PART I--Germany and Switzerland

We're on our way!

So we got to the airport by 7am for our 9am flight. I don't really know why they want you there two hours before your flight--I think we are the only ones who can obey directions, because nobody else seemed to be there. Plus, of course, we were not checking any luggage, so it became an even more moot point. And it's hard to do such important traveling so early in the morning when you stayed up most of the night watching and discussing a fascinating debate on Cleveland's school system. Poor Doug was so confusedly tired that, when he couldn't find our return tickets, he went up to the counter and said "We're going to Paris and..."..."But this says Frankfurt!" she answered...."Uh, yeah, I mean Frankfurt, but we wanted to know where our return tickets were."..."They're here in your flight envelope that you are holding." Boy, could that have been any more embarrassing?

Well, so we threw our luggage in a locker for a buck or two, ate a $8 breakfast of 2 Egg McMuffin fakers and orange juice[2], decided to abort our quest for changing over some Austrian money[3], and meandered aimlessly around the airport. San Francisco is actually a very interesting airport; they had displays of fish, antique clocks, and various rocks and minerals. Not exactly museum quality, but good for killing time.

Our domestic connection to Philadelphia was supposed to be a 4 1/2 hour flight, 2 hour layover, and then 7 1/4 flight to Frankfurt. But when we got to Philadelphia, we walked across the aisle and practically straight onto the international plane because we were so late! Part of this was because they let on people from a canceled flight--it wasn't the people we were waiting for, it was their MEALS! Plus there was a one hour delay because of Philadelphia's bad weather. At least we made the flight.

I'm going to start asking if I can take international flights for domestic destinations, even if that means a layover in China to get to Los Angeles, because they sure treat you better on international flights. They load you down with as much free booze as you want, give you menus for the meals, sleeper socks, toothbrush and paste, and headphone--as opposed to charging $4 to see "Eddie" and $3 for a can of Bud on the domestic flight. Yes, international flights are much better than domestic flights...just as long as you don't sit in aisle 13. Normally a lucky number for me, this is the row with seats that don't recline--a horrifying situation for a red-eye international flight! Luckily, the seat next to me was empty so I could lay down a little bit, but poor Doug didn't get a wink of sleep that flight, so he stayed awake to watch "White Squall" with Jeff Bridges[4]. Overall though, we were amazed at how fast the flight felt, how remarkably tasty the meals were, and how totally cool it was to hear all plane announcements in English AND German...

We touched ground again at 9am the next day, and headed straight for the phone to call Doug's friend Elke, who had invited us to stay with her for a day. We bought a telephone card [5] and dialed. Nobody home? How strange....they knew we were coming. Maybe we did something wrong? We called information (for a 2 DM/$1.35 fee) and discovered that the number we gave her had no listing, but should reach Bruchsal. We had called Elke a few weeks before we left, so we knew this number worked. There just must not be anybody home....(more on this later!)

Frankfurt would have looked better after some sleep...

First impression of Frankfurt? "COLD AND LARGE AND TOTALLY CONFUSING" [6]. This wasn't helped by being two tired, disoriented, and German-oblivious young travelers. The good thing is that we looked that way to people, and many nice English-speakers would come up to us and offer help without us even asking. When trying to get to Frankfurt, a nice English guy directed us to the Zeil for shopping. Another woman came and asked "Was suchen Sie?" when we stood on a corner looking around confusedly. Though what we needed more than anything was a little sleep, it was nice to know that, overall, people were approachable and helpful.

But despite our zombied state, we had enough foresight to put our bags in a locker and go to the TI[7] and buy (yes, they charge for everything) two tourist maps for 1,50 DM ($1) and a friendly smile (free of charge). This was especially needed after trying to get the #@%&ing ,50 DM coins for the lockers. My first try at a German sentence to a German speaker, "Haben Sie bitte funfzig pfennig Stücken?" resulted in ravings and blow offs saying (I think) that they don't exist. Funny, because we only had fifty billion of them floating around after that. I doubted I would ever try my German again.

We tried to keep our decaying bodies moving by walking around Frankfurt, eating some food (McDonalds no less), going to Göethe's house[8], and trying desperately to understand the subway system. Finally around 3 pm and a half-dozen more calls to Elke later, we couldn't stand anymore, and called for a hotel based on my photocopied information from (outdated) Frommers. Though the price quoted on the phone was 50% higher than stated in the book, we went on to Pension Uebe because it sounded really cute--each room decorated in a different city theme, run by a mother-daughter team, huge breakfast included, and apparently a great value.

When we arrived to a building outside a construction sight and sad boob pictures in the window next door, we should have left immediately. The chain-smoking hotel dude and the lack of any other guests, as well a lack of the city-theme rooms and the supposed mother-daughter team, was another tip-off, as was his desire to get our credit card scanned right away. The matchbooks that said "25 Years of Pension Uebe!....1958-1983?" should have had us running. But the last straw was the hideously ugly room for $80 which didn't even have beds next to each other and, naturally, didn't include breakfast. We were too catatonic to go look someplace else, so we accepted, but once we closed the door, I burst into exhausted tears. Luckily my sweetie came to the rescue, and managed to talk the owner into a bigger, better room upstairs with a double bed but without an increase in price. My hero.

So we spent a good three or four hours that afternoon completely unconscious until about 7:30pm when we awoke kinda hungry. Rather than brave the subway again, we went downstairs to a tiny Italian bar/restaurant for calzones and very interesting conversations with a few locals. One guy spoke wonderful English and had been to California, another one's wife came from the states as well, and the third spoke no English but smiled and laughed a lot. The owner of the bar went next door to the ice-cream place for us and told them not to close yet because two customers were a'coming after they finished their dinner. Nice people...and that Erdbeere Eis sundae was worth $4! I remember thinking at that moment that maybe we really were going to get used to this, and it felt pretty flattering to be such a novelty in the locals eyes.

Obviously we couldn't get on the new schedule right away. We tried to get tired after "dinner" by watching the television in our room (one of the few on the whole trip), which consisted mostly of countless interviews and (amazingly) interesting documentaries about ID4, which had been released that day in Europe. We were able to sleep a few more hours but woke up starving at 3am the next morning[9]. Good thing we had some left over peanuts from the plane!