home again

Coming home...always an adventure and a shock and a pleasure. From Rostock I took a train to Leipzig and met up with Konrad after he was done with class and it was, as usual, so good to talk to him! We had a nice chat while walking around the city and then met Mohammed at Lukas and talked with him for a while. It just so happened that one of his friends (also named Mohammed...don't be stereotyping! nicknamed Mimo) was there as well and we all 4 went to a place to play pool for a while and Carolin met us there. While I do have a pool table in my house, I wasn't as good as Mimo. We played for a while and then when the place closed we walked some more and sat in an Irish pub for a bit and then Mimo invited us over to his place. He was, as is usual with most from the Arabic culture, generously hospitable and welcoming. We stayed there all night just talking and listening to music and having an excellent time. Konrad left at about 500 and then Carolin and Mohammed walked me to the train station.
May 17th was a holiday in Germany. Yea...usually things in Germany work almost flawlessly but on holidays apparently the rules relax a bit. The train to Frankfurt was supposed to leave at 7:05 on the computer where i bought my ticket. However, it wasn't posted on the normal train schedules. So we started to worry a bit and asked the info guy and he assured us that it would come to track 10 at 7:05. Well...it did come, if a bit late. So, train was fine and arrived at the Frankfurt airport about 11:15. My flight left at 1:10 and i thought i had plenty of time....i was wrong. I walked into the main hall and I have never seen so many people in an airport. I started to get into one Lufthansa line that was probably 100m long after the snakey part...yea. then i realized that Lufthansa flights to the US were in another place...good, maybe it was shorter...well, it was, by a little bit. By the time I got up to the counter and fixed my bag so that I could check it instead of carrying it on like i wanted (the lady wouldn't let me), and got my boarding pass, it was 12:20. Encouragingly, the lady giving me my boarding pass told me "you had better run" great. So...i ran. The security is monstrous. I had to get my boarding pass checked to get into the B hall, then go through carry on baggage security. Then, you have to show your boarding pass again, then go through passport control....another line. Then, there's another security checkpoint just like the first one, except in this one you get manually checked with a hand wand by an actual person. Finally, you go past a counter and they look at your passport and boarding pass again and if you are a US citizen you get a form to fill out. Wow. So I made it though, and the flight was just beginning to board when I got there. Our gate was the kind that you give your boarding pass to get into an area loosely barriered off. So, i sat next to the barrier and started to read. All of a sudden, this young guy vaulted clumsily over the barrier and fell on the floor next to me. I was tired and i didn't care. He looked at me, and tried to show me his boarding pass...i just told him "i don't want to see that" I realized that he was comnpletely drunk. Poor guy, they wouldn't let him get on the plane...but i was glad they didn't. He said he had a wedding that day, but who knows what he was thinking getting that drunk!
So, it was a long flight but it wasn't that bad and got into denver alright and then my flight to nashville was on time and everything worked out.
It is GOOD to be home. Give me a call if you are reading this and want to chat or hang out! =)
I'll post some more reflections on the trip soon i hope.