I headed out of the quiet one-way street and headed for the town centre. Frankfurt was remarkably quiet, but I had heard that it pretty much closed down on Sunday evenings. There were the odd couple going to or from some very nice-looking restaurants - evidently the thing to do as they were uniformly packed. I kept on, enjoying the cool evening and pleasant walking - and causing some inconvenience to drivers as I still can't bring myself to trust that anything is going to stop just because I'm on a zebra crossing. (A Porsche stopped for me this morning! A Porsche!!)
It did seem strange that the neighbourhood didn't seem to be getting any busier. Until I arrived at a major cross street and realised I was nearly at the office. I had been walking the wrong way the whole time. I grabbed some warm food and and something for breakfast the next day at a petrol station shop (the only thing I had seen open) and decided that I may as well continue and find the office. I went past a huge number of purveyors of funerary monuments, opposite the walls of what must have been a massive cemetary. Spotted eight rabbits cavorting in a green area outside an office block. Found the office, and navigated my way back to the flat along the route I'd planned out on google maps - down a pair of one-way streets divided by trees, along the side of a park and coming back onto my road just a few doors away from the flat. Took about 25 minutes.
After using brute force to get my trailing socket with converter plug in, I chatted with David for a bit before turning in.
Luckily I was too wired to sleep very much, as although I had set the time on the clock I'd forgotten to actually turn the alarm function on. Walked in - decided to leave the camera at home as it would just make me late - and arrived at the large supermarket beside the office a few minutes after nine, and had a nougat croissant (tasted and looked like chocolate to me) and coffee. The coffee almost didn't happen - the cashier couldn't understand my attempts at German, but the other customers could and happily repeated them, to which I could only offer an embarrassed danke schon.
Headed in and found my recruiter and ended up waiting around chatting to a Spanish tester as we waited to be paired up with our bosses - I finally hooked up with Nick, who is in charge of the into-UK-English team and the other two new starters Zakim and Geraint. We read boring documentation, attempted to find somewhere to sit and tried to log in for most of the day, as is the wont of first days.
We headed out for lunch with Nick and Patrick and Gemma, two more into-UK translators, and got some Chinese food at a cafe in the supermarket. I was heartened when, while I was trying to figure out if the chef had just called my number (44), a policeman at the counter reassured me she had said 65. Can't be bad when the police interpret for you.
Zack and I turned out to be in the same building, so we went shopping for the essentials (washing up liquid and sponges, milk, fresh pasta/noodles) after leaving and hauled it all home on the U-bahn in the company of one of the Japanese producers. First kind-of proper meal cooked in my mini-kitchen!
All in all, a good day - totally unproductive as first days are, but I have an idea of what I will be working on tomorrow (it's ironic is all I will say for now) and have met a lot of fun and friendly people. May try to fly back to the UK for Easter as the office is closed here.
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