Planes, Trains and Automobiles

So I'm currently hanging out in the home of my daughter's second host family -- Lens (pronounced Yens), Claudia and their two boys Sven and Tobias. They are very nice and gracious and we're enjoying our time with them.

As you know, we were rerouted from Bozeman to Helena. Happy happy joy joy. We flew from there to Minneapolis which, as luck would have it, not only did we have a direct flight to Europe, but we got lucky enough to be stuck . . . um . . . placed . . . in first class. HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY.

We were on an Airbus 330, or something like that, and I was in seat G. I kind of figured we were in first class when our seat row was 5, but I really knew things were going to be different when I asked the attendant which aisle I needed to go down to get to the seat (wide body jet, two aisles, didn't really know which side G would be on) and she looked at my ticket to sort of point me in the direction and then noticed it was row 5: "Oh . . . right this way, sir."

She personally walked me to my seat and wanted to know if there was anything she could get me. Yepper, first class to Amsterdam, baby.

Oh, right . . . we flew to Amsterdam and then had a six hour train ride ahead of us. As we approached Amsterdam, Mrs. Ref asked an attendant if there were international forms we needed to fill out (having flown internationally, she knew this was SOP). The attendant, who was quite the entertaining guy, looked at her and said, "This is Amsterdam, honey."

Apparently all the stories you've heard about that city really are true.

So, off the plane and made our way to find train tickets to Rostock. The people in the airport were quite friendly. They also all seem to be tri-lingual at least. Everyone we talked to spoke German, Dutch and English. They probably spoke more, but I'm guessing that their location lends to that. Where was I . . . oh, right, the train.

We got tickets from the airport to Rostock and hung out on a train for six hours as we travelled through the countryside. Once we crossed into Germany and got a new crew, there was an attitude change. We moved from hearing announcements in three languages to hearing long announcements in German with the bare minimum in English. It seemed there was a disdain for having to speak anything other than German, and the train staff were annoyed that they had to even make announcements in English.

Thinking about it, it was very American actually. With the only difference is that most Germans I've met can, you know, actually speak another language.

So . . . we made our way to Rostock via the train, cat napping here and there. When we arrived at Rostock, we had the pleasure of wandering around the train station looking for someone who looked like they were looking for someone. It had a very Dr. Suess quality about it.

"Is our ride at the platform? No, our ride is not at the platform.

Is our ride downstairs by the turnstiles? No, our ride is not at the turnstiles.

Is our ride out front by the passenger drop off point? No, our ride is not at the drop off point.

Where oh where could our ride be?

Oh, here comes our ride with his hand outstretched and a smile on his face! We have a ride!"

And then Lens drove us to his home in Gustrow.

Planes, trains and automobiles indeed. And yesterday we did the tourist thing in Rostock, wandering through a few very large churches, seeing the old city wall, the waterfront and lots of chocolate.

Today we're off to Gustrow and more churches and more chocolate.