I’m sailing away…

So I broke with tradition and used an English title, but it fits since I returned to the US today (though it’s mostly because the song’s stuck in my head). What a journey it was to get home. I’ll begin really where I left off yesterday. After lounging around at the McCallan’s, I packed up my stuff and got ready to leave. Chris and Kelly walked me to the nearest U-Bahn stop around 1 AM, so I could catch the last train to head to the Hauptbahnhof until 4 AM. It was important to catch this train since my ICE train was to leave the Hauptbahnhof at 3:24 AM.

So I get to the Hauptbahnhof around 1:15-1:30 AM and now have roughly 2 hours to kill before my train departed. I grabbed a Red Bull since I was dragging a bit, then spent the next hour and a half reading, listening to music, and watching Robin Hood on my laptop. Around 3-3:15 AM, they opened up the train to allow us to begin to board. When I first got on the train, all the seats I saw were labeled as reserved. So I wander around trying to find a seat not labeled as such with a place for my big-ass duffel bag. With my search to no avail, I eventually just took a seat and stood my bag in the floor of the seat next to me. This was not a problem until the stop before I needed to change trains in Mannheim. Luckily, the woman who sat in the seat didn’t mind having my bag invade her personal space.

I made it to Mannheim around 6:30 and had only a few minutes to catch the ICE I was supposed to take to Frankfurt. It was convenient though because my new train was at the adjacent platform so I just needed to walk the 20 ft or so to the new train. The new train actually appeared to be an older train but seemed to have a lot more room. This time, I was able to stash my bag behind my seat and had plenty of leg-room to stretch out.

The trip from Mannheim to Frankfurt lasted only a half hour or so, at which point I reached the Hauptbahnhof. Once there, I attempted to find one of the trains going to the airport. After wandering around for a bit, I eventually found one that was going in the proper direction. I had to wait 20 minutes or so to catch the train, but I didn’t feel like trying to race and possibly catch one leaving 10 minutes or so earlier. With my luck, I would have gotten all the way to the other stop and just missed the train, thus having to go all the way back down to the stop I started at. Once on the train, it was a short 15 or so minute trip to the airport.

Before I get into the airport discussion, I thought I would mention something I realized on the first train I was on. That particular ICE went to the airport, but I didn’t stay on since my ticket told me to get off at the Hauptbahnhof (they actually check tickets on those trains). It made me realize though how retarded I was for not checking Munich to Frankfurt Airport tickets instead of just Munich to Frankfurt Hbf.  Had I done that, I could have probably avoided both stops I had on the way to the airport…Na ja…

Once I got to the airport stop, I exited the train and navigated my way up several escalators to the terminal check-in. One thing that surprised me about the Frankfurt airport was the flight schedule. Unlike the DFW ones which are all digital, the Frankfurt airport still had an old-school schedule where the numbers were on tiles and flipped to change (like the old numerical alarm clocks before LEDs were used). The check-in line went pretty fast, but I ran into a weight issue at check-in.

My duffel bag ended up being 10 kg heavier than the allowed baggage weight. Luckily, I had my messenger bag in the duffel, so I pulled it out, along with a couple books and a plastic bag with my dress shoes in them, to meet the weight requirement. The one thing that would later annoy me is that the woman made me check my messenger bag too, which happened to contain most of the souvenirs I had bought. I figured my duffel would have been overweight, but I think I should have been able to carry on my messenger bag considering I saw people with small suitcases plus another bag, thus having a total carry-on size greater than my messenger bag and backpack combined. I have a feeling one of the micro-Steins I bought David broke because the messenger bag was checked and tossed in with the rest of the luggage.

I might have been able to argue my way into carrying it, but at that point I just wanted to get into the airport and to my gate. Well after check-in, I made my way through security and made my way to the departure gate. With another hour to kill, I grabbed another Red Bull and sat down to watch more Robin Hood.

I think the most annoying portion of the journey came around boarding time. So around 9:15, 15 minutes prior to the official “boarding time”, the people working at the gate decided to make us all line up for pre-boarding or something, not quite sure. So we were then forced to stand in line for 30-45 minutes while they scanned our tickets. I wouldn’t have minded this except that we didn’t board the plane right after this. No, we were forced to sit around for another 15 minutes or so after everyone was “pre-boarded” before the actual boarding process began. For a culture so adament about punctuality and order, the whole boarding process made no sense. At least they did make an attempt to seat people by section for the most part, though no one at the gate really seemed to enforce it. Around an hour or so after the pre-/boarding process began, I finally made it to my seat.

I had a window seat next to this Swedish guy, probably in his mid-20s or so. He works for Ericsson (go figure) and transferred to Dallas a few years ago. He had gone back to visit family and friends for a few weeks. The flight really wasn’t overly exciting. I had no real desire to see the in-flight movies, so I watched a little more Robin Hood till my battery died. After that, it was mostly just reading, listening to music (I charged my mp3 player some while watching Robin Hood so it didn’t die on me till late), and napping. I did take advantage though of a free whiskey-and-coke. I got two meals over the course of the flight: one was a beef and potatoes dish; the other was a chicken dish with corn. After the latter meal, they came around and gave out cognac, so I figured now was as good of time as any to try it. Some 10+ hours after leaving Frankfurt, I arrived at DFW.

So with my 10+ hour flight, I landed in Dallas around 2:30 PM, officially 4 hours from Frankfurt with the time changes. Let me tell you, that’s about the longest 4 hours I’ve ever had. From there, it was a long walk to the passport check and then another long walk to baggage claim. Another 20 minutes waiting for my bags, followed by 5 or so minutes getting through customs, and I was finally back into the Dallas heat. And with that, I conclude this entry.

Notes:

• I updated the Terms/Places page for some of the German in the previous entries.
• Pictures will come eventually once I get time to caption them