no longer stateside

So despite comfortably cuddling with my crazy, wonderful ex-puppy Bella, I didn’t get much sleep the night before my flight building. Very different from the eve of leaving for undergrad. Not sentimental or anxious. The excitement just started building. Isn’t it funny the way you view places you’re leaving and arriving the same way? You notice everything... the buildings, anything on the road, the color of the sky. I looked fondly on my once-small-town, now suburban, soon-to-be-harbor-side neighborhood.

My mother took the afternoon off work and my father the morning to see me off. We got to Dulles Airport with enough time to spare between check-in and boarding for the three of us to have a late lunch at Harry’s Tap Room. Nothing compared to the real place but not bad for airport food.

After that and a teary-eyed farewell, which was nowhere near the waterpark of them leaving me at Tulane for the first time, I went through the security checkpoint and waved ciao. I got a chance to talk on the phone with Adrian, fresh out of class and excited for his first non-pledge Mardi Gras.

My flight to Munich was awesome. Eight hours is nothing after you fly from Minneapolis to Tokyo. I picked “The Ultimate Gift” (so good) from the surprisingly decent movie selection. Before take off, the gentleman assigned to the window seat next to mine went off in search of his own aisle seat, so after dinner at 7:30 EST I slept until breakfast at 6:15 Europe time.

I got to Munich’s Strauss Airport for another eight hours, my layover. (Better that than rushed multiple plane changes.) I had hoped to spend a night in Amsterdam en route to Florence, but the scheduling and pricing didn’t work out. The airport was beautiful and had all sorts of expensive amenities: A gym, a spa, “gambles” (for Lauren and Chad), and a discotheque.

Sadly like Dulles to DC, Strauss is about an hour away from Munich, so there wasn’t enough time for a visit. But another town was only a fifteen-minute ride away.