Exploring Mainz

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Today’s List

• Mainz
• Frankfurt International Airport \<

Next day at 5 in the morning, as we travel using Eurolines bus, we arrive in Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof or Frankfurt Hbf (central station).

Two options for today’s itinerary is city tour in Frankfurt of a walk to Mainz, a smaller city. For city tour, you could download and follow the route shown by the tourism map. The city tour will include a visit to Cathedral, City Hall, Goethe House, including the business district and the annual trade fair. While the Mainz will have that “suburb” atmosphere.

We choose Mainz then, 40 min by train from Frankfurt. Similar as French, no English here. Note: In Germany, Frankfurt is Frankfurt am Main, different from Mainz. Back to language, body language again will be used in Frankfurt. No English in road sign, board sign, restaurant menu and especially the officer.

Ticket to Mainz could be bought by DB ticket machince (similar as ATM). The machine sold both regional or international ticket. This modern machine reflects how modern the city is. The operation is preety simple too, just choose the language, destination, train and preferred time, enter the note, then in a minute, ticket with the returned money are in your hand.

Frankfurt has several transportation choice, however train and bus is in the top of the list. There are two type of trains : S-Bahn dan U-Bahn. S-Bahn is for comuter (out of town including airport) while U-Bahn is the metro one. Same as in Rome, your ticket will not be checked although you should not try to ride on without a ticket since there will be a big penalty for that.

Ticket is in hand now and another thing to be taken care is our luggage. We decide to left the baggage in airport. The airport is located between the city and Mainz so I bought the ticket to airport for € 6 per way per pax. No ticket check but please don’t try to on board without a ticket, okay??
Arrive at the airport, you could pick up a map to find where the left-bagage service is. We have two lugages and totally cost us € 6.20.

Then, I bought ticket to Mainz return through DB Bahn counter in airport (now we meet human at last), cost us €13.70 for 2 pax. We also bought ticket pass Mainz for €8.40, this is a group ticket valid for maximum of 5 pax/group. It takes 20 min from airport to Mainz by S-Bahn.

It’s still too early when we arrive in Mainz Hauptbahnhof train station, so we have a breakfast first. The traditional food is Frankfurters, kind of hotdog and Pretzel.

Then we start exploring the city by tram of bus. First, by bus, we head to Rheine where the city hall and old town is located. There is also Theodor-Heuss-Bridge that connected Mainz and Wiesbaden.

5 min walk, there is one of the oldest Cathedral in German and next to it is the Johannes Gutenberg Museum, the inventor of the printing machine.

Walking around in the city is another new experience for us. A special design of building dominant in brown-white has brought us to experience to the other Europian architecture.

Everything is so convenient here despite of the language. Can you tell me which bus to take???

Unfortunately, we don’t have much time in Frankfurt since at 11 am, we would need to return to Mainz Hauptbahnhof before take another train to Frankfurt Airport.

Actually, there are 2 airports in Frankfurt, Frankfurt Flughafen or known as Frankfurt International Airport and the other is Frankfurt Hahn Airport, serve the low cost airline around Europe. So, please make sure your airport is correct before departure.

Pick up the luggage and check in procedure, we are ready to leave Europe now. Frankfurt Airport is the second busiest airport in Europe after Heathrow. There are 2 terminal conneted by sky line train. Nothing so special in the airport in term of shopping.

That will bring us to the end of the journey. I hope that this writing could at least give you a little of highlight while traveling to the cities. We are open fro any comments, critics, or advise if I missed any part here.

Please encourage me for another series of travel guide to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau. Stay tune in Javamilk.com… Ciao