We have arrived!

Just this morning. Need to rest. All is well. More later ...

... to follow up. We arrived in Hamburg late Sunday night and collected all our luggage together, 15 bags in total, and made it out to the Kielius bus just in time to buy tickets. I had to run back and forth to get the luggage stowed in the bottom of the bus, the driver was very surprised at how much we had and asked "Alles?" with a laugh. When we arrived in Kiel we carried everything over to the train station as fast as possible and bought tickets but just missed by minutes the last train out of the station at 11:44 pm. The next one was at 4:44 am so we spent the night in the train station. The kids were wired and ran all over the place. At one point I took them for a walk to show them the ships in the fjord. A nice man that works in the station helped us carry our bags onto the train. At the stop in Ploen we threw everything off as fast as we could before the doors closed. The kids made it off as well! V stayed at the station and guarded the bags while I took the first load with the kids to the apartment; I left the kids there to pick out rooms and V and I carried the last of the bags to the apartment, stored them in our storage room in the basement, and collapsed after we got in.

The last few days have been very busy. I have been building lots of IKEA furniture while at the apartment and getting starting again at work. The kids have been up at odd times so we haven't been able to get much sleep, but things are starting to adjust now.

Stuck in an airport

It looks like my air travel luck has held up. A tornado hit Atlanta with more storms and warnings as we were supposed to fly out. A very dark cloud was coming in fast as we were taxiing, with a tornado warning so we had to wait on the runway for an hour for things to blow over. At one point the rain changed to hail stones (it sounded like gravel dropping all over a tin roof) and the plane shook in the wind as we waited, but we didn't get sucked up in a twister. We finally got off the ground and the kids loved it and were extremely excited. When we landed in Chicago we had missed our connecting flight and I had to spend hours getting us on another flight (more details later ...). We got the middle row to ourselves in the cross Atlantic flight and the kids enjoyed watching movies the whole way on the little back-of-the-seat screens. In the morning I woke up and T was there with his headset on wide awake. He said it was the first time in his life that he had stayed up all night. (M and V were fast asleep.) He was awake when we landed but by the time we taxied to the gate he was completely out. It took 10 minutes to wake him enough to walk and follow me (I carried his bags.) We missed our connecting flight to Hamburg this morning so the kids are both asleep on benches here in Heathrow and we are planning how to get something to eat without any British pounds (I wish they had switched to euros already). We should arrive in Hamburg at 8:30-9 pm tonight, but you know how that goes ...

A bottle of beer

I forgot to mention this in the last post and there is a bug that deletes everything when I try to edit posts that have embedded Google maps, so I'm adding this as a separate post.

On the drive up to NC I also delivered a bottle of German beer to J as a thank you gift for helping us move. This was no ordinary bottle, it was three liters in size. I needed to bring my luggage bags back from Germany to pack more things here to move with us so I was essentially brining back empty luggage bags. This made it possible for me to fill one with the three liter bottle wrapped in some clothes. I was a little worried about bringing it in through customs because I think you are limited to two liters of alcoholic drinks in general; I declared it on the form, but they didn't say anything about it. J seemed pleased with the "beer bath" gift. At some point I would like to get a picture of the bottle (I forgot) and add it here so everyone can get a sense of its scale.

Last full day stateside

The whole family is flying to Germany tomorrow! The kids are very excited. V and I are getting worn out with last minute arrangements. Our packing was 99% finished last night but it looks like our bags won't all fit in the car with us. I'm not sure how we will be able to carry everything on the German side. Today we are making some more last minute arrangements with the bank, backing up computer files, ... There are so many little things that keep popping up out of nowhere. Yesterday I was cleaning up the car and just before walking away I happened to notice my old work parking permit hanging from the rear view mirror. I'm so used to seeing it there that it didn't even register until just now as something that would need to be dealt with. If I don't mail it to them soon after quitting my job they will fine me, so I just now dropped it in the mail. (Just one example of a thousand little things.)

