Christmas in Germany: Getting There or My Silly Little Saga

Ah, Christmas in Germany - the place that is the father of many of our Christmas traditions: Christmas trees, chestnuts roasting over an open fire (or is that England), Kris Kringle, definitely the Gingerbread Man and Gingerbread Houses!

I told myself early on in 2010 that I wasn't going to visit Emilee and Alan again in Germany until I had my bills paid off. But then, as the year went on and we headed into the second half of the year, I just couldn't get my mind off visiting them during the Christmas season. I was afraid of missing my chance for a visit to Europe in the wintertime. Lee said, "You should do it." It didn't take much encouragement for me to book that flight, in spite of the hefty airfares at Christmastime! I checked fares for about six weeks. I kept waiting for that magic moment between "so far off the fares are still high" to "too close to the time of departure that the fares are exorbitant". It's a fine line in there. (And truthfully, I think I missed it by a couple weeks and a couple hundred dollars.) Anyway, I got booked on a direct flight, and then tried to get on with work for four months. Four months of daydreaming about my trip....my trip of 14 days, but of a lifetime of memories.

The day arrived, ready or not, and I was mostly NOT ready. I didn't have lazy summer days to get ready. I needed to have Christmas shopping completed and presents wrapped for "Santa" to put under the tree on Christmas Eve. Then there were the quilts for the Wounded Warriors that needed their bindings put on.... And of course, in true Susan fashion, I was having crowns put on the morning OF the trip. BUT, ready or not, we did make it to the airport on time....and with THREE suitcases. Had I planned carefully, I could've reduced it to...nah, I wouldn't have reduced the number of suitcases. The small one holds my camera bag so that I have a small suitcase for when we go to Eidelweiss Resort. The two large ones were packed full of clothes that will most probably not be worn, Christmas presents - many of which will probably not be worn or used (I tried!), and the two yet-to-be-finished quilts.

Arriving at the Lufthansa desk and seeing the Disney-style line of passengers (though not as long as the one when Benjamin went to Germany), I began filling out a label for my suitcases with Emilee's address, using my Contacts on my iPhone as a guide. A Lufthansa employee who was "directing traffic" saw my iPhone and said quietly, almost like it was a secret, "You know, if you check in on your phone, you can avoid that long line." Almost not believing that was possible, because after all, why weren't all those other people standing in line doing just what I was about to do?, I asked him how to do it. Easy. http://www.lufthansa.com/. So I sent Luke and Lee on in the line so as not to lose my place when this little secret didn't work. http://www.lufthansa.com/, Check-in, which number? Hmmm. Try this number. Voila! Checked in! Now, he said, just go to that counter and tell them you are checked in but you don't have your boarding pass. Getting Lee and Luke out of line, up to the counter I went, checked in, went to a second counter to pay for my second bag - still cheaper than sending the presents to Germany - and off to the gate I went. Nice little secret! And I didn't even turn around to look at the quizzical and perhaps dirty looks I received for "jumping the line"! But if ALL those people knew my little secret, the short little line would suddenly be.....the same long line as before!

Anticipating the newly infamous full-body scan or invasive body pat-down at security, I got in queue and started stripping.....shoes, belt, coat, purse....laptop out of the bag, cell phone, everything out of the pockets....4 tubs later I walk through.....the regular ole scanner....then proceed to re-dress. Amazed as I was at how easy this went, I went off and left my book, the book that was going to get me through the sleepless hours on a nine hour flight. And the book that I was half-way through reading and now left wondering, "How does it end?" What happens to all those orphans on the boat that were saving the world from the smallpox virus? And what happens to the main character? Does she get slammed with a $50,000 fine for not finishing the manuscript that she received an advance for? Does she join her husband in Nicaragua where he is helping build a green medical center for AIDS? Or does something develop between her and that mysterious son of her elderly friend? Now I am going to have to go to the library and check out the book. But that doesn't help me on the plane!

I also discover that I inadvertently dropped the one and only pill I had that was going to be my saving grace on the "cattle car" I was a passenger on for nine hours - my Xanax pill! I've tried everything: Dramamine, Tylenol P.M., wine, Dramamine AND wine, Tylenol p.m. AND wine, half a Xanax AND wine.....NOTHING has worked to help me sleep away this overnight flight. So, I had it all planned - ONE WHOLE XANAX. At home, I never take a whole pill when the occasion arises for me to even take one. Heck, half makes me so groggy the next morning, it's hard to get up. So, I was armed with my panacea - ONE LITTLE PILL to help me through the claustrophobic panic I feel settling down into the cramped row and seat, through the anxiety of "Who will I be intimately seated next to (bed partners?) for the next nine hours?", and through the jittery feelings every time turbulence hits....which it did BIG time over the Atlantic and I kept thinking of that plane that went down over the Atlantic in the black of night last year....ONE WHOLE PILL that would knock me out, make me sleep fitlessly and wake up just as I was arriving in Germany, refreshed and ready to disembark....AND I DISCOVERED I HAD DROPPED THE PILL! No book to read, no pill to help me sleep, and no time left to even buy a book. Oh criminy, this was not boding well....

