traveldiary.stracke.us

Trying to get any information from United Airlines about our missing scuba duffel bag proves difficult to impossible!
There is no local phone number for United at Lihue Airport, and I place about half a dozen phone calls to the Baggage Service’s 800 number over the next 2 days. Where am I calling?
India, of course. The poor agent at the other end of the line has no idea where Lihue or Kauai are located, and can not tell me when we might see our bag.
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Today is July 27 and, for the first time in my life, I am a suspect! We are scheduled to fly to Hawaii, but the TSA lady at the Albany Airport, claims that I have explosives powder on my hands. I get to the front of the line and my body and luggage are thoroughly examined. I don’t know, if my remark, that I always play with fireworks, earned me the special security screening or if the machine is really this bad in detecting real stuff. By the time I can take possession of my luggage again, Gabi is catching up with me and we continue on our way to Hawaii. Our United flight to Washington Dulles actually leaves the gate 10 minutes early, which should help us to make a tight connection in IAD to catch United 49 to Los Angeles, our next way point.
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Another GAPP exchange is coming to an end. On Friday, Gabi and I buy another round of train tickets for our group. Gabi and Joe take the students by train from Porz for a final visit to Cologne. I drive our Smart rental car and meet them in front of the Cathedral.
Today there is no more sight-seeing on the agenda, just free time and shopping. Gabi and I rather eat instead: lunch at the Dinea Kaufhof restaurant and for dessert “Bienenstich” from Merzenich bakery. We also buy some “Mohnkuchen” to take back home.
In the evening, there is a nice good-bye party in the school. The teachers and a couple of students make some brief speeches. It seems that all the parents and students, German or American, had a great time and enjoyed the whole experience. The chaperones receive many thanks and chocolate or flowers.
Gabi makes some final remarks about the importance for people from different cultures to meet and understand each other, and I feel a little emotional, since this is our last exchange trip.
On Saturday, we “fly” on the ICE 529 from Koeln-Deutz to Frankfurt Airport. First, there is the usual commotion on the station platform in Koeln.
There are many hugs and good-bye tears, with German families and our students forming a big crowd. I begin to wonder, how I will get the Americans all untangled and on board the train. The Deutsche Bahn solves my problem. For the second time in four days, our reserved train coach does not stop at the designated platform area. Now I have our group running after the train, with all our luggage in tow. Gabi tells the conductor about our 34 people, and the train has to wait until we are all on board. The train travels the 164 km distance in 50 minutes, with a speed of up to 300 km/h or 187 MPH (102 miles in 50 minutes). We are faster than the cars on the Autobahn next to us!
Our flight continues to Philadelphia and Albany, where we arrive at 10PM, 30 minutes ahead of schedule.
Prior to landing, the flight attendant welcomes our students back to Albany, telling the other passengers over the PA where we have been for the last 2 weeks. We are happy, when all the students are picked up by their parents. Gabi gets a lot of thanks and hugs. This has been a great group of young people, who were very easy to travel with. Students as well as parents are very appreciative for all of Gabi’s organizational skills and successful execution of the entire exchange program.
Good job, Gabi.
Now take a break, relax and get your health back! We are done with GAPP!!!

