The World At Large

Yesterday was a long day.  Actually, it was more like two days.  With no sleep.

We started at 9:30am on Saturday in D.C. with part two of orientation.  Just things for the trip, our project when we return, etc.  Then we headed to the airport and our flight left around 6pm.  It was an uneventful flight.  Lufthansa has tv’s in the headrests, so I watched the Blind Side.  (Finally!  And I enjoyed it Jeffrey.)  Then my plan was to sleep.  This did not happen, I couldn’t doze for more than a few minutes.  No one could, so we all land in Frankfurt with no sleep at 7am Sunday morning German time. 

The airport really didn’t take long to get through.  Our group headed out to the bus to go to our hotel, and the other group stayed at the airport to catch their flight to Stuttgart.  Most of our rooms were luckily ready, even so early in the morning, so we could drop off our luggage and clean up a bit.  Our first event wasn’t until 2:30pm.  So we headed out to sightsee a bit around Frankfurt.  Since it’s Sunday all the shops are closed so we visited a couple of churches and an archaeological garden with ancient Roman ruins, then crossed the Main River to the other side of Frankfurt.  (We’re in Frankfurt am Main.  There’s also a Frankfurt am Oder, on the Oder River, closer to the Polish border.)  The Main River separates North and South Germany.  We did grab lunch while we were out.  I had real Frankfurters.  They’re trademarked, and if they’re not made in Frankfurt they are not Frankfurters. 

After our bit of impromptu sightseeing we headed back to the hotel for a short break before our tour at the Goethe House.  This tour lasted an hour.  The tour guide did an excellent job although I will have to look up everything he told us again on my own because I walked around like a zombie and could barely keep my eyes open.  (At one point standing there I must have had a very long blink because the next thing I know my head jerked forward, but that woke me up.)  The situation was the same for most people in the group. It was a very nice house and you could visit a lot of the rooms.  He took us on each floor (there were 4 or 5?) to show us rooms which was nice.  Usually when I think of tours like this you only get to visit one or two rooms and most of the house is closed off to guests. 

After the tour we walked by the public viewing areas for the Germany vs. England World Cup game.  They were packed and you had to be there early to get inside.  Many people crowded outside the areas where they could still see the screens.  They let us decide where we wanted to watch the game and told us where to meet when it was over.

I wound up outside one of the public viewing areas with Kerri, Jinny, and Danielle.  I’m glad Germany scored a lot because the crowd was great to watch when they did.  And yes, those horns are annoying.  I had not heard one before now.  Lots of fans dressed up in all sorts of stuff.  I asked some guys near me (one of whom was wearing a flag) if they would take a picture with me.  So Jinny takes the camera and takes the picture.  I was looking at here, not the screen, so I did not see Germany score while this was going on, all of a sudden the guys just started going crazy.  So I cheered too, although I was a little late as you can see in the photo.  (Which I will try to post later, as the internet here is so slow it won’t upload any pictures into my blog.)  The cool thing was after the game as we were walking to dinner (this was an hour or so later) and everyone was going crazy honking their horns and hanging out of their cars, these guys rode by.  The guy wearing the flag sees us on the sidewalk, points at us and yells “those are our friends!” to the rest of the guys in the car behind him.  So they all honked at us and waved and yelled.  We’ve got friends in Germany, how cool.

Dinner was good, although sitting down for so long most of us returned to our zombie like state.  I elected to walk back for some excercise, since I haven’t run in several days.  I downloaded yesterday’s photos onto my netbook and noticed while I was trying to post some pictures on Facebook that my camera battery charger was not lit.  I tried all the outlets in the room.  I’ve got one more set of batteries on me, and I’m hoping my charger works at the next hotel.  I don’t know if it’s because of the plug adaptor or what. 

I did get some sleep but woke up frequently because they stress being on time, today especially since we’re going to Deutsche Bank, and they’re one of our sponsors.  So today we’ll all be dressed up for this meeting, then we head to Fifa to talk about the women’s World Cup next year. 

This evening we leave Frankfurt for Schwerin.  I belive we’re taking the train.  I’ve never done that before, it should be interesting.  I know we have very little time between trains and I hope I don’t get left behind or wind up with my luggage in some other part of Germany.