[Jim in Chicago]

The more I study it, the more attracted I become to the Calatrava submissing - laying aside little questions about whether he could really bring it in at anything close to a budget, or even a typical Chicago inflated final cost.

The approach reminds me of sort of a combination of MUC and FRA. At MUC, there is a pedestrian entrance off the S-Bahn, that takes you through a very lively open area with shops, a Christmas market in December, a skating rink and so on. The stations to buy the train tickets are just as you leave the terminal, so you stop buy a ticket and then take the short walk to the train station. The area is packed with people. The Squaire at FRA which is also very lively, incorporates 2 mid-rise hotels, office buildings, shops, a huge parking garage, restaurants a full-sized grocery store which seems popular with both travelers and airport employees and as a bonus it sits right on top of the mainline rail tracks. There is almost direct access to the autobahn. This part isn't as viable for ORD, but in FRA you can walk off your plane and within minutes be on a high speed train to many parts of Germany and beyond. LH even has a check-in station and "I think" bag drop on the route between the Squaire and the airport terminals.