Triumphant return......

Ok, so I know this is a bit later than I planned on updating following my return from Germany, but school during the week in grad school is always chaotic and especially so when you get a crash course in jet lag. Unfortunately, the pictures are not yet ready to be posted (or more to the point, I haven't gotten around to sorting and titling them yet). I took all of the touristy pictures since Leah hasn't while she's there. She's too much of a native at this point ;). However, I will leave some remarks here for the moment.

The trip to Germany went off without a hitch...no delays, flying over the Atlantic at night (more like Canada, Greenland, Iceland, and Great Britain). It was so good to see Leah again! The first day was worth the whole trip :). We went for a few walks to see the sights, and Leah was brilliant at translating and doing all of the talking since I speak no German. My favorite sight in the city was the Frauenkirsche (sorry Leah if I spelled it wrong). It was a huge baroque church almost completely destroyed in WWII, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they put a team together to reconstruct it. You'll understand more when I post the pictures, but they took all of the remaining stones they had from the original and plugged it into a computer program to restore them to their original location in the structure. Of course, they also had to quarry replacements for many, and actually got replacements from the same quarry the originals were from. Sorry, my computer science and physics geek side came out there a bit.

Anyways, it was on Sunday that I got my first cliched German meal....sausage and beer and it was awesome. I ended up sampling quite a bit of German beer over the course of the week, but you needn't worry, I never got drunk, just a beer or two with each meal (as the Germans do). During the week while Leah was at school, I even got some grading and reading done. I found out that although I went the furthest of anyone in the department for spring break, I also strangely enough got the most done. Leah also had lots of fun playing with my beard, and agreed with the departmental nickname: Eric the Red...now I'm a viking, I just need the hat :).

Tuesday night, we had dinner with one of Leah's teachers. She was very kind, if a bit eccentric....she always seemed so out of her element, but Leah tells me that's what she's normally like. We had lots of fun conversations, although a bit strained when her husband was home (he speaks no English, and I speak no German, so one of us was always out of the conversation). However, it was still an enjoyable evening. For dinner we had sausage and German potato salad (potatoes, onion, sausage slices, apples, mustard, and I don't know what else, but it didn't sit well in either my stomach or Leahs). However, I was good and ate it all, although quite frankly it was rather revolting, but then again most of you know what my tastes are like. I also got to try Radler, which is like the German sports drink....It's half beer and half lemonade....what you thought the Germans wouldn't have beer in their sports drink? Hehehe...Crazy Germans. Oddly enough most of the week we did also have trouble finding sausage....but never problems finding beer.


Thursday, we even went to see a real castle in Saxony. They have these basically sandstone mesas all through the countryside, so naturally someone's going to build a castle on one of them overlooking the Elbe (the river that runs through Dresden a bit further downriver). We decided that the castle was nigh impregnable, and most invading armies would just probably try to avoid it at all costs. This will be born out in the pictures. There's also the fun little bit that it's large enough to have like a full town at the top...not just the basics, but like a full town! Also, although it's mostly wooded now, there's probably enough extra room for crops and livestock if they so choose. There's also plenty of artificial hills which conceal tons of ammo magazines...although you have to be standing next to them to realize what they are. It was a good trip.

The big problem came when I worked my way back. Firstly, in the airport in Dresden, the Lufthansa counter refused to print out the boarding pass for my United flights (the 2nd and 3rd), while the United counter had printed out the Lufthansa boarding pass on the way to Germany. When I got to Frankfurt, the Lufthansa counter said that the United counter was already closed for the night (this is at about 8:30). I tried to ask a security guard how to get to the United counter, but he didn't speak English (neither did the restaurant waiter or the second Starbuck's one, Leah). So, I stay up all night, ordering Starbucks twice (since I had slightly more confidence in it), and once at the restaurant. There I ordered tomato soup and a beer through horrible pronunciation and pointing. In between, I did manage to read an entire book for my Religion and State paper. I did take a 10 minute nap (checked the clock on both sides of it and had an alarm set for it), and when I awoke at 5:40, there was a long line for the counter that hadn't been there when I started the nap. The counter opened at 6:15 (flight at 8:10). When I made it to the front, I said it had been a long night, and they joked back that "you mean a long morning?" Which I was not in the mood for at the time. I did manage to make it to the plane with 10 minutes to spare.

By this point, I thought the hard part was over, but surely enough the adventure was far from over. Six rows in front of me was a 6 month old child who screamed at the top of its lungs for seven hours...I was passing out for like 45 minute stretches before being re-awakened by it. I did get a lovely view of Northern Canada as we flew over, and I really enjoyed that. O'hare was extraordinarily stupidly designed. Organization in there was incredibly lacking. No signs, no indication of where we should go (oh and the security guard had a sense of humor: when looking at my passport from 8 years go, he said "this doesn't look like you"....well yeah, I was 18 then and now I'm 26 *#$*#%*#....needless to say, I wasn't in the mood at the time), and then they even make you go back through security again (completely unnecessary after 26 bloody hours of security checks). When I got to O'hare, it was flurrying....which shouldn't be a problem in the country's biggest airport, right? Wrong...many flights were being cancelled, and mine was delayed by an hour (coming from Kansas City, which had no snow; O'hare with flurries; and Kalamazoo with just overcast skies).

I did however eventually make it back to Kalamazoo and out of the airport 29 hours after I left Leah in the Dresden airport (yest that does include reliving 6 hours due to the time difference and adapting to daylight savings time). Even after all of those shenanigans, the trip was well worth it, simply for getting to see Leah again for the first time in 6 months. Hopefully, I'll get the pictures uploaded soon.