Europe - Germany - Day 1

Wednesday July 26 3:30am was the beginning to my European vacation whether I liked it or not. I had much anxiety walking back to my place from 13371 after a kickass run in DOA4, because I knew I was getting up at 7:00am to rush to the office and pick up my FedEx Overnight Birth Certificate.

The day I am scheduled to fly out at 6:45pm is the same day I was heading downtown to get in line and hope the fine personnel at the D.C. Passport Agency would/could hook me up with a new passport. I'll save you the long winded story of how I lost my passport, but CSI has nothing on the level of detail I went through when searching for my old passport in my house. It's lost.

Sleep deprived and worn out from a weekend of anxiety, I succumbed to the fortune, or karma, of me using up my last hours of the day to get the most important aspect of my flight. I have to say that the D.C. Passport Agency is thorough and quick...when you are forced to throw a lot of money their way. I was finally out of there by 2:30pm. This gave me a comfortable 2 hours and 15 mins to arrive at IAD.

Jeanne was a sport. A true trooper. Any other Leave it to Beaver swell terms I can use? She got me to the airport on time and listened to my neurosis in the car. My neurosis are a different topic all together. I will skip any explanation for now.

I was happy to have made it to the 250 person queue at United Air International check-in. I didn't care how long I had to stand in that line, because I was making it on that plane.

2 1/2 hours of sleep and one viewing of Cindrella Man and I was landing in Frankfurt International. So, to start off my trip in Germany I was working off of a couple hours of sleep and coming down from my passport experience. It was all good though, the weather was a cool 73 degrees and the airport's security was pretty relaxed. Odd thing was, there were only about 15 people waiting for luggage at the baggage claim.

Miguel picked me up in his sweet, new ride which is our chariot throughout Europe. A very comfortable and speedy Volvo T5 with A/C! I love me some A/C. We were off to jump on to the autobahn for my first time and we were doing 160kms by the time we got on to the on-ramp. I love this country already.

After a day of relaxing and doing some errands, we were ready to start our road trip. We drove in to Frankfurt for dinner at a place called Flipper. The restaurant is a lot nice than the name. I got my first Liter of Vetlin. The mug is as big as my face. After looking at the menu, they had meatloaf with eggs and home fries that looked pretty damn good...in my mind.

They brought out my dish and it was spam on steroids. It was one massive slab of ham with two eggs on top. This piece of "meatloaf" was so big that the eggs did not droop over the edge. I divided and conquered and was very happy with this particular German dish (We opted to stay away from the traditional German dishes).

Now it was time to hit the road and begin our 8 hour drive to Venice. It was about 11:00pm and our plan was to drive through the night. Miguel bought a navigation system for our drive. Let me tell you. If you are driving by car in Europe, a navi system is top priority. Every time she says, "Now turn left in 600 yards." I instantly say, "I love you!"

My first day in Germany was a little rough due to the lack of sleep, but we were underway and I was very excited. We set the navi to point us to Venice and I tried to sleep as much as possible, because the next day was going to be very long.

One of thing that made me laugh while in Germany:
1. "Ausfahrt" - this means exit, but the way I read it, it means a completely different kind of exit.

That's it for day 1.