Our group collapses on the cots in the Charlotte airport departure hall at
3 AM. Some of us had planned ahead and took the pillows and blankets from our canceled flight.
It is freezing cold in the Terminal and I am happy to have my fleece vest, leather jacket and blanket. Starting at 4 AM, the Terminal comes to life with a PA announcement about not leaving your luggage unattended (repeated every 15 minutes). The only problem is that we don’t have any luggage. It makes it very difficult to get any shut eye! Before going to “sleep”, I was able to rebook our group on a flight to Frankfurt via Philadelphia for the next day.
This is how we celebrate Valentine’s Day 2010!
We are up again at 6 AM and look for our luggage. All but 2 suitcases are gone, and we are assured by US Airways staff that our luggage will be on our flight. At 9:15 AM we fly back to Philadelphia. Flight US 9011 is an empty 767 wide body and we can stretch out on empty rows, to get some more rest. At 5 PM on February 13th, we take off from Philadelphia, final destination Frankfurt, Germany. The seats in Economy are pure torture.
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Gabi is doing it again. This time she is taking 30 High School students and 4 adults on another GAPP Exchange Trip to Germany.
In the beginning, things are running smoothly. After take-off from Albany International, the pilot flies North and gives us a nice aerial view of Clifton Park, Round Lake and Saratoga Lake, before turning South-East.The flight from Albany to Charlotte is smooth sailing, and in Charlotte we have about 3 hours until our US flight 704 is scheduled to depart for Frankfurt, Germany at 8:10 PM.
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We just cruised the skies non-stop for an entire night and entire day, aboard Air Canada AC 88, a Boeing 777-200LR, without refueling. We left Shanghai on August 27 at “sunset” and flew for 12:40 hours, going east against the travel of the Sun, and landed in Toronto at 19:45, still the same day, August 27!
This time, there was a real sunset. In Shanghai, all we saw was a dirty haze in the “air” and dusk at 5 PM. I was prepared to use our duckbill face masks in the Pudong Shanghai International Airport, but nobody around us was coughing or sneezing. We had to go through immigration, in order to check in our bags. We were a little worried that we would end up stranded here in the Terminal, like Tom Hanks in the movie.
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We are in the air again; this time on a Lufhansa flight between Frankfurt and Singapore. Thanks to Lothar’s ingenuity, we are in Business class with seats claiming to go down to 180 degrees. I view the entertainment guide and see that there really aren’t any new films to be seen. Since having subscribed to Netflix, we are always on top of the latest films, we wish to view. It is already 11PM and the stewardess comes with a dinner menu, which I decline, since I am looking forward to my flat bed and a restful night of sleep. The flight is almost 12 hours long, so that should give me a good ten hours of snoozing time. Before dozing off , I hear the captain remind everyone, “Sie sind verpflichtet sich anzuschnallen”. In English, the captain would ask the passengers to”please fasten your seatbelts”. In German, the translation reads, “You are obligated to fasten your seatbelt”. To the point, wouldn’t you agree?

I try to adjust my seat. It goes down nicely, the top portion to 180 degrees but no matter what I do,  I can’t get my legs to reach that magic number. They are always dangling at least 15 degrees down. Now I know I shouldn’t complain because all those poor souls in Economy have much greater problems, but I feel like I’m sleeping on a slide. After many maneuvers, I finally find a position of comfort and am off into slumberland. The flight was rather smooth, except for some bumpy sections over the Caucasus and near the Himalayan Mtns. The captain came on only once with his obligatory warning.

When at a later time I ask Lothar about the bumps, he casually asks”what bumps”? Either he or I was under the influence of a possible side effect of the Lariam, which we are taking against the mosquitoes. Nightmares! Delusions!???

The next day, after having lost another night and day in time, at  4:00PM local time, we touch down in the city-state of Singapore.

The media is showing plenty of coverage about the Moon landing on July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, but does not participate with all the media attention. Buzz Aldrin, on the other hand, seems to enjoy his spot in the limelight and can be seen on every TV show. He was the second man on the moon, but now reveals each small trivia, including his claim to be the first man on the moon to have emptied his bladder there.
I read in the Sueddeutsche paper that Munich Technical University scientists have measured the distance from Bavaria to the Moon. The laser beam traveled the 769000 kilometers in 2.56 seconds. Now I know how close the Moon is to Bavaria! Every year, the Moon does move 3,8 centimeters further away from us. Oh well, I can live with that.
Another space flight trivia: in 1970 future Apollo astronauts Eugene Cernan (Apollo 17), Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) were undergoing geological training in the Bavarian “Noerdlinger Ries”. Why would NASA train their astronauts in Bavaria?
Simple answer : it is the rock.
Approximately 143 million years ago, a meteorite hit this area north of Munich with a power comparable to several one hundred thousand Hiroshima Atomic Bombs. The resulting crater measures 500 meter deep and 25 kilometers wide. The Meteorite Suevit stone is apparently similar to the Moon rock.
The Americans also appreciated Bavarian food and beer enough to later donate a real piece of Moon Rock to the Noerdlingen Museum.

