Taking the Scenic Route

The ride here was actually pretty decent. Both times it was too bumpy to read most of the time, although I did try anyway when the clouds made any sort of view impossible. ( looked like we were flying through cotton candy for a while).

We didn’t have any checked luggage (just our two rolling carry-on luggage, me with my purse, Zach with his computer case with the work laptop and our personal laptop.) The closest thing to a snag we had was a complaint that we are only supposed to have one laptop per case, but they let us go through because there were two people attached to the laptops (one laptop per person). We made sure we didn’t have to go back through security again so we didn’t take the chance of a problem. I really didn’t want to have to jam the personal laptop into my luggage and it certainly wasn’t going to fit into my purse.

The Dallas airport had these cool tram things. We walked down stairs from the airplane (which surprised me because it wasn’t a puddle hopper….the seats were 2 on one side, 3 on the other, a pretty big plane for going out of Wichita) and I had the daunting task of carrying my luggage down steep stairs. I am not known for my balance on stairs anyway and being stuck in the middle of people hauling a load like that made me a little nervous. We then walked over to this little tram thing which took us to the building. In the building we had to walk over to a little fixed track tram station and get on that to go to another building. It was sort of like an above ground subway. (keep in mind, I am from Kansas and the only time I have ever even seen public transportaion up live and in person was a New York City Subway….again, when I was on vacation, back in the late 80s). It went considerable faster than I was anticipating. Zane would have loved it, it resembled a flatter version of a roller coaster and was totally automated. The voice reminded us of the “jonny cab” from Total Recall. lol

I also had to take a lot of deep breaths and just go for it when faced with mountainous escalators with the rolling luggage. I was glad I didn’t have to deal with checked bags, but we were really not used to dealing with luggage at all.

At the airport Zach got some McDonalds, and I was happy to see a Smoothie King store because it takes me forever to eat something because I have to navigate around the landmines in my mouth right now. It took a long time to drink the smoothie too because it was so thick I was scared I was going to pop off the scabs and get dry socket in my mouth. I don’t have that many pain pills left. lol.

For the flight to Germany we were 3 rows from the very back of the plane, in the middle section. When we went to sit down, there was a dude in one of our seats who gave us the dirtiest look when he realized he wasn’t going to get to sit on the isle seat. He moved in to his seat, and not long after take off disappeared and never came back. (he found an empty isle seat in another row). That made the trip a little more pleasant because he seemed pretty grumpy.

We watched 3 movies on the plane…Prince Caspian, that Panda Kung Fu cartoon one (can’t remember the name) and Iron Man. It really helped pass the time. I also flipped to the “Flight” view and watched the plane move over the map, sort of like the flight view I watched when Zach’s plane was in the air from home. It was neat to see where we were, even if I couldn’t see out the window. There were some tense moments for me when I saw us turning around over Tennessee area. We couldn’t feel that we were turning around in the plane, but we were making a big loop. Then it circled back around and went back on the path. We flew over the southern US, then up the coast over New York and Boston (yeah, killing me that I couldn’t see out the plane) and on up the coast over Canada and those big island just off of Canada. The next time we were over land was Ireland, then England, then France and on to Frankfort. I asked the pilot why the loop as we deboarded and he said that they lost radio contact with Atlanta and wouldn’t let them fly through the airspace until they regained contact. So, no mechanical problems or threats (at least the explanation seemed reasonable and easily offered, so I will take him at his word).

We were jammed in there like sardines and there was no way we could sleep. One thing that sort of pissed me off was that everyone on the plane closed the freakin’ windows before it was even dark. I can guarantee you that if I sat near a window, it would not be closed as long as there was a view. What is the point of getting a window seat if you don’t look out the window? I got up and went “to the bathroom” a few more times than necessary just to go look out the little window in the back exit next to the flight attendant station. I am a dork.

Since we were clear in the back of the plane, it took forever to wait to get off the plane. It did finally give us a few moments to dig out the camera and snap a few pictures…

The airport, unlike Wichita and Dallas, was not nearly as upscale and modern, at least the part we saw wasn’t. It looked very institutional and it seemed like we wound through a lot of basement corridors. We got our passports stamped and went through the baggage claim area (we didn’t have to wait for bags though) and saw a guy standing there holding a sign for us. In the parking garage we got our first look at how different the cars are here. Almost no Fords or other American cars, but all of the cars that are expensive at home are all over the place here. There are also a lot of cars that we have never seen before in interesting shapes. (need to take pictures of the cars for my car-geek family)

Leaving the parking garage we finally go our first glance of Germany. It was drizzling and gray, much like Wichita was when we left. There are LOTS of trees here. A lot more than I am used to. It seemed like we were driving through a forest most of the time. I learned that the “autobahn” is not just one road (don’t know why I thought that, but I thought it was one road that you could drive really fast on) it is basically the same thing as our interstate highway, but you can drive really fast on it. In Frankfort the architecture didn’t look that much different than any large city, but as we drove the couple of hours to Attendorn, we began to see the skylines change a lot. Lot of white houses with interesting roofs and every so often a church steeple with gothic spires.

I am not sure if Attendorn is considered to be in mountains or foothills (if it is mountains, they are certainly not like Colorado’s mountains…they are rounder), but it is much more hilly than I was expecting. We went around an enormous lake with huge bridges spanning it every so often. A long bike path curved around with the road most of the way once we got off the highway.

Once in town, the driver made the comment “it isn’t hard to get around here” and both of us had the same thought…maybe not for you, but there isn’t a square corner anywhere and this has got to be the biggest maze of streets we could have ever imagined. It isn’t a big town, but everything seems to go in circles and normal sized streets suddenly give way to narrow one-car streets that have no logic, and he didn’t even slow down. Driving will be interesting.

The driver was very nice, but must have thought we were the biggest idiots in the world when we asked him how to get gas in the car. It is a diesel, and besides not being able to read the signs, we didn’t really know how the pumps worked or if we had to pay first or anything, so he took us to fill it up with gas before dropping us off in the hotel. By the way he was answering our question I think he didn’t think we knew what “diesel” was. I know what diesel is, but I am not used to seeing it at a typical gas station. (farmer’s co-ops have diesel, but not the local Quick Trips/7-11 type places) lol. I knew it was very bad to put regular gas in a diesel and wanted to make sure we didn’t make that, very expensive, mistake.