The Flight.
So, we left on April 21* from the ever lovely Newark Liberty International Airport. I highly recommend taking advantage of online check in if your airline offers it. We didn't have to be there until just one hour until take off. This was a vast improvement from previous international flights that required 3 hours previous.
Flying to Germany requires 8 hours in a metal tube. This is not necessarily an enjoyable experience Please see previous blog entry. Well, we take off late as usual from Newark. I'm used to this by now. We're always late from Newark. Up, up and away.
Dinner is served within an hour of take off. I ask for Chicken. T asks for chicken. I receive chicken. T recieves beef. bwah? I offer to change with him, but he declines. So he eats the beef. I eat the chicken. Not in anyway exciting at all.
Next up, they turn off the lights, and we are all supposed to try and sleep. Side note: We purchased the funky u-shaped travel pillows. I will NEVER travel without them again. They are the bomb. Well worth the money. I succeed with about 3 hours of sleep. T does not. He gets about 20 minutes, he says.
So then we're sitting there, half away for about 3 more hours of the flight. Somewhere over Ireland we start our decent.
Ireland?
Ireland is about 2 hours by flight from Frankfurt, so instead of this being the nice quick pleasant and occasionally fun decent that I'm used to, we're creeping down. Foot by foot for two very long hours. Now, I don't know if you have ever been on a plane, but the take off and landing are the two parts that people complain about the most. It's not a fun feeling. This is exacerbated by doing it over the course of two hours. By the time we get near Frankfurt Airport, I'm ready to scream at the pilot to just get us on the ground already.
However, this was not to happen, as there was Traffic. Traffic. In Germany. On a Saturday morning. In the air.
Great.
Meanwhile, there is Pants Man. He stands up just as the pilot informs us that we are going in for our final approach. His pants are undone, his shirt untucked and hanging out of his sweater vest, his shoes are off, his hair looks like it has been neither washed nor combed in far longer than 8 hours. He is LARGE, he blocking the aisle, and he completely ignores the flight attendants as they repeated tell him in English, German, French and Spanish that he has to sit down. So he proceeds to run his hands through his hair to no effect, pulls his shirt down to try and straighten in, pulls his pants away from himself to tuck the shirt in, hikes up the pants, and closes them while I am thanking God that I didn't get glimpse of anything, buckles his pants and puts his shoes back on. He finally sits down as the pilot calls for final decent.
So we circle and decend, and I'm about ready to puke my guts out. It's getting worse and I have never experience this horrid feeling before. It was an absolute relief when the wheels finally hit the ground, and we taxied in. I got off that hot, stuffy tube of horridness and made for a bathroom. I needed a cold towel on my face and when I returned to T standing there, I told him that had this been my first flight you would have been hard pressed to get my ass on another plane. Ever.
Meanwhile, T has discovered a pillar of joy in his wait. There are smoking stations in the airport. You seidle up to this thing, light up and sucks away you smoke so the whole building doesn't fill with smoke, and you don't have to wait to clear passport control to have a cig. This was the beacon of hope in his day, and he gladly indulged in one.
Passport control was a breeze-- they looked at the thing, looked at us, and stamped us on unsmiling. I swear they don't know how to smile in government over there. We moved quickly onto the Car Rental counter.
At this point, kind reader, I would like to remind you that we have now been basically awake for about 20 hours. We have just been thrown across the mighty Atlantic at 550 miles an hour at about 35,000 feet. We have eaten bad food, slept not so soundly, been subjected to Pants Man, and felt like we were going to puke.
At the Hertz rental counter, we encounter the following: Mr. and Mrs. Joe Americantourist avec hideous hawaiian shirt and fishing hat who don't speak a lick of German, and apparently don't have a good command of English either. We have Mr. Leather, who is waiting patiently like us, for the counter lady. A couple walks up behind us, speaking German and queuing properly.
