Back in late March, my brother (who lives in San Francisco) and I decided we should take a weekend trip somewhere. At the time, airfares to fly overseas were pretty inexpensive and we narrowed our list down to three choices: 1) Australia, 2) Tokyo, or 3) Germany

We determined that Australia was too far to fly for a long weekend, even though round trip airfares to Melbourne were only $700 from San Francisco and $850 from Chicago – unheard of low fares.

Tokyo was similarly priced to Australia but not nearly as far. We almost chose Tokyo until we found a $440 roundtrip airfare from Chicago to Frankfurt and only $470 from San Francisco to Frankfurt. With those fares costing about half as much, Germany was the winner.

The Sporting Events
Before booking the trip to Germany, I already knew of sporting events we would attend no matter the location. With Germany, the plan was to attend three Bundesliga matches within a reasonable distance of Frankfurt – one Friday night, one Saturday afternoon and one Sunday evening.