Day One: May 21st-Travel day and arrival
We had just had a wonderful, busy week with Wayne and Mark and then Dave here visiting. Their help here was much appreciated, and the visiting was wonderful. It was a whirlwind week of family and finishing getting ready to go away for two weeks. Thursday morning Wayne and Mark headed out early (we made our goodbys the night before) My packing was done. I pack lite as a philosophy. I pack heavy in practice. I had my next to biggest suitcase, a small rolling carry on bag, and my trusty Duluth Trading company messenger bag with all my comfort necessities for the trip. Dave was headed back to Moses Lake and was able to drive me to the airport. I spent the last hour before leaving printing out as many geocaches and Waypoint searches for Nurenberg and Munich as I could fit into the time. Finally I cancelled the last few prints and we headed out to the airport. I was to regret the extra time spent doing that when I got to the airport.
The line to the ticket counter was so long they had filled their overflow line up area separate from the main line. As time wore on, the agents more and more urgently called for us to identify ourselves for the flight to Amsterdam as opposed to a flight to Taiwan that was also checking in. We were moved ahead of passengers from the other flight. The woman doing this got more and more frantic at the amount of us not checked in and I realized we were running out of time. I was one of the last ones. It turned out that my main bag was five pounds over the 50 pound limit, so I pulled a heavy pair of Harry's shoes out that he'd asked me to bring. (He wore them once, briefly, later on). and was glad my roll aboard was half empty. They weighed exactly 5 pounds and fit nicely in the other bag.
I am used to sitting around the gate area for over an hour, so it was different to find them already lining up to board when I got there. We were flying the largest commercial plane they use, and it was full, so there were a lot of us. I had taken time after taking the shuttle train to the gate to get a bottle of water and make a quick WC stop, but I still was way not the last one in line. My passport was checked at check in, at security, while lined up waiting to board, and at boarding when presenting my boarding pass. There were five secuity police in the telescoping passageway to the plane, all standing at intervals in the first section. I wondered what they were there to prevent or what kind of potential action they were there to deal with.
I had reserved a window seat because I really like to see what there is to be seen, but found my seat taken by a woman who should have been on the aisle. There were only two seats along the window sides. I decided not to make a fuss with someone I had to be in such close proximity with for over nine hours. She was from near Amsterdam and heading home after attending a conference in Seattle. She stayed glued to the window whenever there was anything to see, so I could see she really go something out of being able to sit in that spot.
I tried to sleep on the plane, but even with earplugs and melatonin at the appropriate time, I was only able to sleep for two hours. We had beverage and snack services, a lovely full course hot meal, more beverage and snack, water refills, and hot continental breakfast sandwiches. Compressed into the nine hours of the flight, it felt like a lot. I watched two movies, tried to listen to a book on tape, but found my player not working, tried to read my kindle, but found that my contacts were bothering my eyes so badly that I was in greater and greater discomfort for any close visual, so I gave up. I realized I should have taken out the lenses for the trip, but wasn't sure how I'd manage without them in the airports.
When we landed in Amsterdam, I had an hour to make the city hopper flight to Nurenberg. I hurried through the airport, waiting in line for passport check, and got to the gate in good time. We were bussed to the plane, where we boarded up a flight of stairs. I'd met a young service man's wife coming to join her husband at Viseck, and she was amazed that we would be bussed out and going up stairs to board the plane. She resoved to stick with me at the airport, as she felt very insecure about managing now that we were in country. This flight on the small commuter plane was only an hour, but we were still served lovely Dutch sandwiches. I felt quite full at this point from all the meal services. The extra food I'd brought along had only been needed at the beginning of the first flight, which left at noon when I hadn't had lunch.
I decided towards the end of the first leg that my plan to spend the rest of my arrival day touring Nurenberg wasn't going to be the best idea. My eyes were swollen and painful, and I hadn't gotten the sleep I'd hoped to get. I couldn't quite imagine negotiating an unfamiliar foriegn city with no contacts in and realized I'd need to rest some after all. It was my first reality check on my ambitious touring plans. I'd already decided to have a rest day Sunday, since I knew we'd be doing something ambitious Saturday on Harry's day off.
Fortunately, Harry's co-workers had convinced him to come meet me at the airport in case I needed to come back with him, and to take my luggage away. He wasn't surprised to find that I was ready to go back to the Gasthaus and rest. I should have stopped and dug out my contact case at that point, but I wanted to see the countryside as we drove. My eyes hurt so bad by then that I really regretted not taking them out, though.
So Harry needed lunch before heading back to work, so for my first meal on German soil, (though I wasn't hungry enough to eat much) was a quick stop at a McCafe for burgers and fries...LOL By this time in country he was tired of pork all the time, so we ended up eating non-German about half the time.
The countryside was beautiful. We quickly left the city behind and traveled through a rolling landscape of green cultivated fields dotted by tidy islands of woods. Many of the woods had woodpiles stacked neatly at their edges, or brush cleared and stacked in piles just outside the forest perimeter. All was green, gentle rolling swells of land, dotted here and there with small pockets of red tile roofed houses and barns, little towns nestled into the landscape. It was like that mile after mile, or Kilometer after Kilometer, for an hour of driving to where we were staying.
Next Post: Settling in to Edelsfeld
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