It takes the poor counter lady, left by herself to defend the counter, close to 20 minutes to explain to these dingdongs how to get out of the airport. During this 20 minutes, Psycho Bitch comes stomping up to the Please Wait Here and starts rustling her paperwork. When Mr. And Mrs. Joe Americantourist walk away, Psycho Bitch starts to walk up to the counter.
T flipped. "Um, no! There is a line here you know!"
Well, PB's male companion was clearly embarassed that she thought she was going to be served next after Americantourist and waves her back to him on line. She starts to make a fuss, but he says something to her, and waves to the people waiting. Just to piss her off, after Counter Lady takes care of Mr. Leather, we wave forward the Hertz Gold Club member who was standing at the back of the line.
We get our turn at the counter, and we are asked if we would like the wagon for the same price as the regular, and T takes it. Meanwhile I was secretly hoping that they would offer us an automatic at the same price, but no luck. His first card was declined. His second card was declined. His third card, the one that he didn't want to use for the car, was finally accepted, and he was ANGRY. He knew that he had enough on both of those cards, and they wouldn't go through. I was able to talk him down from choking the poor Counter Lady.
We go all the way to Europe and we get stuck with a rented Ford Focus Wagon.
Faboo. This dog of a vehicle eats gas, sucks air and drags ass on the Autobahn. I got it up to 100 but it was running high, about 4500 RPM. (It redlined at 6.) The only thing that this baby had going for it was that it held our bags without complaint.
Time to go. I revv it up and off we go- my first time driving a stick in nearly 7 years. And it was like riding a bike. You don't really forget. We pull up to the first light and--
um.
now what?
We have no idea which way is which and I randomly pick a road. I get on the A5 at the first chance, and head in the wrong direction. So, now, dispite being on the ground, we are circling Frankfurt again.
Sheer Dumb Luck, who was my best friend on this trip, caused me to pull on to another highway and we saw the names of the towns on the sign that we were looking for. I slap that sucker into 5th and rip into the Autobahn.
Until we hit traffic in Wurtzburg. An HOUR of traffic in Wurtzburg. Because they are patching the road. I nearly wept. And then I nearly peed myself. Worse, we discovered that you have pay to pee on the Autobahn. 50 Cents, and we had a 50 euro bill. I wanted to get going, so at the next stop we bought two sodas and had a wonderful pee.
We drive for four hours to get to Munich where our first hotel is, and arrive on the outskirts of the city-- and once again, um... now what? Yes, dear reader, we were sitting on a major roadway in Munich with ab-so-lute-ly no clue how to get to Swanthalerstrasse, or even where we were. Eventually we started following signs for the Oktoberfest grounds because the hotel claimed they were within walking distance.
And Sheer Dumb Luck had us cross Swanthalterstrasse less than 5 minutes later. The hotel was at the one end of the street, and we wound up circling that twice before finding the entrance to the parking garage.
We check in, and haul up to our room. We realize that we need to call our parents and have no way of doing this because direct dialing from the room would be insane. We freshen up a touch and head to the Hauptbahnhof (Big Train Station)and find a... um... calling card dealer. Now, being as I am, I think that calling the US is still a big deal, and that we're going to need at least 20 Euros with the calling card. Turns out the 5 Euro would have been enough. It had 460 minutes on it.
We take our purchases back to the hotel and decide that it's time to eat. At 8 at night.
A word of advice. If you're Europe, make sure you've eaten dinner by 6. Trust me on this. However, Sheer Dumb Luck was once again riding shot gun and there was a wonderful little restuarant next to the hotel that had a kick ass italian menu.
All the way to Germany to have a pizza and a spaghetti bolognaise. *thumbs up!* It was however, an acceptable dinner.
Back to the room, I attempt to call my parents-- 37 times. What I had forgotten, idiot that I am, was that I was dialing TO the US and not out. I was trying to get the US internation operator and kept getting "Incorrect number." Finally I realized that I had to dial 001 and not the international operator.
So, I was toast by this time. I cleaned up for bed and went to hop on the bed. But I think that the last and only person who would have found this bed comfortable was Fred Flintstone. I passed out anyway.
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