Fall Asleep, Miss Out on Chocolate

Ich bin schon wieder in Deutschland verloren. I am once again lost in Germany. I have so named this blog because I can't remember the password and such for my last blog, "Ich Bin In Deutschland Verloren" (I am lost in Germany), and don't feel like going through all the mess to make it work again. A new start! That's what this blog is, for a different sort of experience. Dieses mal werde ich ganz alles geniessen. This time I am going to enjoy absolutely everything.
It is an adventure to get to Germany the cheapest way possible. Four planes: from Maine to DC to Philly to Munich to Dusseldorf. Four. Planes. Over twenty-four hours of solid travel. And I can't sleep on planes. Even the meds my fantastic fiance got for me beforehand did not help. At all. I watched two movies and two television episodes (Iron Man 2, 500 Days of Summer, True Blood and Bones in case you were wondering) on the 7 1/2 hour flight from Philly to Munich. Oh, and I'm also terrified of flying. That's because I'm terrified of heights. Every take off and landing causes me to grip whatever is nearest to me until my knuckles turn white and my fingernails break off. On this trip I brought Sudoku. Every landing and take off I sped through puzzles in a panicked frenzy. I finished over 25 of them by the time the trip was done.
I was very lucky though. Not only did I not fall out of the sky halfway across the Atlantic but only one of my flights was delayed by a significant amount, and it was my last one. I had no adjoining flight awaiting me as I flew from Munich to Dusseldorf, and so the flight could be delayed all it liked. I was glad that I had to sit the entire 50 minutes on the plane rather than at the gate; I was less than impressed with the Munich airport. Nowhere near as efficient as in Frankfurt, the security was the rudest I have ever encountered (and that includes that time I forgot official ID when flying from Maine to New York and they demanded I show five other things with my name on it and tested my shoes for explosives) and after the metal detector went off on the button from my jeans (NOT something I could remove, danke sehr) the woman who was supposed to wand me down was handsy enough to warrant a lawsuit, or at least a good deal of uncomfortableness and irritation. I'm sure they have had their share of annoying tourists pouring in for Oktoberfest but come on. No need to be openly nasty.
Oh and they changed the gate for my flight but didn't announce it, so I almost missed it. When another American asked why they hadn't announced it he was told--again, nastily--that it wasn't their responsibility to keep him informed of his individual flight plan.
The flight attendants, however, were lovely. I adore Lufthansa. They apologized profusely over the wait and offered drinks to anyone who wanted one. I fell asleep while the plane was just sitting there. I figured I had about an hour to kill and my brain was shutting down from the many hours I had had to stay awake and alert in order to catch all of my flights. When the rustling of food packaging woke me up I at first decided to ignore it; sleep was more important than food, and I wasn't hungry. But then I was curious as to what sort of snacks one might serve on a German flight. Peanuts? Pepper-flavored (as in the vegetable, not the spice) chips, which are more standard than plain ones here?
No. They were passing out small bars of Toblerone.
Naturally. I finally get some sleep and it caused me to miss the flight attendant as she went by with chocolate. Not to fret though, there was a very nice Australian couple sitting next to me who got her attention so I could get a bar too. Wilkommen in Deutschland, wollen Sie ein Stueckchen Schokolade? Gerne!
I knew I would like Dusseldorf the moment we touched down: the plane parked at the gate next to us had HARIBO written on it in lieu of an airline, complete with the cute bear they have on all of their packages. Even better, my suitcase--which I was terrified would be lost due to following me on these four flights and two different airlines--was one of the first to emerge at baggage claim. And the best: Eva was waiting for me the moment I walked out of the terminal.
A moment to explain: I am here in Germany to write an honors thesis for my history degree at the Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet in Dusseldorf. But they won't let me move into my apartment until October 1st. I met Eva and her mother Gisla and daughter Ellen when they came to stay for three weeks at Mechuwana, the summer camp where I'm a lifeguard. They live about 40 minutes outside Dusseldorf and are such wonderful people, they are letting me stay with them for the ten days that I have nowhere else to be. Amazing, wonderful, fantastic, kind and nur einfach klasse people. They have been so wonderful to me, I cannot even say how much.
Today I went on a boat ride along the Rhein, seeing mostly a coal factory but also much of Dusseldorf. It is beautiful, a fantastic mix of the traditional and the modern with some of the most creative architecture I have ever seen. I'm looking forward to living there for the next four months more than I was looking forward to living in New York when I started college there. I've been here less than two days and already I am mostly thinking only in German: it's actually difficult to write this in English, because the German comes to mind first and I have to rearrange the sentences in order to have correct grammar. It's a funny and marvelous feeling. Tomorrow Eva and I are going back into Dusseldorf to set up a bank account and send some stuff to the DAAD so that I can start receiving my grant money so I can actually live here until late January. I am so looking forward to having adventures I can share and an experience even better than the last one I had in this country, four years ago.