Back In The U.S.S.....A

Greetings from Maine. Yeah, after about 5 months I'm home. The trip (the traveling home, I mean, not the entire German trip thing) was long and, let's be honest, sucky. It was over 30 hours of being awake and traveling. The worst was Basel, Switzerland. Basel is close to Freiburg, really close, so I figured it would be a good place to fly out of...but that was when I thought I was leaving Dec. 18, from Freiburg. I was flying out at 6 AM. I had to take a train that arrived there at 12:00 AM. Have you ever spent the night alone in an airport? Don't. I don't recommend it. Airports at night are huge, dark, and eerie. If you really need a place to rob somebody, the airport at like 1 AM should be right up your alley. You'll find 1 or 2 suckers like me, sitting in a chair with 2 bags under my chair and between my legs, with my suitcase standing up next to me as I try to rest my head on it and catch roughly 10 minutes of sleep per hour. Lame.

So finally I'm able to fly out of Basel, aaand...it's a 30 minute flight to Zurich. That's right, a half hour flight to Zurich, where I proceed to wait for almost 7 more hours. Zurich was closer to me by train than Basel was--where's the justice in that? Finally I fly from Zurich to Boston, a lovely 8 hour flight. I had my first airplane alcohol--one of those little bottles of wine. It wasn't as exciting as I would have expected, and I really couldn't understand why, on a SWISS Air flight, the only beer was Heineken and the only wine was Californian. There was also at one point a meal served that was basically a large hot pocket. The package told me it was made in Italy. My instinct (and tastebuds) told me it was a Nike factory in Taiwan.

But enough about airline food. My mom picked me up in Boston and brought me home to some great belated Christmas gifts, which it turns out were just to soften the blow of the 8 AM dentist appointment the next day. So anyway, by now hopefully my negativity has plunged you into depression, and because I'm still jetlagged, I don't feel like raising your spirits by talking about positive things, so I'll call it a night. Tune in next time, when I may slip up and write about things that I actually enjoy/ed.