Finally...a new post

Hi everyone-
1) Sorry I haven’t updated the blog since I left the country. It’s been a busy and crazy few days. I am going to backtrack a bit in this blog and will be a few days behind, but I hope I will catch up somewhere.
2) So, leaving the country. Beth and I were dropped off at the airport by her mother and brother, which was an adventure in itself. We got checked in and to our gate pretty much hitchless. We practiced our German days of the week and numbers while we waited for our plane to board. Once we were all boarded and almost ready to take off the captain came on the intercom and said that maintenance had found a discrepancy in their system check and needed to check it out, which would only take about fifteen minutes. So, we waited, then he came on again to tell us that there was something wrong with the backup (electronic) flap system that would need to be fixed before we took off and that should only be another twenty minutes or so. More than twenty minutes later he said it would be forty-five minutes to an hour or so. During this time Beth and I watched Girl with a Pearl Earring. Needless to say it was FOUR HOURS before we took off and we were stuck on the plane for this whole time. I was able to watch almost two movies before we took off. The flight was eight hours of restless sleep with some annoying passengers (two of which almost got in a fight) and some hilarious and kind flight attendants (the guys were a crack up!).

Landing in London not at eleven am, but at almost four pm. We rushed as fast as possible through customs, picking up our bags, and catching the Gatwick express to town. Forty-five minutes later we were in Victoria station with all my luggage for the six months plus our stuff for the month of traveling. Surprised that there wasn’t a lift (elevator) in this station, I had to quickly stow my luggage at the station for $22 until we could come back with less stuff and a sure place to store it for the month we are gone. It took at least another forty-five minutes for us to find the hostel, which did not have us on record for staying there and there seemed to be people living on top of each other. It was eight-thirty pm when we were finally settled enough to head back to get the bags. We found out that the sister hostel to the one we were staying in would store my bags for free, especially since we were coming back to the hostel in August. We weren’t back to the hostel until about midnight and it took us another hour and a half to figure out how to get to the train station the next morning in order to catch our flight to Stuttgart, which is when we realized that we needed to leave the hostel at about four in the morning.

We knew we couldn’t trust ourselves after not having slept for almost thirty-six hours to only sleep for three hours and get up in time to make our flight. So, we watched a bit of West Wing and then took turns sleeping for a half an hour each (which was all we got). We got to the train station and airport with relative ease (the bus system in London in ridiculously chaotic). If at all possible, avoid flying into or out of the Stansted airport (it’s a nightmare). We got on the flight to Stuttgart at eight am and were in Stuttgart at ten thirty am (they’re an hour ahead of London). Customs was easier here than London because we were visiting Konstanze and had her address. Konstanze met us at the airport to take us to her house in the town of Altdorf (which means old town in German). It was just about eleven am by this time and I went immediately to bed because it had been about forty-five hours of no sleep! I still can’t believe that all happened. It seems more like a distant nightmare than near reality. We made it and we are safe and having fun, which I will try to tell you about soon.