Germany Day 1

hello, for a minute, New York!

We arrived in Frankfurt around 11 am on Saturday, after two 6-hour flights (SLC to NYC, and NYC to Frankfurt). We took advantage of our business-class tickets, and relaxed in the Delta lounge at both airports. They have free wifi there, and snacks. It is fantastic. A was taken into a closed-door room at the SLC airport by TSA. He had neglected to remove his wallet from his pocket before entering the body scanner, so they swabbed his hands and found traces of an explosive chemical. We suspect it was from bouncing a tennis ball around in the garage that morning. It made for quite the experience.

On the plane I watched "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," read "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society," and slept. The food was pretty good, and generally the flights went smoothly. A got a prescription for something to help him tolerate the plane ride with more ease, but didn't end up taking any of it. He watched "Avengers" and slept for 1 hour. As our plane made its way to the gate at the Frankfurt airport, we could see a sort of parkway trail bordering the airfield. There was a group of people standing there, waving to our plane as we rolled by. It was nice.

On the plane I wore leggings, TOMS, the off-white long tee, and black polkadot cardi.

We picked up the rental car, and Audi wagon, and hopped on the Autobahn to find our house. We stayed in a small "suburb" of Bad Camberg called Dombach, about 45 minutes outside of Frankfurt. It isn't really a suburb, in the sense of the American suburb. It has a little church and beautiful houses, population 382, about 7 minutes drive on a winding forest road from Bad Camberg. The house was very nice, with three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, kitchen/living/dining on the main floor with a half bath, and a utility room, laundry room, and two bedrooms in the basement. The coolest part of the house? The electric blinds. You control them with switches from inside, and when all the way closed they act as blackout shades. So nice! The worst part? No ventilation system, meaning no AC. It was cool outside at night, and got very hot inside, so we opened the windows. And the mosquitoes came in. I got 8 mosquito bites in Germany, after surviving a week in Jackson and an entire summer in Utah without any. The beds were also funny. Upstairs all the beds were double, and had two twin mattresses in each frame instead of one solid, plus two twin duvets! A loved the separate blankets. I told him I'd consider it at home if it meant choosing a new bedding set. Anyway, the setting of Dombach was really quite idyllic, if a bit far from Frankfurt. 

hauptbahnhoff (the main train station)

We grocery shopped so that we would have breakfast foods and lunch/dinner for Sunday, and took a nap at the house for a few hours. I changed into my Reeboks and the Abbey Road tee. Then we drove into town to see the exhibition site and our booth setup, and to get some dinner. We had Dooners at Hauptbahnhoff (the main train station), and paid $.50 to use the WC (bathroom). Then feeling exhausted, we went home, messed around on our computers/ipods/ipads, played a few rounds of Ticket to Ride on our ipods, ate some chocolate chip cake, and went to bed.

downtown Frankfurt