We disembarked the aircraft in a fog, with little sleep on the transatlantic flight DFW to Frankfurt, and a 7-hour time change to contend with. Luckily, our hotel was connected to the airport terminal, so after Immigrations and Customs we collected our bags and walked over. As we entered the cavernous, sun-filled lobby of the Sheraton, a man in a bellhop uniform practically ran towards us, shouting how happy he was to see us. He immediately took my bags from me (however, not my traveling companion's) and ushered us to the reception desk.
As we were being checked in, he continued to circle me, exclaiming how much he liked me.
"I'm so glad you're not blonde", he said. "I don't like blondes." He moved right in front of my face as if to study it further, and then told the reception clerk to put my colleague in a room far away from me so that he could come up and flirt with me. My colleague, also female, is blonde. Alas, it just wasn't her day.
As the reception clerk checking me in rolled her eyes, she confessed to me that the bellhop was her father, and that her mother was the clerk two positions down. I could tell that she had seen this little performance before.
I heard a Scottish or Irish accent in the man, so asked him if he was Celtic. He kept circling me, hooting how much he loved me. He finally said no, "I'm Tunisian - I'm Arab". Wherever he learned his English, his instructor was definitely Scottish.
He took us to our rooms (he didn't get his wish - our rooms were next to each other), and I laughed the whole way. I tipped him $5 and shooed him out the door after he told us how to get downtown on the train.
I never saw him again, but he certainly made the start of my trip to Frankfurt more interesting!
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