Category: Travel

Homesick

I have never experienced homesickness before. Ever.

I have traveled all over the world. I have stayed weeks in places. I have wanted so badly to stay and never return home… but now… now that I actually live far away ….

I’m homesick.

I’m not sure why. It could be the dreary weather and the cold. It rains and snows on and off with a few glimpses of sun. The temps aren’t even that bad. It gets into the 50’s and down into the 30’s. But no extreme lows.

It could be the grocery stores (a place I LOVE). The stress of not having a bagger and most of the time not understanding the language of the cashier. I frantically try to pull out money then proceed to bag my own items all the while the cashier has moved on and is throwing the next customers groceries towards me.

It could be the fact that I am so far away from family and friends.

Though, I admit I am a homebody. I don’t often put myself out there, I like my routine, work – gym – home. But here I have no job, I have no friends, no open gyms (dreaded home workouts) and I have only my boys (husband + 2 dogs) around me.

Don’t get me wrong – they’re great, but it would be nice to have a girlfriend to chat with over coffee or wine.

I am trying to put myself out there here. But as moving in the middle of a pandemic would have it… it’s not easy. Plus Munich is quite strict on the rules and no one here questions them – they just do as they’re told.

Very un-American. We question everything.

Language classes don’t start for me until March, and it feels so far away. And even then I believe they’ll be online at first… so no human contact.

Without a job – which I thought I would be more excited about – I don’t have a great purpose in life right now. It’s hard to be idle. I am used to go-go-going.

Weekends we try to explore what we can within our limitations. You can walk up to a castle but not into it… so many of these trips we will have to plan to do again.

So, I find myself here. In a beautiful but dreary and locked down place, and I have developed homesickness.

Portland

I will be honest with you…

I have been having a hard time writing my thoughts on Portland.

One, because it is a literal shit hole (excuse my French)

Two, because the rest of Oregon is not.

Matthew and I stayed in a hotel exactly one night in downtown Portland. On the way to said hotel, I questioned Matthew on our safety. I know it may come as a shock to you, but lining the street all the way to the hotel were various tents and fire pits along the sidewalks next to boarded up, abandoned businesses.

In a sense, the only living things were living on the streets.

The next morning we took a walk to grab some coffee from a shop between the boards. Between the piles of human feces and needle-laid bushes. Behind the beautiful yet sad graffiti painted streets.

Don’t get me wrong, I think we should be doing something to help these drug addicted people. But allowing them freedom to shit and shoot up wherever they please is NOT the answer.

In one part of the city there is a parking lot full of tents that is set up JUST LIKE A NORMAL NEIGHBORHOOD… but….They literally have no laws. They pay no taxes. They have no rules.. and they have no toilets.

Portland is a giant toilet.

Why is it that they can parade around in the masses, sans face masks, while working folk in California are threatened with the turning off of water and power if they have the audacity to do such a thing?

We are SO divided.

Where is the help? Why are we relying on the politicians who line their pockets with OUR MONEY to do something about this? When all they do is turn the other cheek and let them keep on living this way.

But I’ll stop before I piss too many people off.

So…. anyway. The graffiti was unbelievable. It was BEAUTIFUL.

The city has this ominous yet gorgeous glow to it. While you walk around in the fog, slightly worried about your safety.

You can’t help but stop and stare at the intricate paintings on the wood nailed onto the expensive shops on the red brick sidewalks. You could see the damage behind the wood from all the rioting. The cracks in the windows above the barrier around the Apple store.

Portland is beautiful in a very sad way.

Needless to say, we checked out of our hotel and moved into the outskirts of Portland. Where the homeless still live in the trees but society is still moving.

We can do better.

Time to…. wait

It’s almost time… starting today we have seven weeks until we can fly to Germany.

The Visa’s have been “pre-approved” and we have our meeting with the German Consulate coming up on Tuesday in Houston.

The process thus far has been LONG and TEDIOUS. It seems to be a lot of hurry up and wait. And if it weren’t for this second surge of COVID we would have booked tickets out and spent the better part of November and December exploring the European countryside/looking for housing/settling in.

As it stands, we cannot go until Matthew’s start date (that’s my amazing husband). Which is Jan 1. At which time we must quarantine for a minimum of 5 days. During that time we are not allowed to leave our place of residence for anything… including walking our dogs.

OUR DOGS.

Now this has been a headache in itself. I cannot leave them here. I just can’t. I will be unable to function especially as they are older and even leaving them with my parents is out of the question. They are my babies.

However, in Munich the real estate is so desired that having a dog (let alone two) is quite a challenge. We’ve had to write motivational letters including pictures of us and the dogs to send to possible land lords (is that a PC term anymore?) as well as letters from prior landlords backing us up in the fact that I have raised two well behaved, house trained and beautiful mongrels. (Jury is still out for Pepe, however, Zucker is a gem).

Then we are tasked with flying them out. American Air and various other airlines have currently discontinued their flight program for relocating animals and no animals are to be transported on any the flights. I nearly had a breakdown at work when I read this. Luckily Lufthansa still allows animal transportation, so that is who we are planning on flying with as of today.

