salted caramel and Australian macadamia flavour, with a koala on the wrapper. We had one of those each. Our flight to Singapore ended up being delayed about 15 minutes, but eventually we boarded and settled in for the long hauls across the globe.
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