European Vacation

I have finally taken enough vacation after going to Europe that I think I can write about it. I will give you the short and sweet version, because there is no way that you can live a 6 week trip vicariously. I would encourage anyone to go and see for themself.

We packed up and left, guessing what we would need to bring. We took two long plane rides. They were awful. You could barely move, and by the time we got there my feet and legs had swollen from sitting so long. We arrived in Frankfurt and collected our bags. Customs was a breeze; they just waved us through after we said we had nothing to declare. We found our way through the airport to the train station and took a train to Kiel. It was there, I think, that we first really realized we were not in the US anymore. We were sitting in our seats in first-class. A well kept gentleman in a train uniform about my age, came up to us and started speaking mile-a-minute German. Culture shock! After he saw the doe in the headlights look on both of our faces he switched to English, apologizing and offering us a newspaper in German or English. For most of our trip, if we weren't carrying our bags or speaking English, we got mistaken for some sort of natives. In Italy, they thought we were from Germany.



We arrived in Kiel tired but excited. We found our hotel after some searching and got our room key. The day seemed to last forever and we were so glad to finally be able to rest. We lugged all of our stuff up to the fourth floor (no elevator) and opened our room. What could have surprised us more than people sitting on our bed watching TV. We apologized and quickly shut the door.
The first lesson in Jeff's German class in college was a cute little video about going to a hotel. In the video, the man goes to the reception desk to get a room. The receptionist says in German, this room is free and hands him the key. He goes and opens the door and there is someone in it. He goes back. This happens three times. Finally, as he is ready to leave, she hands him another key and says this room is free for sure. She walks him down the hall and opens it and he goes in.
So Jeff marches back down all the flights of stairs. We had heard all sorts of horror stories about hotels overbooking on purpose and people ending up without a room. We were ready for war. We had been awake for a day and a half. Jeff came back up to where I was waiting with the luggage, took a key and opened the room right across the hall! After many apologies, the clerk explained that they were training a new girl and she had entered it into the computer wrong. What a relief.