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Scamming the airlines....arrival in Frankfurt.....My mom the terrorist.....Lena makes the wanted list..... When I last left you, we were getting ready for our trip. I was lustily packing mine and everyone else's bags, and still, I didn’t have enough space. After I packed everything, mom repacked it, and by the time she was done, they were all too heavy to lift. Now she was worried. She was concerned how I was going to get from Frankfurt to St. Petersburg with all these bags. I was going to have 4 huge suitcases, a big carryon and a briefcase. I had also worked out a way to tweak a little more space out of the deal. I was planning on living out of my carryon while in Europe, so I had put all of my clean shirts and other things in there, along with a US Army laundry bag. My plan was, as I used my clean clothes, to put the dirty clothes in the laundry bag, thereby freeing up space in the carryon for souvenirs acquired in my travels. Granted, it would be yet another bag to carry, but I didn’t concern myself with that. Mom, on the other hand was concerned. She knew I was planning on taking a bus from Frankfurt, and she knew how difficult it was going to be to transport all those bags. Essentially, the plan was this. Carry two suitcases 10 yards or so, then go back for two more, leave the four together, then go back for the carryon, laundry bag, and briefcase, and slowly catapult my way across bus terminals, train stations, and customs checkpoints in this manner. It was going to be slow, tiring, unsightly, but what the heck, it was also two weeks off, and I have never concerned myself with problems that far off, so I just kept finding ways to jam things in these bags. Then an inspiration hit me. "What," I wondered, "would happen to my bags if they were lost on the way to Frankfurt? My final destination wasn’t Frankfurt, even though I was only flying that far, so it didn’t seem fair that the airline shouldn’t be somehow responsible for the delivery of my bags to wherever I ended up." With that idea in mind, I called the airlines and asked, positing the question to the people who should know. I explained to them we were going to have a very short layover in Philadelphia, and I was concerned that the bags may not make it. They assured me they would, but at my insistence, they admitted that if the bags weren’t there upon my arrival, US Air would deliver them to me anywhere in the world, at no extra cost, upon my request. Anywhere. It didn’t even matter that they didn’t fly there. They would also keep the bags for me until I wanted them delivered. (Most people may have blushed at asking these blatantly obvious questions.... I didn’t.) I then repacked my luggage. In the carryon were things I wanted in Europe on my travels, in the briefcase were books and maps. In two suitcases were things I would need in Russia as soon as I got here; i.e. my cold weather hat and gloves, presents for the girls, bribes for Lena, etc. In the other two suitcases were things that could be 'lost' for a while, just in case.... I don’t want to disappoint anyone who has (mistakenly) begun to believe that I have changed significantly in the last several years, so let me just say that upon arrival in Frankfurt, two bags were lost.... The two that had the less urgent things in them. If they were on the carousel, I didn’t see them. I really didn’t. While I was making a report to the lovely fraulein about the unfortunate loss of my bags, Mom and Lori were looking through the maps and books in the main section of the airport. When I got done, I met up with them, we loaded the things on a baggage cart, and headed for Hertz counter to get our car. I went to the Hertz counter first; while Mom waited for Delores to do something, probably find a soda bottle. (It is a long story, and I will tell it in its time.....) When I got the Hertz, they explained that there were no cars. None. We would have to wait, probably at least an hour. Mom and Delores showed up, and we parked the overloaded baggage cart out of the way and sat and talked about our plans. After about an hour, I asked the Hertz people, and they told me there were still 9 people in front of us to get cars, so we were still a long time out. I was getting angry, but they were feeding us free food, and I had hopes of a free upgrade, (To a Mercedes...) so I was being polite, or as close as I can come to it. I went back to our campsite, and suggested that Mom and Lori go check out the airport. Frankfurt has a wonderful airport. It has great shops, stores, restaurants, and so what the heck, they could go looking while I guarded our things. They liked the idea, so they left. About ten minutes later, they came back. It seemed that there was a problem in the main terminal. There was crime scene tape all over, dogs, cops, soldiers, and there was talk of evacuation. So far, this trip was getting off to an inauspicious beginning. (Notice how quickly I forgot my good fortune at my bags not being in my possession?) Here we were, in Germany, no car, tired, and our first experience was a terrorist event. Oh well, not a lot we could do, so we waited. And waited. And waited. I finally