Garmisch-Partenkirchen:

Current Weather Conditions.

The German keyboard is laid out all different and I’ve had a few liters of bier and it took about 15 minutes to type that URL so there will be no more URLs in this post.

We arrived at Schiphol Airport Friday morning and waited a few hours before catching the train to Düsseldorf. At the time I was mad at myself because this was supposed to be a big money saver and now we were wasting so much time sitting around. But it turned out okay. We had good adventures and were forced to stay awake and stand on breezy train platforms

I forgot the first thing we do everytime we get off the train in a new city: get completelz lost.

It was the train station’s fault. They had a giant map with a red dot that said you are here. It should have said: turn around and go out the other door and you are here.

We finally found our hotel and the desk guy directed us to a fabulous restaurant and we ate our weight in wurst and potatoes and returned to our room and I fell asleep at 7:15 and when I finally woke up it was light outside and I got up to check my watch and it was 8:10. Our plane was taking off at 10am.

Team Pam and Bob sprang to action, shampooed, packed and were at the front desk in 30 minutes. The cab arrived 5 minutes later and we were in the terminal about 20 minutes later. We zoomed through check in and then to airport security.

This is the most organized, efficient country except for local airport security. The weekday business travelers at PDX would eat these people for lunch. We could have gotten 100 passengers through in the same time it took 2 dozen to get through in Düsseldorf. And we didn’t even have to take our shoes off.

Flight was delayed 1 hr 40 because of huge snowfall in Munich. Then we got out of the gate and had to turn back because of technical problems. Then the technical problems were fixed. Actually the Captain’s exact words were: hopefully the problem is fixed. Just the confident speech I want to hear before take-off. Then we had to get back in line for take off. Then there was a delay unloading the luggage.

We finally got to the train station and then another 45 minutes for our regional train.

But we got here finally. yay. All the Neuner girls are taller than me now. Luis nicely pointed out that he wasn’t but I’m sure when I see him in August that will have changed. There’s lots of snow and it’s pretty.

This rearranged keyboard has reduced my typing to about 15 words a minute so I will stop here. Possibly more later.