Against All Odds
By Lothar. Filed in Germany |
It is April 29th and we are at the Cologne main train station, awaiting the arrival of ICE 513. We register with a big relief that nobody overslept and all students and chaperons are at least present, even though some are not awake. We learn of a late night disco visit until 4 or 5 AM and some never saw their beds on the last night in Cologne. The train is on time and we grab any open seat, after we had noticed that our original seat reservations were made out for the wrong date!
This is the fastest train in Germany and we are flying at ground level : 300 km/h (187 MPH) is our speed and we do not feel any track noise or vibrations. I walk up to watch the train driver through the glass door and it is fun to see the train tracks in front of us, racing under our car. We arrive at the Frankfurt airport train station in less than 1 hour. After disembarking, we all are standing on the platform and Gabi has the great idea to make a “group check”, her proven system to ensure that all are present!
One student is missing !!
The high-speed ICE train is still standing there, but is ready to close the doors for departure. Without any regard for his own safety, intrepid Joe is jumping back on the train and finds the sleeping student while yelling his name at maximum decibel level. The train’s conductor is nice enough to hold the train until Joe plus sleepy student and luggage emerge again from our train coach.
I will not mention the male student’s name, because that might get me into trouble with our site administrator and editor-in-chief (aka Carsten).
Next we teach the students how to drive the luggage carts on and off the airport’s escalators and nobody gets killed by falling suitcases!
We manage to guide our group of, now again, 32 people to the US Airways check-in counter and the next Maalox moment strikes Gabi. Another student now notices that he has lost his US passport. Without passport, no travel across borders!
Fortunately, Gabi pulls out her stack of papers and a photocopy of his passport. We can’t believe our luck, but the supervisor at US Airways is unbelievably helpful and checks us in for the flight to Philadelphia, accepting just the xerox copy of the passport. Now we approach German passport checkpoint, but the American supervisor is there to meet us and speaks on our behalf to the Germans, so that they let our “Alzheimer” student out of Germany. Another phone call from the German immigration officer to his supervisor and, after a lot of fear and stress on empty stomachs, we finally board the plane.
Us Airways flight 781 closes its doors at 11:15 AM. Gabi makes one final head count of her students and then collapses into her seat!! She had done it and we are on our way home.
While she is sleeping, I watch the coastline of the European continent, the British Channel and follow our flight up the east coast of England.
Later on, I have some great views of snow-covered New Foundland and Labrador .
We see downtown Boston, Logan Airport and sunny Cape Cod from 39,000 feet high.
Next comes the New Jersey coast and beaches, Atlantic City on my left and just before landing, the Delaware River in Philadelphia.
Now we realize that we are not home yet ( remember the lack of a passport!). Again, we approach an immigration officer with our student and a lot of trepidation. The officer gives him a stern lecture about losing his passport and the student gets sent to a special screening room for further interrogation. They take his passport xerox and boarding passes, but he is allowed into the country. Now comes the next obstacle, in form of a TSA screener. He won’t let us go to the next airport terminal without a boarding pass for our flight to Albany! We sent Rob and Joe with the rest of the students ahead, while Gabi, myself and the unlucky student have to go to US Airways ticket counter to get him a new boarding pass. The ticket agent misunderstands our request and states that without a passport, there will be no new boarding pass. He disappears to talk to his supervisor, while the clock is ticking ( 40 minutes until our flight to Albany). We finally clear up the confusion (he had understood that we were flying to Germany, instead of coming from Germany), and get the replacement boarding pass. Now the three of us do one more run through an airport and catch up with the rest of our group.
The kids give the teachers a very nice Thank-You card and Gabi gets a Smart car out of chocolate from her students.
The kids are in high spirits, home being less than 45 minutes flying time away from now. Our group fills up half of the Embraer 170 jet and the other passengers on the plane get to hear our song “Viva Colonia”.
A great finish to a great trip through Germany!