Belated Post:

After two months of being without wheels, today is the big day! We are picking up our new car from the Mercedes Benz factory in Sindelfingen near Stuttgart. First , with our friends Maria and Rolf, we get to ride the ICE train from Hanau over Frankfurt to Stuttgart. The German trains always come with their own excitement, today was to be no different. Instead of a leisurely journey, in Frankfurt HBF, Lothar is called into action. We had a patient on the train in need of medical services. (See Lothar’s post)

After a half hour delay and finally arriving in Stuttgart, we catch a cab to the Mercedes Benz factory. The driver almost left before Rolf was able to get in and seat himself.  Stuttgart, like many of the cities in Germany now has a tunnel beneath part of the city which diverts the traffic away from the center.  Twenty minutes later we arrive at the factory and in their restaurant, each of us are served a delicious lunch of our choice. We had thought we would have lunch in a canteen…..not at Mercedes, they do everything with class. We did forgo the wine, since it was only midday and the Germans are real strict on DWI.

The next stop was a movie, highlighting the history of the company and its various products. Then came the factory tour. Wow, what a tour it was!  We saw how the cars are mostly made with robots. Ok  I know that everyone knows that, but it was really extraordinary to see how two giant robots can actually work together within inches  of each other and not ever make a mistake. I guess that is why they use robots; they also don’t need toilet, cigarette or coffee breaks. They reminded me of the large transformers out in the movies right now.  If the robots had eyes and could talk, I am sure there would have been interesting conversations going on.  One of the most stunning  stops on the tour was when a giant robot lifted the entire front panel of a car through its front windshield and attached it in the front of the car. This occurred again and again, every 90 seconds, producing 2000 new cars a day, which will be shipped all over the world. A lot of the assembly, but not everything was done by robots, the electronics in the dashboard,   the airbag installation, as well as the final fine tuning was done by humans. In the final stage, the car goes through a tunnel with hundred of laser sensors, which measure the accuracy of everything. Any part, which is outside of the allowable deviation(0,1mm), is then corrected by hand until the computer shows a green light heralding success.

Two hours later, we can finally take possession of our new “baby”.  It’s a beautiful car with way too many features to learn in a few minutes. The manual is 300 pages long, with 100’s of warnings for the American consumer. I decided it was better to let Lothar do the honors and drive it home to Hambachs. I will read the instructions and drive it later……………latest in CP.

Today, we take the ICE train from Hanau to Stuttgart, where we will pick up Gabi’s new GLK 350.
We just settled into our seats at the Frankfurt HBF, when the conductor is asking for a doctor to come to coach #9. After first running in the wrong direction, I make my way to the train car #9, taking the station platform. It crosses my mind that the train might leave without me, but the signal is on red and they have a medical emergency on board. I find a distraught young mother in car #9 and quickly evaluate her. She tells me that she is on her way to be hospitalized in a Homeopathic Hospital. Nausea, dizziness, upper back pain are the main complaints. She looks fine and has good pulses. She does not smoke, has no diabetes and no major health problems in the past. She tells me that she has had these symptoms for years. My diagnosis is “mostly stress and anxiety.” I feel like I am back home, working in the ER. The paramedics and a German emergency doctor arrive, and blood pressure, blood glucose and EKG are all normal. I reassure her that I look at many EKG’s every day, and she spontaneously states that she has trust in me. She does not say a word to the young German doctor in EMS gear. I take my leave and join Gabi, Maria and Rolf, 8 coaches down in 2nd class. I sat for less than 5 minutes, when a train official shows up, smiling and happy about the fact that she found me again. My “patient” had asked for me to sit next to her during the train journey, so she felt safer in my presence. Why me? I am trying to have a vacation!
The Conductor practically forces the four of us into First Class, and we obediently march back through 8 train coaches to be reunited with my patient. The train sat in the station during the whole chain of events. Now, we finally pull out of the station, 35 minutes late, on our way to Stuttgart.