Wanderung 31

As the Scottish poet Robert Burns once wrote, "The best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft aglay." Although we had great plans for another couple pleasant days in Hamburg and then a driving tour in Ireland with Lois and Beth, it all came to naught when I came down with apparently a Norovirus that I may have caught the last day on the ship. I started to feel ill that evening, and after vomiting and diarrhea all night, I felt like a limp rag the next morning.

We both hoped a day of rest would allow me to shake it off, but I just slept continuously for the next 24 hours, at the end of which I decided I could not do the driving tour. We emailed Lois and Beth about it and then called United Airlines to change our tickets back to the US to the next day. The nice ticket agent at United was very helpful, and just charged us a "change of ticket" fee of $300 apiece rather than forcing us to simply purchase a completely new ticket, which would have cost us $1300 each, which she could well have done as we had booked the cheapest, non-refundable tickets. Thus, the nice lady saved us $2000, for which I was grateful as I was at a very low ebb and just wanted to get back home.

After one last night recovering at Detlef and Susanne's house, Heinke and Gustl were so kind to act as a taxi service and pick us up there and drive us directly to the airport. I was so grateful they did that as I was so weak that I was not sure I could manage to take the bus and train over to the airport. Even waiting in line to check our luggage, I was so weak that I could not stand up and had to sit on the luggage to rest, which has never happened to me before.

The flight home was long and arduous, but I was barely conscious most of the time so it just felt like a weird daytime nightmare of some kind. Our new GOES membership helped us get quickly through the US Customs and Immigration checks at Newark airport, which was another blessing, and then we just had the final puddle-jumper flight back to Dulles airport. Being utterly exhausted, I chose to pay a taxi to drive us directly to our doorstep, and we just pulled our luggage inside, emailed our boys that we were home safely, and then collapsed for the night. All told, it took me another week to really recover from that illness and take up the reins of normal life again. But really up to that point, we had had a wonderful trip around the Baltic Sea with Linda and Jerry, and had seen several new, exotic ports.