Greetings from Deutschland

The trip over was fairly uneventful. I was totally exhausted from not really sleeping Friday night and so I passed out after watching one movie. The movie that garnered my attention for those ever so brief waking hours was The Heart Break Kid starring Ben Stiller and some ladies. It was rather comical a good in flight movie choice. I was able to convince the lady at Passport Control to stamp my passport. They don’t stamp passports anymore, they really only stamp visas…so yeah the security guys at the military base are wrong.

Sadly, once I received my luggage I realized that my camera was missing. I made a quick call home to make sure I had not left it on the couch while I was repacking my suitcase. As I feared, my father confirmed that I had not indeed left it at home. This is my lesson to you, when handing your suitcase off to TSA if your heart starts to beat quickly and tells you to quick grab that electronic back out of your checked luggage, do it. Otherwise you may find yourself in a foreign country trying to file a missing items report and wishing that you had listened to yourself. I did file a report with the airline and I will be filing a complaint with TSA once I get home and can provide them with receipts and a photo of the item…yes, a photo of my camera…because most normal citizens have photos of their CAMERAS.

I am now in the dilemma of trying to figure out how to carry on all the souvenirs that I don’t want stolen out of my suitcase. This is my punishment for trying to pack efficiently. From here on out I will take the largest carry on I can muster and two of them at that. I just can’t trust the airlines anymore. For those of you keeping track this is the second time my luggage has been stolen on an international flight. At least last time all that was in my suitcase was dirty laundry so I got it all back. My friends on the same flight as I were not so fortunate.

On to happier news. I totally got an upgrade from Avis so I am tooling around Germany in a Renault Laguna. She’s a nice car and handles well. She is a bit more touchy than my Civic and by touchy I mean she responds to the slightest movements on the wheel and pressure on the brakes. Not a bad thing at all. Oh and the trippy-est thing ever, the mirrors, they fold in when you turn the car off and then extend back out when you turn the car on.

I arrived in Konstanz Sunday afternoon after spending less than an hour driving. The wonders of not getting lost! Who knew that the drive from the airport was so short? I showered, took a brief one hour nap and then forced myself to wander around town to keep awake. The thing about Germany is that all the shops are closed on Sunday so I did window shopping and located all of the shops that I wanted to get to on Monday. I then came back to the hotel and worked on Tai’s Jacket. It’s coming along quite nicely and I finished the first sleeve and cast on for the second.

Monday I went into work early because well the time change has me up early and I wanted to cut out and go to the shops before they closed at 6 pm. The work day went smoothly and I enjoyed meeting up with my colleagues who were also quite pleased to hear that we had been awarded another contract with them. After work I walked to the Tea shop, Teehaus. where I bought some tea and mugs for very dear friends who are avid tea drinkers. Mom said that she didn’t want anymore tea because she still needs to drink up all the tea I bought her on the last couple of trips. 🙂

Then I went to the wool shop to buy some Addi needles. 3 sets of needles for magic loop in the tiny sizes (but not super tiny) and my total bill – € 14,58. The joys of traveling to the places where items are made and thusly avoiding import/export duties. 😉 After buying my needles I moseyed over to Kardstat to buy souvenirs for the rest of the lot. I went to the craft section to make sure I had bought the size needles that I thought I had. (I forgot to make a list so we used pidgin English and German and pantomimed to figure out what size to get.) They had a lot of nice yarns in their craft section, Regia sock yarn and Fortissima in colors exclusive to Kardstat…blasted Lenten sacrifices. (I gave up buying yarn and clothes for Lent.) Hopefully work will send me back here again soon and I can buy some of the nice yarns I saw. I bought up a bunch of Swiss chocolate and a couple of other trinkets and headed back to the hotel.

On the way back to the hotel I happened upon a place advertising sushi so I got some sushi for dinner and continued on my journey back to the hotel. Once I arrived I ate dinner and then put in The Bridge on the River Kwai which I have been meaning to watch for months. It was a great diversion while staying in a country where I don’t speak the language because my goodness that movie is almost 3 hours long. I didn’t even realize that until it was over. I have finished the increases on the second sleeve and am quickly running out of yarn. I will have to see if anyone out there in the world has some Claudia Hand Painted Fingering in Jill’s Pink to spare.

Have a great day everyone! Tschüs

PS – there will be no pictures until I get state side…for obvious reasons 🙁