Europe Trip: Prelude
Today begins a series of blog entries about my trip to Europe, which wrapped up yesterday. As with any good story, I'll start at the beginning.
The date: Thursday April 27th
Today, I'm getting ready to leave for Europe. A good deal of the packing and getting things ready was done last night, and today I have to drive the dogs to Woodstock (to my wife's family) so that they don't starve to death while we're gone. My wife, who is "working" from home that day, decides to accompany me on the trip (it's ~2 hours there and 2 hours back).
As we're heading out, I plug in my iPod to the car stereo, only to see a folder icon pop up that says to call Apple support - fantastic. I decide to reimage it when I get home and reupload a bunch of music so I have something to listen to, but upon returning home I discover that the iPod won't even mount correctly on the computer - it's making clicking noises, and acting rather like a useless paperweight. Now I'm seeing a sad Mac icon (well, sad iPod), and I have no music for the next month. That'll end up sucking some serious ass down the road, I'm sure.
By the time we end up getting home and getting everything packed, it's too late to take the subway/bus to the airport, so we cough up $50 and take a cab. We get there a little less than 2 hours before (2 hours is how far in advance you're supposed to be there for international flights), but doing an electronic check-in saves us a lot of time and we get through security with 90 minutes to spare. Since we are travelling with only carry-on baggage, we don't have anything to check, and we don't have anything to wait for once we arrive in Frankfurt. I decide to get a coffee while I'm waiting, and win a free cup of coffee - finally something's going right. I also decide to pick up a couple of books ("Why Most Things Fail" by Paul Ormerod, and "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell), since I no longer have music to amuse me.
We get on the flight without incident, and pack our carry-on bags into the overhead bins - that means more leg room for the overnight flight to Frankfurt, which is good. The flight leaves at 10 p.m. EST (GMT -5), and arrives at 11:45 a.m. CET (GMT + 1) - that's a 6 hour difference, combined with a 7.5 hour overnight flight - party central. As expected, sleep is fleeting and uncomfortable, and there's only about 4 hours of true darkness before we find the sun again. As patches of land start to appear, I see Europe for the first time - there's an awful lot of green patches, and clumps of cities at frequent intervals. We pass over the UK, France, and Belgium, and come in to land at the Frankfurt airport about 30 minutes ahead of schedule. We come up to the gate, and...
...my first 24 hours in Europe will be in the next entry. Don't you hate cliffhangers? :)
Interesting factoid of the day: There are 2 Frankfurts in Germany, and I went through them both. Frankfurt am Main is located on the Main river, and is in the midwestern portion of Germany, in the state of Hesse. Frankfurt an der Oder is located on the Oder river, and it is in the extreme east of the country, in the state of Brandenburg on the Polish border (on the main Berlin-to-Warsaw rail line).
The date: Thursday April 27th
Today, I'm getting ready to leave for Europe. A good deal of the packing and getting things ready was done last night, and today I have to drive the dogs to Woodstock (to my wife's family) so that they don't starve to death while we're gone. My wife, who is "working" from home that day, decides to accompany me on the trip (it's ~2 hours there and 2 hours back).
As we're heading out, I plug in my iPod to the car stereo, only to see a folder icon pop up that says to call Apple support - fantastic. I decide to reimage it when I get home and reupload a bunch of music so I have something to listen to, but upon returning home I discover that the iPod won't even mount correctly on the computer - it's making clicking noises, and acting rather like a useless paperweight. Now I'm seeing a sad Mac icon (well, sad iPod), and I have no music for the next month. That'll end up sucking some serious ass down the road, I'm sure.
By the time we end up getting home and getting everything packed, it's too late to take the subway/bus to the airport, so we cough up $50 and take a cab. We get there a little less than 2 hours before (2 hours is how far in advance you're supposed to be there for international flights), but doing an electronic check-in saves us a lot of time and we get through security with 90 minutes to spare. Since we are travelling with only carry-on baggage, we don't have anything to check, and we don't have anything to wait for once we arrive in Frankfurt. I decide to get a coffee while I'm waiting, and win a free cup of coffee - finally something's going right. I also decide to pick up a couple of books ("Why Most Things Fail" by Paul Ormerod, and "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell), since I no longer have music to amuse me.
We get on the flight without incident, and pack our carry-on bags into the overhead bins - that means more leg room for the overnight flight to Frankfurt, which is good. The flight leaves at 10 p.m. EST (GMT -5), and arrives at 11:45 a.m. CET (GMT + 1) - that's a 6 hour difference, combined with a 7.5 hour overnight flight - party central. As expected, sleep is fleeting and uncomfortable, and there's only about 4 hours of true darkness before we find the sun again. As patches of land start to appear, I see Europe for the first time - there's an awful lot of green patches, and clumps of cities at frequent intervals. We pass over the UK, France, and Belgium, and come in to land at the Frankfurt airport about 30 minutes ahead of schedule. We come up to the gate, and...
...my first 24 hours in Europe will be in the next entry. Don't you hate cliffhangers? :)
Interesting factoid of the day: There are 2 Frankfurts in Germany, and I went through them both. Frankfurt am Main is located on the Main river, and is in the midwestern portion of Germany, in the state of Hesse. Frankfurt an der Oder is located on the Oder river, and it is in the extreme east of the country, in the state of Brandenburg on the Polish border (on the main Berlin-to-Warsaw rail line).
posted by Ryan Slobojan at 20:20
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