After passing through First Class with their upstairs Lounge, through the Business Class - two to a row with recliners that had adjustable over-the-shoulder reading lamps, I arrived at my section of the plane. What the heck just happened? It seemed like suddenly I couldn't breathe! All the air in the cabin was sucked right out. It was a sea of people, a sea of seats! Finding my seat, I was a bit relieved to notice that I was the first one to arrive in our row. Good, now I won't have such a hard time putting my suitcase in the overhead bin, getting settled in my seat....

Presently, a rather average sized gentleman sits next to me, overflowing into my seat. A man with the worst bad breath I've encountered in awhile. Yes, I smelled it even before he spoke. I thought, "Oh great!" But, not wanting to be rude, and doing what I thought was the best idea to make a nine-hour flight pleasant, I decided to get the pleasantries over with and asked him if Germany was his home. "Yah, yah." He was on holiday to visit his daughter who was a student at the university. "Oh, which university?" "The Florida university." "But which one of the Florida universities?" "Ah, University of Florida in Gainesville." Well, right away we had something in common - "My son is also at THE university of Florida." "Yes?" "What is your daughter studying?" "Politico." "Oh, politics!" "Yah, yah, politics." And on it went until we both ran out of things to say, so I donned my headphones to begin listening to the line up of shows: A documentary on German 'football' player, Schwiney, Winey, or whatever his name was - the guy who wants to be dignified by being called his full surname; some movie with a crazy animal character (brain gets a little fuzzy here....perhaps it was the German wine that was free-flowing with dinner....and that I had settled on to get me through the night), and finally, the movie I had predicted would be the on-flight movie, "Eat, Love, and Pray". Like the movie name, I had just eaten, and now I was praying that the wine would help me sleep. I guess it did, as I don't remember watching but a few bits and pieces of the movie before taking off my headphones, and the rest of the night is a blur of 'where can I put my feet now - now that they've gone numb in this position?' and 'oh my gosh, I think my legs are swelling because my pants suddenly feel tight....now I know why Benjamin's high school friends wore flannel pajama pants home on their flight from Italy....THEY HAD SOME SENSE IN THEIR BRAINS! And where was mine???!!!!"

After what seemed like just a few hours, I woke up, decided to open the window shade just a bit, and discovered that morning 'had broken' and it was fully light out! How could that be? Ah yes, - jump forward six hours in time! But, we had to be getting closer....the flight attendant was handing out hot wipes with tongs! Breakfast time! Whoo hoo! I felt like I'd been granted a reprieve! I WAS going to get off this plane after all!

So, after a breakfast of a soggy but decent crepe champinon and steamed spinach (yea, remember this is Lufthansa, not United), I went to the 'head' to clean up to meet my daughter. After all, we were only 30 minutes away from Frankfurt!

An hour and 30 minutes later we landed! We circled Frankfurt for an hour waiting for them to shovel the runways. Seven inches of snow dropped on Frankfurt through the night and the airport had been closed. So, after all the snowplows did their job, we were able to land. But those poor passengers with connecting flights were out of luck.

Not only did they some miss their connections, but the others whose connections had not been missed, were cancelled. No flights going out. But they were being issued waivers for train tickets. Train tickets on already full trains. I suddenly felt like I'd won the lottery. I didn't have any connecting flights! I wouldn't have to sleep on one of those cots that were lining the expanse of hallways! I HAD ARRIVED! ~~~~~

Oh, as for my German "bed partner"....Well, as I was taking photos of the scenery below me in Frankfurt as we circled for an hour, he said to me in his broken English, "By the way, I am gentleman. Most wouldn't have been gentlemen." "What?" Pointing to the letters for the seats, he said, "A,B,C,D....Ten seats. I am J. J - window." I said, "I am sorry, I do not understand what you are saying." He replied, "A, B,C,D,E....J is last seat. I....J..." and something about getting J because of people who always get up to go to the bathroom. I was starting to understand now. He was trying to tell me that HE was supposed to be in the window seat, that I had taken HIS seat, and he was politely trying to tell me that I had disturbed him with getting up to go to the bathroom three times during a nine hour flight. Oh, I get it. "I am so sorry if I disturbed you." Then digging into my purse, I pulled out my seat ticket stub and said ever so politely, "K. I went online and selected a window seat. The lady at the desk told me this was a window seat. K. " With a very puzzled look on his face, he said, "There is no K." Not wanting to argue with him, I just said, "I think they must've left out a letter." Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as my German friend (loose term) studied the letters above the seats. Finally, he said, "I. They left out the letter I." HE obviously had not gone to THE university of Florida.