Day 2 [May 9 2010]

I woke up from my rather brief rest at about 11:30 EST. Our flight trajectory was rather interesting as the plane went straight north to the upper border of Quebec before turning east to fly over the southern region of Greenland.  I was too curious to sleep and found myself constantly peeking out somebody’s window to look for a gap in the clouds to see the famous ice sheet. After a while, I got bored and decided to watch some good ol’ “Top Gear.”

After getting through an episode, the in-flight TV (unfortunately an archaic CRT screen jostling around on the ceiling) turned on to play ‘It’s Complicated’ starring Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. I wouldn’t recommend the movie, unless its free and you have time to spare, as its essentially an upscale soap opera with a few choice funny moments. Fortunately, it managed to burn through enough time to get us solidly into the North Sea near England, and our breakfast appetizer was served.

Before long, we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany. I find it funny that almost every airport, no, make that every airport in the world looks *exactly* the same from the runway. The signs to terminals and concourses are the same, almost all in English; even the font is the same. This turned out to be a blessing, seeing as I don’t know a single word of German (Other than bratwurst and hamburger). Also, more than 95% of Germans know English at least conversationally, so we’re OK.

On the bright side of things, ‘jet-lag’ (so far) hasn’t affected me whatsoever! Maybe it’s because I was awake all night and watching it get bright when my iPod clock said 2:00AM, but as of right now I have no symptoms at all. Still, I didn’t get much –any- sleep but adrenaline and caffeine (Germans know their latte machiattos) keep me conscious.

Frustratingly, because our trans-Atlantic flight was delayed, we couldn’t make our normal Istanbul flight.   Regan Barr stood in the Lufthansa line for over an hour to re-book our flight to Istanbul.   This time the wait was 9 hours. Wow, volcanoes sure can disrupt world-wide travel --- we saw more than one person sleeping on airport benches and floors and many red eyed  travelers suffering from sleep deprivation.

As of right now, I’m uploading pictures and writing up the events on my computer. My (EST) clock says 9:20am, but my body says 3:20pm (German time). Isn’t this the reverse of what should be happening?  It helps that we are sitting in Kuffler & Bucher eating the national food – bratwurst and sauerkraut.  Is this breakfast, second breakfast or lunch?  Not sure but it is very delicious!

We spent some time in a McDonald’s McCafe sub-store. It seems that in almost every country in the world you can order a Big Mac and Coca-Cola (Auskjghjklenheim das Koeka-Kowla, or something like that). Eventually we headed toward the terminal for our rather delayed flight, where we learned we were actually fairly lucky with regard to delays. Apparently ol’ Eyjafjallajokull had one too many bean burritos and was then spewing pyroclastic material (We’ve all been there). According to the German version of WLN, the volcano had covered much of Europe and most of Germany, *except* for Frankfurt and Istanbul. Wow, we really got lucky on this one. There were at least 20 standby hopefuls behind us who had come in by train from the other closed stations.

Our flight was pretty plain; we had the normal Lufthansa plane dinner and I then tried, and failed, to sleep. Fortunately the flight was short and I was near an Azerbaijani flying to Istanbul to tour the sights.  In Azerbaijan, their national language is nearly the same as Turkish. I tested a few attempted ‘Hadi Gorusuruz’s and a ‘Hoscakal’ on him (We’re pretty sure he’ll survive) and survived my flight without much boredom.

We soon landed in my second European country, Turkey, and learned that sadly my passport hadn’t been stamped for Germany as I had never left the airport. Hmmph. Fortunately, the Turkish border guard qualified me for the famed stamp of truth and excellence, and by 3:30 AM I sleepily wobbled out into the baggage claim.

Well, it appears that we weren’t done yet. To put it simply, our baggage hadn’t been delivered to the airport. It was in another country. Darn. I’m glad I followed the advice of bringing a spare pair of clothes in my carry-on, so I wouldn’t be on my 3^rd day of one pair of clothes.

We soon met our tour guide Ugur who speaks excellent English (and apparently Japanese too) who took us to our hotel where we checked in and went to sleep. I’m rather tired now (it’s the next day but I still haven’t slept enough), so I think I’ll end here.