Western Europe continued
Zurich, Switzerland to Frankfurt, Germany October 4-5, by Aaron
October 4, 2001
While we had to cut our trip to Deutschland short, I would like to thank Felix and Christina, Thomas Donner, and Lutz, all for offering us places to stay. We were really flaky, all through September, changing plans and changing our minds. We were both sad to only spend a day in Germany, since we both love the people, the language, and the food so much. At a gas station, I stopped and ordered a big bratwurst, and it was the best sausage of our trip. And we bought it at a freakin' gas station, man! We drove from Zurich to Frankfurt, had some trouble with traffic in a border city, but managed to get around the trucks to get across and up to Thomas Renk's house. Thomas Renk had worked with Laura at Active Software, and lived rather close to the Frankfurt airport. We had to see him, as Laura and he got along so well, and he had just finished doing a major remodel on his house. We joked when we got the tour and called it Kleine Neuschanstein. It really is beautiful. We liked it so much we got the floor plan for it! We chatted with Thomas Renk, his wife Birgit, their two daughters. They kindly took us out to eat at a local restaurant, where I had the region's famed mushrooms in a sauce on a generous hunk of pork. We then went back, talked about the mother of all pressure cooker's in their kitchen, and went to bed. The views out of their windows are stunning, and I looked out over our last night in Europe with a sense of melancholy, more that the home I was looking for wasn't going to be in Colorado, or California, and it was not something we could build with the floor plans we had gotten from Thomas. Be that as it may, we were going home.
October 5, 2001
Two weeks early, we went to the airport to fly stand-by and hope
for the best. Fourteen months and two weeks earlier we had taken
off from SFO, and now we were flying back to DIA. I must say,
the security and the organization at Heathrow was better than
the Frankfurt Airport. Heavens. The Brits are getting more organized
than the Germans and their cuisine is improving, maybe those
limey's have something. We were trying to fly stand-by, get the
VAT back on the things we bought in the European Union, and avoid
being picked up for the various fake things we had acquired in
Thailand, face rice, fake socks, that kind of thing, when we
were told that our flight had been cancelled, permanently. Swiss
Air had gone bankrupt while we were there, and United was shuffling
around their flights, and in all the mess after the attacks,
they had discontinued our flight. If we had showed up on October
19 as planned, we would have been given a free seat on another
flight, but as it was, we had to pay an extra $150 each to change
our ticket and get a seat. We were ready to go home, and the
original tickets were so cheap, we decided to jump on board.
So we paid. While we were trying to pay, this old American woman
came up, she was roughly a trillion years old, and began to talk
to me. The conversation went like this:
Old Woman: Are you an American?
Me: Kind of.
Old Woman: Kind of, what does that mean?
Me: I was born in Zimbabwe, but I have dual citizenship, so I'm
kind of an American.
Old Woman: Oh, what are you doing in the good 'ol U.S. of A?
Me: Well, my wife and I are visiting my parents before we move
down to Capetown.
Old Woman: So you were born in Zimbabwe, visiting your parents
in America, and moving to South Africa?
Me: Something like that…
Laura: Excuse me, we're trying to make our plane….
Laura later told me she was pretty tense, hoping the ticket guys weren't listening to me making up this tall tale. We scooted on away from Mrs. Methusaleh and tried to get our VAT back. I had told Laura we needed to get to the airport early, but we weren't there early enough, and when we had talked to the travel agent in Zurich, they had not told us that the flight was going to be cancelled. So we were running, and we scoured the entire Frankfurt airport for a customs guy to stamp our form so we could get our VAT back, dammit. Finally we got the stamp and headed up into security. The line stretched into the distance. Laura sweet-talked her way into the front with her flawless German and we made it onto the airplane. We were on our way back to our home soil.
We flew into Dulles, Washington D.C., newly opened by George W. for business. I called my parents to tell them our flight changes, then walked around. People spoke English! They used American dollars, and you know the exchange rate, right? One dollar equals one dollar! I was taken aback by all of the flags, and we had some trouble with our luggage, but I shall never forget the flag on the stairway, as we came off the plane. It said, "Welcome to the United States of America." We were home.
On the flight from Dulles to Denver, I listened to Neil Diamond. They played his song, "Coming to America," and my heart swelled as the man sang, "They're coming to America! Today! My country 'tis of thee! Today! Sweet land of liberty! Today! Of thee I sing! Today!" Thus ended the world trip.
The view from Thomas' house, just amazing!
A portrait Birgit's daughter Julia drew of me. I think it shows a likeness.
Me and Birgit in their beautiful garden
Take me to Colorado, USA