quit being polite, and they finally got us a car. We did get the upgrade, but not to a Mercedes. We got a Volvo station wagon. (Which I would later discover could cruise easily at more than 120 mph.) The girls wheeled the luggage cart down, and I went for the car, pulling it up to the curb. We began to load, and I inventoried. One suitcase of mine. One suitcase of Moms. One suitcase of mine. One suitcase of Loris. One carryon of mine. One carryon of Loris. One carryon of Moms. ....... hmmm......... something wasn’t right. Oh yeah! My briefcase! We checked. It wasn’t there. I ran to the elevator, then to the Hertz counter and asked had they seen it. The girl smirked no, so I checked the area where we had been sitting. Not there either. Hmmm.... There was an information counter not far away, so I thought I would check there. "Has anyone turned in a briefcase?" I asked. "Was it a black Samsonite?" the lady said. "YES!" I exclaimed, thinking they must have found it. "Your briefcase was left in the main lobby, and caused a terrorist scare. We almost evacuated the airport. We had to call out dogs, soldiers, SWAT teams, the whole works. I can not tell you the havoc you wreaked on us here." the lady snarled, with all the femininity one imagines in a concentration camp guard. Thinking quickly, I explained, "Uhhh.... well, actually, my Mother did it. I had left it in her charge." (Nobody should deceive themselves about doing a crime with me. Captain Rollover is my name.) "Well, you can go pick it up at lost and found, in terminal one." I went back to the car, and told the girls that the terrorist incident that had stopped their shopping actually had an ironic twist to it. Mom was horrified. Delores was numbed, I think. She just seemed to take it all in stride. Then again, why shouldn’t she. It wasn’t her case, and I hadn’t fingered her as the guilty party. I raced around to the other terminal, parked illegally, (Wouldn’t you think I would by now have gained some respect for the law?) and ran inside. When I walked in, the man seemed to know me, and he brought the case to me. "They must have great security cameras or something." I thought. He handed me the case, and upon opening it, I saw a sheet of photo paper in it with about 48 small photos of me printed on it. OK, maybe the German security cameras weren’t as good as I thought. They had entered the case in the computer, which is probably connected to some computer system worldwide, keeping track of terrorist attacks and scares. Not exactly the kind of list you want to be on. Once again, irony rears its hilarious head. You really have to laugh at this. Ya see, there was nothing in the case with my name on it. Nothing. There was however a large packet with YELENA FRANCIS written across it. The Germans filed the case under my wife's name. The ironic part is, she wasn’t even in Germany. She was in Russia, waiting for OVIR to send my invitation letter so I could come back here and be with her. There was a small fine, they hadn’t hosed it down, or blown it up, so I felt fortunate. I got the case, got in the car, and we headed off. We were wanting to touch as many countries as we could, so we started off toward Luxembourg. At least we thought we did. To this day I don’t know where we were heading toward, but I can tell you one thing, the highways in Germany are terrible. I know they are supposed to be awesome, the much ballyhooed Autobahns. Phooey. The autobahns are nothing more than a smaller version of our Interstate system with a lot higher speed limit. (There actually is a speed limit, but nobody pays attention to it, or is subject to it. What they do enforce is the 'idiot rule.' If you are driving 140 mph in the snow and have a wreck, you are in trouble. It is actually a great system. You can drive fast, and you get where you need to go.) The bad thing is, if you need to get off and turn around, forget it. There are no exits to speak of, in the traditional sense. No clover-leafs, no turnarounds. When you get off the highway, you get on another highway, and you have to go a long way to find a place to get off, and you may be getting on another highway then. It took hours to get out of Frankfurt. It was horrid. Everything was too crowded, people were flying around me, I was lost, frustrated, and wishing for just a moment the Germans had more lebensraum. Eventually, my (almost incapable) navigator stumbled across something she could identify on our map, and we were heading the wrong direction. This was progress you see, because it was an identifiably wrong direction. From there, we could get out of town and begin to look for the ring road to circle the city and find our way toward the Benelux countries. I will send some pictures now, I hope you enjoy them. I will get us further down the road in my next letter. Dave The pictures are of us crossing the border into Luxembourg, Belgium, and France. We made it to all of those, and Germany in our first day. 4 countries in one day. Good start. The last couple of pictures are of Mom and Lori in Paris, standing on a bridge across the Seine, and of a painter working in the Louvre museum. As I watched the process, I gained a whole new respect for Xerox. |