Getting Here

Deep Snow

Getting here was very stressful. February 2010 in Maryland was a time of blizzards. You may remember hearing about Snowmageddon or Snowpocalypse? Yeah, that's when I was trying to move to a foreign country. We had been snowed in at our hotel a couple of times in the 10 days preceding our flight, and another blizzard was expected the day after our flight. I was terrified that we wouldn't get out. But, we got out on the one full day that the airport was open between storms. It was amazing.

The flight itself was pretty uneventful. There was a bit of turbulence at both the beginning and the end (it was snowing at both ends), but we had a few good hours in the middle. The flight from Dulles to Frankfurt is about 8.5 hours, mostly overnight. Unfortunately, I don't sleep well on planes, so I only slept for maybe half an hour. Em didn't get much more. It was fun at the beginning of the flight, because it was still light enough that we could see a lot of neat things. We could see DC and Baltimore, as well as Annapolis (I think). It got dark, so we got to see Manhattan all lit up. It was cool, becasue we could pick out Times Square from its density of light, and Central Park from its lack.

See Manhattan? Neato, huh?

Domo says "Goodnight US!"

I was by the window, because that's the only seat on the plane that I don't detest. I can pretend I'm not in there with a bunch of other people. I pay Em for the privilege, so don't feel sorry for her.


We watched the map for the rest, because it was too dark to see anything. There was nothing to see as we left the US over Maine, and nothing to see as we left North America over Newfoundland.

Bye, US!

Bye, North America!

Guten Morgen, Deutschland!

The first thing we saw of Europe was a few clumps of light over Western England (probably Wales, actually, but I'm not sure). The first thing of the continent was The Hague. The sun started to rise as we flew over Germany, and we got to see Mainz as we flew over it. We could see where the Rhein met the Main, and then followed the Main to the airport. As we landed, it was a bit slippy, since the runway was covered in snow.

Domo is happy to be off the plane

Customs didn't take as long as we had expected, so that was nice. We retrieved our luggage and met Max at the gate (he had gotten here 3 months before). He drove us around and showed us some stuff. I don't remember most of it. All I wanted to do was sleep, but we needed to stay awake as long as we could, to reset our clocks. We finally came home and took a nap. It was lovely.