We had a difficult time figuring out where we wanted to go this year. The Pacific Northwest held a high place in this list, as did Arizona and Boston. With the Euro-dollar exchange rate what it is right now, we decided on Europe. After thinking Italy, Austria, Ireland or the Scandinavian countries, we settled on Munich. I researched, planned and triple checked flights and connections to make sure it would all go smoothly. Best laid plans as they say.

Our flight out ended up delayed three hours – the amount of time I left between landing in Atlanta and taking off from Atlanta in case of a delay. The gate agents at a Delta were incredible. They tried booking us on a flight to a different city with a connection to Munich through Amsterdam. Couldn’t get on that flight. They tried an Atlanta flight that went through Amsterdam – no luck. We couldn’t make the connection to Paris, so back to the drawing board. We finally ended up with a flight to Frankfurt with a connection to Munich on Lufthansa. How they did this, I have no idea.

We made (just) the Frankfurt flight. The flight itself was uneventful and we had an easy time getting into Frankfurt. Almost every airport I’ve been in has passport control as the first thing you do. You go through passport control before you have any access to any other portion of the airport. Not Frankfurt. Frankfurt we figured out which terminal and gate had our connecting flight, then went through the airport to that area. We went through security (think American TSA screening) with no ID and no ticket. You just go through and while it is easier than the U.S. Airports, they are way more thorough – the number of bags they had people open (including both Bob and I) to check specific items, was amazing. Yet still faster and easier than most U.S. airports.  We made our connection into Munich, made our way to the hotel via the train system and headed out for our first taste of Germany. We said we were going to have a few adventures in German, but I wasn’t counting on the trip to get here being a part of that.