Travel Update – Part 1

This will probably be a couple of posts because I have been without internet access for a little while now and have been composing this all in a document as events have been unfolding.  Eventually I will get my own internet access – for now I’m using my neighbors username and password (shhhh don’t tell anyone).

Where should I begin – probably with “Day 1” which would be my first travel day 9/9/09.

The Super Shuttle came and picked me up and I headed off to the airport.  Now the evening before I had been packing, and unpacking, and packing some more, just to make sure that I hadn’t overpacked my bags and that they would make it under the 50 lbs. limit.  This is what my bags looked like.  There’s a backpack that goes along with that – which is also packed to the gills along with these three bags.  In all my bags weighed almost as much as I do – and let me tell you, I am not easy to carry around – even on wheels.  It makes me re-thing my career as a “cleaner.”


Anyway,  I arrived at RDU with time to spare, and started the check in process.  They had a scale right next to the electronic check in booths, and I weighed my one bag that I was concerned about and it came in almost a little over on that scale, so I was starting to get a little freaked out at this point.  But I thought, they’ll probably weigh them together and I’m definitely less than 100 lbs. Hahahahaha….optimistic me thinking that they would weigh them together.  What was I thinking – in this craptastic economy, they’re looking for every dollar they can get out of you.  Luckily, my heaviest bag was exactly 50 lbs.  The scale momentarily registered 50.5, but then rethought its folly and quickly went back down to 50 lbs.  The other bag was just fine, and off I went to the gate.

By the way, at 12:00 the terminals at RDU are completely dead.  I had no problems getting through security.  I think that the woman actually flagged one of my bags to be checked, but nobody paid any attention so I went on my merry way.  My flight left at 1:50, so I had some time to sit around reading and people watching – which I did.  This is the motley bunch hanging out at the gate.  Really not so bad.

The plane to JFK was one of those tiny commuter planes with one seat on one side and two on the other.  It’s the type of plane that when I’ve been on them before, they will ask people to move to a different seat to even out the weight.  (Yikes!)  But today we had no problems with weight.  Today the problem was that they had shut down all traffic into JFK.  Not sure why.  They claim that it was because of a backup in air traffic, but that sounds like crap to me.  We waited on the tarmac for about 40 minutes waiting for JFK to give us a slot, and within an hour we were on the ground in New York.

In New York, I began mentally preparing myself for the flight to Zürich.  Most of the people around me were if not German then at least German speaking.  I mean if you can really call Swiss German “German.” But I digress.  Once on the plane I found my seat, eventually because these two annoying little boys wanted to sit up near their mother, I was able to get an empty seat next to me, and the German/Swiss woman who had been sitting in that seat, took the other aisle (the three seat section in the middle) and we had plenty of room for all of our stuff.  The flight was supposed to take off at 5:30, but because of delays on the ground we ended up leaving almost an hour late.  If we had left on time we would have gotten in about an hour ahead of schedule, but we got there on time.  Don’t ask…I don’t know who makes the schedules.

I watched both of the films on the plane, because I couldn’t fall asleep.  Both were about Greece.  The first one was with the woman from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but it wasn’t that movie.  And the other movie was Mama Mia!, which I had recently seen with my mother.

 I set my watch to Zürich time almost as soon as we got on the plane because I knew I only had an hour and a half to get to my train at the main train station in Zürich, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage lugging around my bags.  While waiting for the bags, I changed money (some Swiss Francs, some Euros), and once out of customs I headed for the train.

Here ends part one of our adventures to Tübingen.  The train ride is a whole other story, to be continued.