Earlier this spring my husband mentioned the possibility of a June conference in Germany, right about the time of our anniversary and wondered out loud if I would be able to get time off work. This has been a wild year for travel for our whole family; another trip at this point just seemed like a bonus, but again, because of how busy we've been, we also had not made any solid plans for our 25th wedding anniversary. A big family party with all the extended relatives had been proposed, but we declined; when it comes down to it, marriage is really an agreement between two people, and those two people should be the ones celebrating. Sorry, wedding industry, you already got us once; this time we knew we'd do something personal. It was pure accident that this conference happened to fall right during our June 18th anniversary, so we started to make some plans.
June is always such a crazy month, we knew we'd need professional help to pull off the events we'd be missing by being away for 11 days, so I called my Mom ("Amma" to our 3 boys), and she agreed to handle everything: a Grade 8 Farewell celebration for our twins, exam time for our oldest, driving to lessons and work, keeping up the supply of food and milk required for three teenagers, etc. We stocked the fridge, gave her a calendar, hugged her and knew it would all be cool.
From Winnipeg to Montreal we were bumped up to first class thanks to Rick's frequent flier points and it was lovely and peaceful thanks to the delicious meal and the Gravol that turns me into a happy, dozey simpleton, every time. Once in Montreal we were able to make our way to the
Maple Leaf Lounge to wait for our connection to Frankfurt; had some snacks, wine, free internet, cappucino, stuffed my carry-on bag with free magazines, and generally enjoyed my Gravol buzz until it was time for the next dose. It was probably a good thing we had a nice restful stopover prior to getting on the cattle car to Frankfurt! Once we were starting boarding we realized we were on a full flight, with a lot of families, and yes, our anniversary trip included a 6+ hour flight with a crying baby..in our row.. in her mother's arms, being violently rocked, elbows flying into the meat of Rick's upper right arm. The mom was doing her best to get the baby to go to sleep, which seemed to include possibly knocking her out by banging her baby's head into the armrest, seat table tray and Rick's elbow. It was one of those awkward social situations that is only cured by knowing glances and the end of the flight. The real hero in all this turned out to be pharmaceuticals once again: Rick was so knocked out by Naproxen (for his back pain ) that being maniacally elbowed for hours on end really was not as big of a deal as it might have been. I too, was being helped along by a pair of earbuds and my old buddy Gravol. As much as I wanted to soothe a baby and help the Mom out, I really just wanted to drool and sleep more. We arrived in Frankfurt, mildly dazed, and set about the task of getting our bags and our arranged rental car (ooooooooooooh, German engineering).
Frankfurt Airport is enormous; if there were any time to include moving walkways, this would be it but instead you are on your first German
Volksmarch, walking for several kilometres, with sights such as Starbucks, Hermes and full-service grocery shopping en route just to the rental cars! In the spirit of the trip I wore a good pair of supportive Birkenstocks, and they did not fail me as I flip-flopped all the way to Hertz. Our flight arrived early Sunday morning so once our flight crowd dispersed, we were fairly alone in the giant airport terminal. We found our Hertz representative having his morning Starbucks, and were assigned this
beauty, a Volvo D3 diesel.
Rick being the planner that he is, had purchased a Garmin GPS unit loaded with European maps, so once we had a look at the fancy dashboard of our new Volvo and plugged in our GPS, we thought we'd be on our way to our first destination,
Landstuhl, where Rick's NATO conference was being held. Just leaving Frankfurt airport was a challenge, as we tried to figure out which ausfahrt (German word for exit) would be the best. Just as an aside, say AUSFAHRT " ows-fart ", for fun, over and over, if you want to be THAT annoying tourist. " Take the AUSFAHRT!", I'd yell, for no good reason other than to act like I was 10. Okay, enough fart jokes, now for the serious business of getting lost at 160 km/hour.
We drove to the wrong town. Not gonna lie, even with an onboard GPS unit in the car, and a Garmin on the windshield, if you type in the wrong town name, you will drive to the wrong town. That is how we happened to find ourselves on a Sunday morning, talking to local Polizei about how to turn around and get ourselves to Landstuhl, from Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe does look like a very nice place from what we could see as we were blocked by a bike race in progress, but really, it's no Landstuhl. So an extra hour or so added to our trip, we had a little more time to see the sights and let the Naproxen and Gravol buzz wear off as we enjoyed the famous
Autobahn highways of southern Germany. Always good to be overtired, recovering from pharmaceutical effects and driving faster than you ever have in a car you don't know on highways you have never driven. Very comforting!
*Now I'd like to introduce my first guest blogger, Rick! He'll share with you the next part of our journey to Landstuhl!
First we should describe what I called the "magic car." This Volvo was fully loaded with features that would put the F35 fighter aircraft to shame - glass cockpit, smart cruise control, heads-up display, proximity detectors (I'm not joking with any of this!) and the list goes on. I had no idea how to use any of it initially, as it was quite a step up from my 1998 Escort. However, soon we were screaming along the autobahn at Mach 2, with my legs crossed on the seat and hands in the meditation position using the mind control driving feature of the car (OK, I made that part up). And all of this would have been great if we stayed on the autobahn but the GPS calculated an interesting route from Karlsruhe to Landstuhl.
We departed the well traveled path and began a scenic journey through the forests and mountains popular in movies like the Sound of Music or Heidi. Unfortunately, GPS technology works on having enough satellites visible to at least triangulate your position - we were now lucky to have one satellite visible to the car, assuming it was directly above us through the rocks and trees. Much of this portion of the trip was spent with the GPS reminding me that both of us were lost so best to enjoy the view. It was spectacular, even when the road became increasingly narrow and it was a struggle to avoid putting passing motorcycles into the woods...then it was cyclists...then it was a wagon being pulled by a tractor. We figured that the road would end at someone's chalet and the next few days would be spent eating bratwurst with long-lost relatives. But there were just enough GPS hits to tell us that we were actually on real roads and heading in the right direction. Remarkably, we ended up at the hotel in Landstuhl and began our efforts to stay awake and adjust to German time.
So we arrived safely and settled in... stay tuned for the next days of our trip to Germany!
