Europe Post 2: Flight to Germany

When we arrived at the Detroit airport I was so excited to just get going! This trip was my first time leaving the country (excluding a quick family jaunt to Canada) and I was beyond excited to see more of the world. Lars is much more of the world traveler, so hopping on a plane to Europe was no big deal for him. Nonetheless, he was a great sport about it and let me be all giddy and excited to do basic things like buy a pack of overpriced gum at the airport shop.

It turns out the excitement of travel can quickly wear off around hour 6 in a 10 hour flight. We were fortunate enough to have no layovers, but our flight was overnight and sleeping on planes is hard! I did my best to fiddle around with the sleeping mask and mini, very thin airplane blanket (I luckily wore a scarf that doubled as an extra blanket!) and was able to get a few hours. Just our luck we had a couple very loud, crying babies right behind us. The joys of travel!!

When I was awake I tried to pass time by watching random in-flight movies. I did really enjoy Hector and The Search For Happiness, which was based on a book that I read a few summers ago.

It seems our troubles hit us much harder once we arrived in Germany. I was haggled a bit at the customs border (show me your hotel reservation -- errr, Lars has that on his phone and is already across the border since he went through the line for German citizens!).

The biggest stress of the travel came early, and that was when Hertz refused to give us our rental car! Long story short, we had paid with a credit card that Lars lent to his brother earlier in the summer, whom happened to actually be studying abroad in Germany. Because we didn't have the same card with us, they refused to let us use a different one to put down for the car! We ended up forking over almost all of our euros to be able to take the car sans insurance (thank god we had thought to take a bunch out before leaving!) and ended up driving a few hours each way to go find his brother, Nils, and grab the card.


Seeing Nils was an unexpected bonus, and lucky for us he let us take a nap in his dorm room to catch up on some much needed sleep!

Once we were feeling more awake we left Nils and drove BACK to the airport to put the card down with Hertz to ensure that our car was covered by insurance. Such an unnecessary hassle and suffice it to say, we shall not be renting from Hertz ever again!

After this whole shebang, we drove off to Saarland to check into our hotel for the night.
Our hotel ended up being the most lovely little spot with wonderful customer service. The manager put us up in the largest room (apparently it's rare for anyone to stay for more than 1 or 2 nights in Saarland!) and the room itself was gorgeous with the nicest bathroom ever. Kid you not - the shower was the most perfect shower, especially after such a long day!

   

Because we were both so exhausted from the long flight and unexpected 6+ hours of driving, we decided to just eat our late dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was surprisingly good! Not the cheapest place to eat, and we were probably under-dressed for how fancy it was, but it was warm food that we didn't have to drive out to get. I believe I had a nice salmon and asparagus dish and Lars ordered some sort of meat dish (classic orders for both of us).

We also enjoyed some massive German beers as we both felt they were well-deserved after such a stressful day!

Next post I'll get into more details about what we did while we were in Saarland and start to write about some of the day trips we took (Heidelberg and Luxembourg!).