I flew back to Atlanta last Saturday after a very busy few days wrapping things up and packing. W dropped me off at the BWI airport. Upon arriving back in Atlanta V presented me with my social security card that had just arrived (record time for government work!). So the next day we drove up to NC and on Monday were able to get our NC drivers licenses and register to vote. One detail that caught us was insurance. In addition to the social security card, we needed insurance in NC to get the license (so we can vote in NC and trade it for a license in Germany, unlike MD or GA drivers liscenses), but we do not own a car in NC and it took most of the day to find an insurance company that would issue us non-owner drivers insurance. We hopped from company to company, finally got some coverage and made it back to the DMV before closing. The next day we drove back to Atlanta and have been packing and arranging since.

Also I found out that a federal government funding agency that has given me grants in the recent past is threatening to fine me a huge amount of money because I am moving to a job outside of the US! (They want me to remain in the US for two more years in the fine print.) This has largely blindsided me so I have been rushing writing appeal letters and getting documentation together.

Tomorrow we are flying from Atlanta (Hartsfield-Jackson) to Chicago (O'Hare) to London (Heathrow) then to Hamburg. We're going through some of the largest and busiest airports in the world! It is essentially the first time the kids have flown (T flew some when he was a baby but he doesn't remember it.) This kids are very excited. I've added our route tomorrow in red to the moving map.

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Back in Maryland

I flew from Atlanta to Baltimore this morning to wrap up some loose ends in Maryland. The flight left at 7 am and we landed 7 minutes early for a change. At the Baltimore airport I hopped a shuttle to the Greenbelt DC Metro station ($3.10 one way) and took the metro and another shuttle back to my old job. I was in my office by 11:30 am, before a lot of other people show up for work.

Also, I seem to be coming down with a cold. It's really kicked in this afternoon. I'm going to try to get as much sleep as possible tonight, but tomorrow I can't stay in as I only have a few days here to work with.

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Social Security Card

North Carolina has a new requirement for driver's licenses. We have to present a federal social security card to get an NC license now. Neither V nor I have one so we went and submitted paperwork to get a card mailed to us yesterday. This involved a minute of filling out the form, then several hours of waiting for our number to be called. While waiting if we sat in one of the seats in front of the closed offices a security guard came over and told us we couldn't sit there. So we stood near them most of the time while the kids played with other kids on the floor. Finally they called our numbers and we turned in our forms and showed them our IDs (passport and MD driver's license). It is supposed to take 10 days to get the card so we may not make it before we move.

We also went to Costco so I could get a free hearing test. I haven't had one in years (I am partially deaf) and wanted a baseline before moving to Germany. I might try to use our European insurance to finally get a hearing aid while in Germany (my various US insurances over the years have refused to pay for one despite saying they cover them in their paperwork).

