As of today, I've offically been in Germany for one week! Who would've thought? It's definitely been interesting, too, so I thought I'd share. ;-) The plane trip over was just that a total trip, especially since I brought my eldest cat, Little Boy, with me in the cabin. Note to self: NEVER, under any circumstances, do that again!!!! It was actually a living nightmare, lol. The drive to the Columbia, SC, airport, yes, Columbia, SC, ...thanks Army for not allowing me to fly out of the Atlanta airport which is only 30 minutes from where I live...was an ever so enjoyable 3-hour experience thanks to my cat because he gets violently carsick. Dramamine only helps a little. =( Anyhoo, we get to the airport in one piece, technically, and get on the plane to Dulles. Luckily, the flight attendant allowed me to unzip Little Boy's carrier, which was a really cool backpack made for cats, so he was happy and slept the whole way. We got to Dulles and hung out in the latrine b/c he gets really upset when he has to be zipped in. So to keep him quiet, we stayed in the latrine til our flight.
After our hour layover in the latrine, we got on our flight to Frankfurt... woohoo!!! Little did I know... Unfortunately the lovely, blonde, French woman (Note: if you read my journal from my trip to Europe last summer, you will realize that lovely, blonde, French women and I don't really get along very well...) decided that she was going to be a stickler for the rules and not allow me to unzip Little Boy's carrier, supposedly b/c "Zee peeple zay have allergeez, ant zey will bee sneezink, so you must keep heem inside zee kennel." Well that's all fine and dandy except that the carrier is MESH for christ's sake...Regardless, she wouldn't budge no matter how many times I explained that he would be quieter if he were unzipped.
Thus, as the flight dragged on, Little Boy became more and more adamant about his displeasure of being zipped up, to the displeasure of, oh, the other 249 people on the plane. So after getting up to clean vomit, urine and poop out of his cage on four separate occasions because he worked himself up into such a tizzy that he excreted from his every orifice, I finally locked us both into the latrine at around 0200. The flight was scheduled to land in Frankfurt at 0500 (EST), so I became a resident of the latrine on United Airlines flight 932 for roughly three hours. I guess a seat on the toilet is as good as one in the cabin; Little Boy, by the way, was certainly pleased with his new seat...Lucky for the French lady, she had the good sense not to even think about knocking on the door of that latrine...grrrr...
So, we landed. We waited in lines. Little Boy peed on himself two more times. Thank goodness for wet wipes and puppy pads! We finally made it through customs after waiting for 30 minutes for a vet to show up to check his paperwok and scan his microchip, and we met my sponsor. I thought that we'd immediately be able to drop Little Boy off at the hotel. Boy, was I mistaken! It was now 1200 Germany time (0600 EST), and I was to soon discover that I was to begin inprocessing *immediately.* By the time we made it to the hotel, it was 1800 Germany time (1200 EST), and I had been up for over 30 hours. Little Boy had been in his carrier for 24 hours, and we had both had it. To be perfectly honest, I almost made Baby Jesus cry that day. Good trainin,' HOOAH!
It hasn't been all bad though. The trip was actually the worst of it. Since then I've been getting over some nasty jetlag, and cruising around seeing what's up in Deutschland. The first weekend, I walked to the mall which is only two minutes from my hotel and looked around. It was a very humbling experience not to know what *anything* said, and not to be able to understand *anything* anyone said. With the language handicap, I noticed a lot of things I think I probably wouldn't have on a regular trip to the mall. I was almost overwhelmed by the colors and sounds and smells. Everything looked alien and odd. Brighter, bigger, different somehow. I felt small in a big, big world. I almost felt like Alice in Wonderland going down the rabbit hole. It was really kind of an odd and exhilarating experience. I was starving and the mall food looked delicious, unlike the greasy crap in American malls, but I was too chicken to try to buy any, so I ended up with the old standby: a Big Mac Maxi Meal. Yeah...you know what that is. Very unoriginal, I know. I'll do better next time, promise!
Then, I decided I'd try to figure out how to get from my hotel to post so that I wouldn't have to bum rides off my sponsor anymore. That was interesting! I found the stop whoich was right by the mall, and proceeded to try to buy a ticket. Well, the machine said it had an English version, but for some reason the ticket would never come, so I had to switch to German. K, well, I decided to mash the same sequence of buttons I had learned from the English version and viola! A ticket! So apparently, the English version was only some kind of monkey-see, monkey-do tutorial for those of us who are unfortunate enough not to know German. I dunno, all I know is the damn thing only worked in German.
I hopped on the tram, and the next stop was mine..yay... Walked around and realized that nothing was open, it was Sunday at 0900; apparently, Germans believe in giving even their lowliest workers time off, like evenings and weekends, what a concept. So, I sat outside the PX until it opened at 1000. I had to buy cat litter of all things. Oh as a side note, living in a one room hotel with a cat box is pure joy...
Then it was time to go back to the hotel. I went back to the tram stop and went to buy another ticket; however, the sun was beaming down on the machine to such a degree that the screen was entirely unreadable. Well, after my earlier experience with the German-only machine, I was unfazed. I thought, "What's the difference if I can't see the screen? I couldn't read the German earlier, either," so I just started tapping the screen in various places until the machne made noises like it wanted money; I put some money in and voila! A ticket! Monkey dumb *and* blind, monkey still gets ticket!
Anyways, that was my weekend. Work has been a lot of inprocessing paperwork. Ugh! Everybody in my office is really excited that I'm here. I'm thinking they prolly won't be once they realize how much of a tard I really am. I mean, I've stood in on some conversations about various issues around the office and have fervently hoped that my face wasn't registering what my brain was actually thinking at the time, e.g, "What in the *hell* are they *talking* about?!?!?!?!" Geeezzz!!! Oh and I have had some issues with this one side gate that is about 200 feet from my office building. It's supposed to read your fingerprint to let you through b/c there is not guard posted there. Well, the damn thing hates me b/c it lets everyone else but me in, so I get the added exercise of literally walking 20 minutes around to the main gate to get in when I can practically touch my building from the side gate. It hates me, I now it.
Alrighty, that's it for now. I'll keep everybody posted and add pix as I get them. Hugs y'all!!!!!
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