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Tuesday - Wednesday, November 13th and 14th: Fairfax, Virginia, USA to Hamburg, Germany
Bob: After a day of fruitless waiting for an arborist to cut down some trees in our back yard that were leaning toward our house, we gave a check for the estimated cost to our good neighbors, Mike and Laura, who promised to make sure they did work and give them the check after they had completed the job. That eased our minds a bit as we took the taxi to the airport and set off for Germany via Reykjavik, Iceland, on Icelandic Air. Since Icelandic has followed the American pattern of not serving any free food in economy class, the food service was quite brief but that allowed me to get to sleep relatively early. After a pause in Reykjavik, we continued on to Copenhagen and I had another three hours sleep on that leg. The final hop from Copenhagen to Hamburg was quite short and we had nice views of the city as we circled to land, so that was fun. |
Monika: For our trip to Hamburg, I had booked us on Icelandair, the only airline that had one-way ticket as cheap as half an economy round trip fare. This meant, however, two stops, the first in Iceland and the second in Copenhagen. But in exchange each leg was a little shorter. It also meant no free food, but we fixed that by bringing hard boiled eggs and rolls to eat before the flight. This way we could also quickly bed down and try to get some sleep. On the first leg, we were seated in an exit row, so even Bob had plenty of room for his legs and we both got some rest if not sleep. In Keflavik, Iceland's airport, we had coffee with the last of our rolls and enjoyed the Christmas decorations. In Copenhagen we shared a nice pizza for lunch. |
Bob: After Heinke and Gustl picked us up and we were in time for Kaffeetrinken, the wonderful German invention of coffee and cake in the afternoon. We chatted in the afternoon, intent on NOT sleeping until it was actual evening, which seems to work best for us in adjusting to the European time zone after a long West-to-East flight. |
Monika: We finally reached Hamburg in the afternoon and were happy to see that our luggage had come with us. As we were coming out of the terminal, Heinke end Gustl arrived in their car. They had kept track in the internet when we would arrive and timed their departure from home accordingly. We were in time for Kaffetrinken (American: Afternoon coffee) and a little later a nice Abendessen (American: evening meal). In Germany the noon time meal is always the big meal and evening meal is just sandwiches, which suits us just fine, as it is our pattern also. Watching the Tagesschau (American: "Daily Overview" of local and international news) and then a program about animals in Finland kept us awake until 9PM, but that was all for us and we were glad to head for bed. |
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