A long return via New York

Well I finally made it, more than 24 hours after I expected to arrive. Everything went smoothly at first. I made the 1 am train, then the 3 am bus (the bus station was deserted until 15 minutes before the bus arrived then a flood of taxis came from out of nowhere and dropped a crowd of people off that were heading to the airport). I got the the airport in Hamburg, checked in, got my boarding pass, went through security, bought some bottled water for the trip, went to my gate, they started boarding, I got my seating ticket, got on the bus to the plane and headed across the tarmac. The bus stopped just outside the plane but didn't open its doors. We waited. Eventually they made an announcement that the "cabin wasn't clean" yet and that they needed some more time. We waited. Then they said there was a "technical difficulty" and we went back to the gate and walked back in off the bus. We waited there for half an hour then they made an announcement that the replacement part was coming on a plane from Amsterdam and that we would have to go out and collect our checked bags and go to the KLM airport office to reschedule. I went down to baggage and waited for my bag to appear. Other people collected theirs and went out to get in line. I waited, and waited, finally there were only two other people waiting with me, then it was down to me waiting by myself, finally my bag appeared with the extendable handle newly broken off, and I went up to get in last in line for rescheduling. The line moved very slowly and I was in it until noon. I overheard the people in front of me and the person two people in front got the last seat out that day. When I got up there they said the best they could do was route me to JFK in New York then on a flight from there to Atlanta the next morning. They told me to talk to the KLM office there when I arrived to get them to arrange a place for me to spend the night (they assured me that KLM would pay for the hotel room, no problem). I had to throw away the bottle I had bough inside the airport to go back through security. I got another bottle of water on the inside then they had an additional security screening just before the gate so I had to throw it away. On the other side was a coke machine which I refused to buy anything from on matter of principle. So in the afternoon I flew from Hamburg to Amsterdam, then got on the flight to New York. The flight was delayed for a long time before departure because two people that checked in bags didn't show up for the flight so they had to unpack all the bags, get theirs out, then repack everything. When we arrived in New York it was close to midnight and blowing snow outside. I went to the KLM office and there was no one there. I asked a security guard that worked there and she said they had all left for the day. I went down to the information office and had them page someone that worked for KLM. I waited there for an hour and they paged them 5 times. No one showed up. Finally they called and talked to someone on the phone and said they would be right down. No one showed up. For those that have heard about my experience in the Addis Ababa airport with Emirates Air last November, this should sound familiar. I waited 30 minutes and they called again and no one was there, evidently they had left for the night as well. Another guy that was also on the flight from Amsterdam was in the same position as me, he was heading to Patagonia, so we agreed to split a room for the night and try to get our money back from KLM in the morning. We took a shuttle to the Ramada Inn near the airport and were able to get a discount "stranded passenger" rate. When we got up to the room I was out and went straight to sleep. In the morning we went back to the KLM office and again, no one was there. I talked to people from Northwest (that works with KLM) and they said they wouldn't be there until 2:30 in the afternoon, because that was when the flights arrived from Europe and I would have to wait until then to get help from them--there was nothing they could do. (I'm sure that some of these people also worked for KLM and just changed uniforms when their shift came on, that's what the Ethiopian Air people did with Emirates Air in Addis, but what could I say?) My flight was leaving in an hour with Delta so I had to go to make that connection. I went to the Delta terminal, got in line, waited my turn, talked to a ticket agent and they looked at the ticket KLM had written for me the day before in Hamburg. They said something about how I probably couldn't get on the flight (was it full?) and told me to get back in line and talk to another agent! Then she left the desk. I couldn't believe this, but I knew not to make trouble at a US airport so I got back in line and waited. I got to another agent and at first she said that I couldn't use the ticket because it was only good for one day and I should have left yesterday, I asked how this was possible because I arrived at almost midnight the night before. Then she switched gears and said that I could only take carry on bags. I held up my large moving suitcase and said "you want me to carry this on?" and she said that I couldn't get on the flight and that I had to talk to KLM. So what else could I do. I walked off to kill some time until 2:30 when they came to the KLM office. In the next terminal there was an Air France desk so I asked next door when the people from Air France would arrive. (Air France partners with KLM.) They said they should be at the desk. I explained no one was there. ... same old story. I called V to explain that I wouldn't be arriving on the rescheduled flight, was waiting for someone from Air France or KLM to show up and went to a dining area that overlooked the Air France ticketing area so I could keep an eye out. I had just got some food and sat down to eat when they paged me over the intercom by name to go to the Air France desk. I asked a woman that was sitting next to me to please watch my stuff and ran down there. No one was there. I even went down another level to the baggage check and no one was there. I went to the neighboring ticket booth and they said they should be there because they just paged some one. I explained that was me. ... I waited as long as I dared then had to go back to my food and luggage. Fortunately the woman was still there and my bags had not been destroyed while I was gone. I sat down to finally eat a much needed meal. Later I went back to Air France and waited ... finally a woman appeared that was setting up the desks. I asked if she worked for Air France, yes. I explained I had been paged and need to get a new ticket for Delta. She went back into a door and two other women popped out. I explained that I needed the ticket and that I had been paged and waiting. They explained that they couldn't see me because they were back in the office (then why had they bothered to page me?). They paged me because V had called to arrange another ticket with Delta. Then I needed to convince them that yes indeed the Delta agent had refused my ticket. Finally they wrote out another ticket to arrive at 3:30 in Atlanta (At this point, if I had just waited in Hamburg and went out the next day I would have arrived in Atlanta faster then coming through NY). I called V to tell her so she could pick me up and went back to the Delta terminal. This time they accepted me and let me check my bag (wonder of wonders!), and I went to the gate 2 1/2 hours early to camp out until boarding. The rest of the trip back went smoothly. The kids were happy to see me and came running out of nowhere and V had my new glasses for me.

Whew ...

Now it's time for me to get back to work.

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