Day 40 - Journey home

So, Sunday morning I woke up in Germany around 7am. Raymond, Jody and Jeanna were on earlier flights than me, Marc and Bill, so they left for the train station (right across the street from the hotel) around 7:30am. Marc, Bill and I headed there around 8:15am to catch a train to the airport for our flights. Bill was so nice! He took care of my suitcase the whole time, since he and Marc had checked their's through. I appreciated it because it wasn't as simple as we had hoped. We did a lot of back-tracking trying to get the proper tickets and then to get to our platform, but we found our train (which was quite a bit cheaper than the cabs we took the day before) and made it to the airport in plenty of time.

After that, it was just a waiting game. I got through airport security with no problems and waited. I did find a McDonalds in the airport where I had a breakfast of chicken nuggets and fries. It tasted similar enough to our version that I was satisfied, however I paid about 7 Euros for something that would cost me $4 in the States! Oh well, it was still good after not having any fast food for almost 6 weeks! ;)

One thing I found strange was that our gate had an additional security checkpoint, so I had to do the whole routine twice at that airport. Normally, it wouldn't bother me that much, but every time I had to take my laptop out of my backpack, which was stuffed so full, I had to do major rearrangements whenever I put it back.

The flight was a little less than 8 hours. I watched Spiderwick Chronicles and Definitely, Maybe. I could have watched more movies but the other ones I had already seen, so I just read a book for a while. We arrived in Washington D.C. around 3pm. I hate that airport! It was actually pretty organized when we got off the plane because they separated those of us with connections from everyone else, but there were so many of us with connections it was still a mad house. I waited for over 30 minutes (of my 2-hour layover) just to get my suitcase, so I could wheel it across the room after stopping at Customs for 2.5 seconds.

Then, just around the corner from where I dropped off my bag, security made me give them a tiny snowglobe that I had purchased in Montenegro because they said they weren't allowed. I gave the TSA guy a hard time about taking away one of my only souveniers from the country, but he didn't really seem to care. I told him they should update their website to include tiny snowglobes and to enjoy my souvenier. He said he was going to through it away anyway and that I couldn't even put it in the clear plastic bag. Jerk.

So, after the security fiasco, I was fuming and had about 45 minutes before my plane left, so I walked really fast to get to the shuttle which took us to the other terminal. I ended up getting to my gate and sitting down for about 5-10 minutes before I had to board the next plane. This plane was tiny! Only one seat on my side and two on the other. I was surpised when my carry-ons fit under my seat. One guy wasn't so lucky, he ended up getting his carry-on stuck in the overhead bin. They had to call maitenance to come and fix it, then he had to put his carry-on underneath. Despite the 10-15 minute delay while they pried open the bin, we still arrived on time in Indy.

I was off the plane and with my luggage in about 10 minutes from arrival. In fact, I was done and outside while Adam was still parking. We found each other and he helped me get everything to the car. We stopped at the Burger King in Mooresville for dinner and got down to Bloomington around 9pm. I spent about an hour unpacking and we were both in bed, sound asleep by 10pm (4am Croatia time). I got up around 7am today and plan to finish unpacking and going through my mail.

This is all for the travel blog for a while. I hope everyone enjoyed hearing about all of my adventures. I'll probably still add a few photos on here in the next week, but this will be the last entry for a while.