The adventures of flying to Germany

After a relatively benign start to our journey to a new life over here in Europe, things unraveled a bit. We arrived at the airport and went to gather our luggage and despite the fact that we were told that we would have to go to another building to pick up Flynn we were pleasantly surprised to see him in his carrier at the bulky luggage area waiting patiently for us. When we went through customs the agent looked surprised to see that we had a live animal with us. I just asked, “okay?” and though his body language said otherwise, he replied, “okay” and we were through.


After that bit of good fortune, we had a series of misadventures. First, we frantically searched for the track from which our train was supposed to depart and by the time we found it, it was long gone.  We checked in with the agents at the station, but since we had purchased the ticket online from an agent other the Deutsche Bahn, they could not assure us that the ticket we had was a flexible ticket. I was pretty sure it was.  Unfortunately, the next train that would get us to Pforzheim wouldn’t arrive for another hour and would take a longer route and it would get us to Pforzheim 90 minutes later than the original one requiring two train changes. 


When the train arrived, we rushed to get on with me carrying Flynn in his large carrier required by the airline, the large suitcase, my bulky computer bag and a full backpack.  My attempt to board the train was a comedy of errors. The suitcase was so heavy that getting up the steps required so much effort that I had to leave Flynn on the platform. When I returned to get him, the handle on his carrier came off and one of the train’s agents was aggressively pushing it up the steps to me. Now the carrier was too large to get up the aisle without hitting the arm rest of every seat, especially since the train was in motion and rocking from side to side. I finally got all of our luggage stowed ( I didn’t mention that Susi was towing her two carry ones and had a backpack) and plopped into a seat. This procedure was repeated for the two train changes before we got to Pforzheim and got a taxi to Angela’s apartment building where we discovered our bad luck had not ended. Her apartment is on the fourth floor of an old building built in1920 with a narrow wooden winding staircase and it took me four heart pounding trips to get everything up to it. I heaved a sigh of relief once we were settled in.


That sigh of relief turned out to be premature. Our first day was great. We’re able to walk down to a bakery cafe and enjoy a cup of coffee, bretzel and a brotchen. The next day I had a bit of a scratchy throat from the dry air of the flight. Or so I thought. The scratchiness turned into a sore throat, cough and chest tightness. I tested for COVID, but it was negative.  So, I just rested for the next two days but things didn’t get much better. I took another test today and this time the fates had a good laugh. It was positive. I had a flashback to the 10.5 hour flight that required passengers to be masked but I saw a couple of men who did not think it applied to them and the only male steward who did not cover his nose on top of the times when we were fed that no one had a mask on. So, it’s no surprise I got COVID. Susi already had COVID and was apparently immune. That was a bit of luck. I have had the vaccine and two boosters but I guess that’s not 100% protection. So for the time being, I am resting,coughing, sniffling and hoping I get over this in time to drive to Rotterdam to take the overnight ferry to Hull, England in five days. I’m sure everything will go as planned. 🙂

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