Then we met with a few pet relocation service providers… the average cost to ship them came out to be around 4k…. so! we are planning on doing it ourselves. We already purchased the approved kennels and have been working on the correct shots and approvals with vets and what have you… I won’t go into all the nitty gritty but just know it’s been stressful.

On top of that! I quit my job prematurely due to our original plan being us leaving this month (November). So I’ve got lots of time to do lots of things – all of which I haven’t been doing.

I spend my days working out, writing Matthew and I’s workouts, still buying and selling second hand clothes (due to COVID this has decreased substantially) and playing dress up. I practice German with Duolingo and I plan on starting language classes with Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich on Jan 7. I won’t be working when we get over there so I plan to just immerse myself in the culture and try to learn the language. Deutsch ist schwer.

For now I cross my fingers that I can go on our trip to Portland/Seattle in two weeks. The consulate meeting goes well next week. And we make it overseas with the dogs in tow with little to no more hurdles… who am I kidding, we are going to have tons to jump over.

Until my next post,

Auf Wiedersehen

Don’t panic – Tales of a standby flyer

Could always be worse right? At least that’s what we tell ourselves when things go south… But I was too chipper this past weekend to let anything stand in my way. 

It all started with the “storm of the century”.. insert eye-roll.  If you ask me, we always think a bad storm is the worst we’ve ever seen.. and then the “if you like our weather just wait a few minutes, it’ll change” spiel I hear in EVERY TOWN of EVERY STATE I’ve ever been to. 

Catchy, but the world is just a place of unknown and unpredictable.. Your corner of the world isn’t much different from most others corners (crazy weather wise…)… though I’ve been some places where the weather is a perfect sunny and 75 year round… it’s the people that are the reason I am not trying to move there.

Pick your poison I guess.

Okay – rant over.

Anyway – the day started off nicely. I got to the airport (on my way to a bachelorette weekend in Savannah, GA) and got a parking spot on a lower level. I get through the security check point within ten minutes and my gate is right there so I stroll on over.

The airport is slow – not many people at the gate, I find a seat, pull out my phone, check the app for standbys….

I panic.

I had been religiously checking my spot in line daily up to this moment.. I even checked my spot in line A FEW MINUTES before I drove off to the airport.

I went from 5th in line with 35 or so open seats to 50th or so and an overbooked flight by at least 20. If you’re counting – thats about 50 new people seemingly out of nowhere trying to make this flight. Of course I didn’t make it on. The storm of the century grounded or diverted over 60 airplanes the night before. So all those people dispersed onto other open flights.

Panic ensues more. I try to contact my flight attendant sister who I assumed was in Hawaii and sound asleep so I call my mom. No Answer.

My palms were sweaty, knees weak, arms were heavy…

Then Stefanie (flight attendant sister) texts me letting me know that she has landed at DFW and is about to sprint to her second gate to catch her flight to Hawaii… She jokingly invites me along as her flight has plenty of seats open.

But she calls me when she gets off the plane and talks me through it. It was such an easy process and it just put me in the best mood. I could just find a flight that was open and practically hop on.

So I catch a flight to Memphis. Have a seat assignment before I even get to the gate. Walk right on. No problem.

Land in Memphis… where there was a nice little group of us waiting to catch the next flight. Nice, friendly people and we all stood together just out of the way to watch the charades that ensued.

It started with an elderly lady and her son who just NEEDED to board that flight. Apparently she had called earlier to see if she could catch a flight a few hours before her actual flight. I’m not sure where the miscommunication came from but they gave her a standby ticket and she thought it was a guaranteed seat. After a half an hour of explanations and with her stating numerous times to “just give me someone else’s seat” and repeatedly being told that legally they cannot do that… and then her still insisting… she somehow got on that aircraft.

Whoofta.

A few flyers behind her in line was a young, wispy, straight haired, red-head being that comes marching up in these outrageous green platform shoes, torn hiking clothes and a quite large purple hiking backpack on… she scans her ticket and is told she cannot take that bag on and that it must be checked.

Arguments are really dumb when you’re sitting out watching them.

But she argues and argues and argues, saying “I always fly with this and never have to check it” and “Just let me on and I’ll show you”.

GOD FORBID she has to wait for her baggage like the rest of us peasants.

They offer to let her stick it in the size box, she won’t, they push her aside and a couple walks up… same story.. bag too big.

Suddenly the entire gate seams to be arguing (given the only people arguing was just the family, the two gate agents and the red haired alien screaming and making hand gestures while the others ignore her). Finally one agent says “fine, this is now a matter of you either check your bag or you don’t get on the flight”.

Family gives in. Runs down the runway. Alien still standing there but now shoving her bag into the size box. The bag obviously does not fit, but she is shoving and shoving chanting “yes it fits see”… the agents aren’t amused and give her the ultimatum again.

It gets dead quiet. She stares them down… they break the stare and calmly begin letting other people on. The other agent turns and prints off her baggage check ticket and turns towards her again. She finds that she has not won, she gives in with a huff a three year old would do when they don’t get their way. She takes the ticket for the bag and stomps her green platforms to the runway while flipping everyone the bird.

