Week One

Monday May 5th, 5:30pm. Northwest flight 52 from Detroit to Frankfurt. Seat 10H exit row. Our pilot came up to us, and saw that I could speak Russian. He decided to practice his Russian with me. His name was Steve. The flight was great, sat next to Elizabeth who works for Honeywell. She travels to Germany and England a lot for business. She hopes to go to Lake Constance, Bodensee auf Deutsch, for the weekend. Doris was our flight attendant for our section. She was fluent in German and English, and was ensuring the safety of drunk passengers on the plane. :).

Tuesday May 6th, 7:50am. Arrival in Frankfurt. I got of the plane, and heading down towards passport control or immigration (not customs for those who argue with me about this subject.) The line moved briskly but not a sound was heard in the entire terminal. Frankfurt seems to be a quiet airport and the silence is strange. I got my bags off the automatic baggage carousel that it so sophisticated that they exist only in Germany. Of course the Germans looked at bewilderment at me as I offloaded my 2 extremely heavy bags. Add to that the carry-on that I took on the plane, which included hiking backpack, my laptop messenger bag, and a small travel documents bag, and I was weighed down by over 120lbs of stuff.

I finally made it to the ReiseZentrum at the Bahnhof Frankfurt Flughafen, where I bought my train ticket to Tubingen with my bahncard 50, which saves me 50% off of all train tickets within Germany. I made it to the train with all my bags with just minutes to spare, and got on to find no empty spaces and no where to put all my stuff, but luckily I managed to sit down, and get settled. The train traveled at a speed of 220km/h so we were cruising pretty fast. The time from Frankfurt to Stuttgart took only 1h20mintues. Luckily a met a very friendly person, who took interest in me being American, and also happened to be a travel addict, and had digits in his phone number like 767, and 747, denoting the Boeing Passenger planes. He was nice enough to help me carry some of my stuff to the other train during my 6 minute connection in Stuttgart to the regiobahn to Tubingen.

I arrived in Tubingen at 11am, and Walter (Jutta's father) met me at the platform. I expected him to pick me up in the car, even though their house was only a couple of blocks away, or so it seemed on Google maps, but we just walked under a tunnel and into a park. On the otherside of the park there stood their house, and we carried the massive luggage up three stories to their apartment.

Jutta's Grandmother, Бабушка Маша смотрела с ужасом на меня, и на мой багаж (looked in horror at my baggage). Nevertheless, everyone was happy to see me, and I was happy to have finally arrived.

That day, I basically didn't do anything, and was extremely tired. I watched from the 3rd floor windows and waited for Jutta and Dennis to come home. After dinner, I took a nap, and in the evening with Jutta and Dennis, I went to innerstadt Tubingen, where we act Gelato at a sidewalk cafe.