The last couple days were days of choices. Crazy cab drivers, horrendous airlines (British Airlines and ANA were really great though), and moral questions — all presenting choices to let the circumstances change our trip or to ‘be with Zen’ and let it go.

Scenario 1:  Our London car service driver was angry from the moment he picked us of for some reason, was trying to fleece us on USD->GBP exchange, and worse was spewing racist crap to us. In hindsight, I wish I had a way of calling a ‘racial police’ because we had it recorded as did a couple others who witnessed it. I’ll admit, I lost it with him though and I could have made the choice to say screw it and let it go I guess.  Minus 1 for Zen.

Scenario 2: Our flight to Tunisia was from London via Frankfurt.  We arrived in Frankfurt the night prior to the early morning Tunisia flight and stayed at a hotel nearby.  Thus no chance to see Frankfurt and we actually didn’t really have any regrets about that. However, even though we arrived at the terminal in the morning with far more than enough time, we didn’t make the flights. Lufthansa made a number of mistakes and we missed the cutoff for boarding the plane, and our bags were unloaded into a holding area. Despite admitting they had made the mistake, Lufthansa was useless in helping (on the way in to Europe, Lufthansa had totally destroyed one of our bags, and with this, I rank them as one of the worst airlines).

So now we found ourselves in Frankfurt for an evening with nothing but our carry on bags.  What should we do? Spend the time at the airport arguing with Lufthansa to get our bags back and for a room, or just flow with it. We let it go, booked a room at the same hotel again, and headed into town.

The way I looked at it, we basically received a bonus round for our trip.  So what do you do in Frankfurt? Strangely, they didn’t seem to have frankfurters anywhere… Surely they have hamburgers in Hamburg right? It was actually a pretty nice city though. Rayma found a Toni&Guy, I found a local coffee spot, and we were good. The people were friendly (albeit moving very slowly to do anything…), there were a few historical buildings and modern ones as well. One in particular had a hole right through the center of it.

For a city that is supposed to be a ‘finance’ capital  it was absurd to change money though.  Only one place in the city center would exchange USD. And then to change to Tunisian dinars, they were charging almost 45% in fees.  

Dinner ended up being awesome. We found a ‘typical’ German restaurant and stuffed ourselves. We found out they are famous for their ‘green sauce’ which I drowned my food in (but be careful if you ever have it because I think must have a ton of asparagus in it and so that would be a minus 1 for taking a pee…)

Overall though: +1 on the Zen and spending a night in Frankfurt!

Scenario 3:  After dinner we found ourselves in a bit of a debate though. We found a 20 Euro note on the outside patio area in the square. We debated to keep it or give it to the waitress – doubt it was hers. On one hand it was our good luck, on the other it would have been benefiting on someone else’s poor luck (either the waitress or some customer).  Maybe by giving it back, we are ‘paying it forward’ or conversely by keeping it, someone was ‘paying it forward’ to us.  We debated it while we had our drinks, and then finally decided to give it to the waitress and made it her dilemma to see if anyone asks for it.

Not sure if it helped with or against Zen yet.

What would you have done? Does your answer change based on anything different in the situation like the amount or where it was found?