Traveling Sucks

Originally posted 1-2-07

Germany is 6 hours ahead of East Coast Time. Sarah and I went to bed on New Years Morning at 1 am German time. We knew we were flying back on New Years Day, but we just couldn't bring ourselves to not stay up to welcome in 2007. But the problem with that is that we had to wake up at 6 am to get ready to leave the house at 7:15am to get to the airport in time. Now, just to put this in perspective: we woke up at midnight New Years Morning East Coast time.

We loaded up the car and headed to the airport. Our plane left at 12:30pm German time - we had to wake up so early because it was a 2 hour trip to the airport from my parent's house, and you have to get to the airport now 2 hours before your trip. Anyway around 11:45, we loaded on the plane and at 12:30 we took off. As we took off, I thought we were going to die. The first 10,000 feet up were the bumpiest I have ever had in my life. We were bouncing around in a 767 like a little prop plane in a tornado. It was horrible.

The next 9 1/2 hours wasn't bad. We had 2 movies and they were both ones that I had wanted to see, so that was nice. We got a little sleep: I think I got about an hour on the plane, total.When we got to Philadelphia, apparently, we were a little early because the plane simply circled the airport for about an hour. All along the way of doing circles, we got bounced around by turbulence. People were throwing up all over the plane and even I started to get a little sick. We weren't allowed to listen to music because we were on our "initial approach", so I was bored and nauseated. Not a good combination.

We finally landed. Then we had to go through to 2 lines of Customs. Then we had to wait in baggage claim to get our luggage, only to wait in an astronomically long line to go through another customs line that then lead to another long line to re-check our recently claimed baggage. After that line, we were sent to another terminal. However, in order to get to our new terminal we had to go through yet another security check. Unfortunately, the line at the next security check was about 500-600 people long and they only had 1 line. We literally stood for a half hour without moving a step. That line took over an hour and then we still had to find our shuttle that took us to our terminal.

When we got to our gate, they announced that our flight would be a little late. A little late ended up being 4 hours late. So, instead of getting home at a reasonable 8pm, we got in at midnight. By the time we reached home, we had been up for 24 hours straight. That sucks.But to top it all off, they only got 3 of our bags to us. The 1 bag they didn't get on the plane wasn't the bag that help all of our miscellanious items. It was the bag that literally holds all my clothes...my entire wardrobe.

Traveling Sucks.