Arriving in Germany



June 27, 2012 - RDU - Raleigh, NC

     Getting to Germany has been over a year in the making, but official travel began on June 27, 2012.  Jason and Kim Panciera offered to take all of us and our bags to the airport the morning of our departure since we needed two vehicles to load all 18 bags.  Then, upon unloading at the curb and counting, we realized we had 19!  I forgot to count Tracy's computer bag....too late now - they were all getting there one way or another.



June 27, 2012 - JFK - New York, NY

     This photo captures how excessively we packed!  We will not be traveling home with all that we brought.  Of that, I am certain!  Problem is that I'm sure we'll have many new things we will want to bring home.  Here we are in JFK working our way to another terminal.  We had a bit of delay when Air Berlin made us check two bags that were fine with Jet Blue - $140 later bites the bank account a bit!  Being at the gate for Air Berlin was our first experience with hearing lots of German, but that didn't even compare to landing in Berlin and working our way to the next gate.  Having boarding passes helped - we could show those to get the help needed.



June 28, 2012 - Ferienhaus Veauville - Kaelbertshausen, Germany

     A little cottage from the 1700s was home to our first few nights in Germany.  We had to book airline tickets before knowing where we were to live.  The flat ended up not being available until the 2nd so we rented a car in Frankfurt and drove the couple of hours to a small village near Heidelberg.  Funny thing about renting cars in Germany - very few people have more than 1.3 kids so when we asked for a vehicle seating six, we got looked at as if we were unicorns.  Actually, a few funny things about renting cars in Germany....

1. They are ALL very small with little to absolutely no room for luggage.  We had left our six largest bags in Frankfurt storage thinking that once we found the car, we'd go back and get all the bags.  No sense in paying for storage if they would fit in the car.  Ha!  Between six carry-ons, six people, six backpacks and the computer bag...well, let's just say that I wondered if once in, we'd ever get out again.  It was that tight!

2. Being in Germany, the GPS is in German so not very helpful yet.  Maybe next year...just not yet.  In fact, Tracy pulled the vehicle over in one small village to ask for directions - the guy ended up climbing into the driver's seat so that he could plug in the address for our little cottage.  Funny thing is that we accidentally had him plug in the wrong address!  So we ended up at this little bakery where no one spoke a lick of English.  After showing them the address of where we wanted to be, a little old man motioned for us to follow him saying something along the lines of it being only a couple kilometers away.  An interesting side note on the GPS - it switched to English the next day without us doing anything.  We desperately tried to get it into English the first day without success.  Someone must have been praying as English GPS helped so much!

3. Entrance onto the Autobahn is close to the Frankfurt Airport - not something I thought we'd try within the first few hours of being in Germany.  The really comical part of that now is that Josiah got car sick and had to throw up suddenly.  Tracy found a spot to pull off quickly, but I'm hopeful we don't go through that again.