So I miss that flight but was sort of happy to… and the small group of us hang out until the next flight to Charlotte. (I can’t make it into Savannah so I rented a car the night before so I could tour the countryside)

The Memphis airport is small – not much to do nor much time to venture out. So I find the only really acceptable eatery on my side of the terminal, a BBQ place called “Jim Neely’s Interstate BBW”. And OMG – surprisingly delicious.

I’m pretty sure I sent my boyfriend numerous texts about how good the beans were (I hate BBQ beans) they put brisket in them. But the ribs, OH THE RIBS, those were the fall off the bone kind of ribs that even us Texans can’t perfect… and I LOVE a good rib.

Paid my dues – back to my gate. Happy and full.

The flight starts boarding… I am not so sure I’ll make this one either. No crazy riders though so I cross my fingers… plus my plans to drive across South Caroline in the daylight and to catch a little hike somewhere along the way are already gone… So I don’t mind, too much.

At this point I’d like to set the stage and tell you that all the surrounding gates are empty. No people, no agents, nothing. Just our gaggle of people pushing to get to their seat first. There are probably five standby riders… They start calling us on – I watch as they board standby flyer number one, number two, number three…. four and I look at each other. I recognize him from missing the earlier flight, we nod knowingly. They call his name…

So I’m left standing there, almost completely alone with the agent and out of no where a woman shows up with a ticket in her hand.

I am doomed.

She approaches the agent right as flyer number four disappears into the walk way and they start talking. I am not paying attention as I don’t want to hear her say she is just late.

Agent types, doesn’t look up, says “Blair”.

My heart jumps out of my chest and I take three large steps forward. I’m now one step away and before I can take that last step the agent looks up, makes eye contact with me and sternly (and little too loudly in my opinion) says “STAND BY”

OooOOoooOoohhh

That’s why they call us that. I snap to attention and take my big three steps backwards and stand there like a cadet. “MA’AM YES MA’AM”

So there I am again, trying not to panic, I didn’t sleep the night before and I’m afraid a drive at midnight would be a bad idea… while I ponder this for a few she repeats my name and tells new flyer number six “you don’t have a seat on this flight”

BUT I DO. I am giddy and I gallop down the runway as if the airplane is going to leave me there.

I get on, I’ve got the last seat in the very back right night to standby flyer number four. He smiles surprised to see me but states he is very happy to see I made it on. It was a nice flight and he was very pleasant, so I didn’t mind the cramped quarters.

Land on the tarmac – depart the plane on the tarmac, which was cool, I always feel like a celebrity when that happens. Letting my hair snap around in the wind, I always want to pause like they make the president do to take his picture.

I didn’t get to pause because I wasn’t the last one off. Next time though.

I grab my bag and march on down to the car rental building.

Things are going smoothly.

I take the elevator up to the car lot and approach the teller station. Standing there is a foreign couple who seamed to have been waiting quite some time.. they do speak English and they move aside so I can get my car.

The lady behind the counter, though pleasant and helpful to me, is rude to just about everyone else. And some man keeps popping in out of no where like Sonic the hedgehog.

As he is flying by he is telling the foreigners “no worries, your car is just now being vacuumed”. He stops once to put a piece of paper behind the couple who are faced away, walks around to the front of them says “sign this” to no one in particular and proceeds to start an argument with the lady who is helping me.

PTSD from a few hours earlier and the terminal fiasco.

This time I jet into action. I get the couples attention, point to the paper, mimic me signing a piece of paper. They look around, no pens.

I spot a bouquet of pens… you know, the ones with the flowers on the end. It’s sitting between the arguing employees. I reach through and barely grab one by its petals and pull it out… this wasn’t easy as you would think as the man was leaned through the window of the tellers box and moving almost violently with each word that was said.

The foreigners laugh, but they laugh in that way that tells me that they are not impressed with America. Scoff would probably be the better word. I want to apologize to them but at this point the lady has thrust keys into my hand and is telling me to go to stall 40.

I find the little Kia Rio. Cute. Economic. Clean. I feel good about it. I sign off and get in.

I start adjusting things… I am lead to believe a very tall very large man was driving this car before me. The seats pushed all the way back and is leaned almost as far back as it will go.

I adjust, adjust, adjust and find the leaver to pull up the seat up so it’s sitting upright.

Nothing happens.

I grab the leaver while grabbing the back of the seat and ppuuuuullllll.

Nothing.

I get out, get behind the seat (not easy as it’s leaned so far back) grab the leaver and push my body into the seat.

Notta.

I walk up to the tellers station.

Everyone is gone.

Time is wasting… so I decide to drive to Georgia in the little car practically lying down, in the dark playing all the gangster music I can find (so maybe people will think the lean back is on purpose) to make the drive more pleasurable.

I made it there and back without issue. But a lot of fun in between!

There are worse things that can happen, right?

Thanks for reading! I’ll post separate blogs about my time in Savannah, Charleston and my stop in Congaree national park soon!