Crossing the Pond

We made it all the way to Germany! With, of course, the unexpected 5 phases of traveling.

Phase 1: waiting waiting waiting at the Atlanta airport because of crazy thunderstorms in Baltimore.

Phase 2: the turbulent flight to Baltimore in the very last row of the plane with no window :-(

Phase 3: arriving in Baltimore at 1:00am, while we were supposed to check in for our next flight at 12:30am. We gave Callie her dreaded sleepy pill, grabbed our luggage, and booked it to the other end of the airport to the international terminal. The lovely staff at the international terminal had pleasant comments for us, such as "you're really, really late," "I don't think we have room for 2 more," and "you're going to miss your flight." Not comforting, considering the entire reason we were late to Baltimore was because of the crazy thunderstorms right there in Baltimore. Had they looked out the window lately? So as we check in, we realize we're missing an important bag we left at the luggage claim. I leave Chris to check in and I run all the way back to the baggage claim where the nice AirTran guys are gathering the leftover luggage and they help me locate my bag. Then I run all the way back, Chris calls me his track star. Once we get through with checking in we rush through security to the gate, only to find that boarding had not even begun yet. This is the epitome of the Air Force my friends: "hurry up and wait."

Phase 4: the AMC flight to Ramstein. It was not bad, we slept most of the time. Unfortunately we were separated, and being the nice wife I am I let Chris keep the iPod since I had forgotten to charge my MP3 player. He was lucky to have an aisle seat, while I was sandwiched between 2 nice but bulky Army dudes who both had a knack of leaning into me while sleeping.

Phase 5: when we exit the plane, the crew puts everybody into 3 little glass rooms. I found this very odd until we realized it was to explain what to do when going through customs, and then they let us move along. Reunited with Callie and our bags, we searched for our sponsor, who eventually found us after we decided he wasn't there to get us and we were waiting for the shuttle to take us where we needed to go.

We got Callie set up with a litterbox, and she was quite pleased after the long trek. She's still a bit mad at us, but she enjoys exploring our room, tomorrow we shall take her into the garden. Our hotel room is wonderful! I had forgotten how much I love European hotels. We are in a family run hotel (as most are) and it is very cozy and friendly. Our room is more like a little apartment, we have a bedroom, living/kitchen area, and bathroom. After unpacking and showering off the travel ickies, we decided to find food. We walked around the corner to an Italian restaurant, always a good choice. Chris experienced his first German beer and was quite pleased ;-) Looking through the menu, Chris chose a calzone and I chose rigatoni with marinara. You can't get any safer in a choice than tube noodles and a tomato based sauce, I thought to myself. Well, I was quite wrong. In amongst my tubey noodles and tomatoey sauce were several mussels and miniature squid. That's right, squid. Needless to say, I only ate the tubey noodles. Chris's calzone was interesting as well, with each bite he was less thrilled. There was hard-boiled egg in his calzone! It was quite a first eating experience, and I found it odd because I didn't have any weirdness like that last summer when I was here, and Chris is quite confused about European food now. Tomorrow we're going to get groceries and do some cooking, as you may have guessed. There is another Italian restaurant in another direction, and I may convince him to try it tomorrow night, we heard they have gelato!

20 minutes left until 9:00pm, then we can go to sleep! We're trying to get into this new time zone easily, and I must say that it is a lot easier since we left the US in the evening/early morning hours and arrived in Germany in the afternoon. Last summer we left in the morning and arrived in Europe in the morning, then had the whole day to go before we could sleep! Mmm, sleep...