Not surprisingly, I made it. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful; we rode in a 757, which had a little more room than the first-leg 737, but not much. It was a pretty friendly plane; lots of convivial conversation going on, with Germans tolerantly serving as guinea pigs to Americans and Brits who wanted to take their German out for a test drive. The woman across the aisle from me was going to some kind of let's-learn-German boot camp (some kind of Goethe-Institut thing?) and kept a big stack of workbooks on her tray for the entire flight.
I, of course, ended up sitting next to a Chinese couple that said "excuse me" -- once -- and absolutely nothing else (even to each other!) for the entire flight.
Don't expect snappy luggage service when your flight arrives at 7:30 AM on a Sunday morning; it took me an hour to get my bag.
You can tell that you're in a civilized and highly advanced country when there's a group of dogs just outside the arrivals area in the airport terminal, patiently waiting along with everyone else for their humans to come home.
The taxi driver totally took me on a scenic cruise from the airport to my hotel -- but it was a nice drive around the Alster, so I didn't mind. (And there did seem to be an awful lot of roadwork going on in various places, so perhaps he was an honest man after all.) Upon getting to the hotel, I found out that he didn't take credit cards, so we made a special bonus trip to find an ATM; while we were driving around, he started to bitch me out for not having cash at the ready! Excuse me? It's not like you're making this let's-find-the-money trip for free -- five minutes more that you spend driving me around are five minutes less that you spend at a taxi stand, waiting for a new fare and making no money in the process . . .
And the TSA luggage gnomes went through my checked luggage (it was pretty obvious; someone refolded half of my shirts) without even bothering to leave behind the "Hello, we've just gone through your suitcase" card that they've always left in the past.
Now I think that I'll take a nap and then go out to hit the town; my big chance before work starts tomorrow morning.
Posted by Kevin at August 21, 2005 01:31 AM