Here at Last

I’ve made it! And I’m so happy to be here.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, I managed to sleep through almost the entire flight. I woke up somewhere over Iceland to see the sunrise, which was beautiful. Glacier beneath, blue sky above, and a hazy, buttercup yellow horizon, as far as the eye could see. Unfortunately, cheap digital cameras, snap happy tourists and easy facebook uploads have cheapened the beauty of the view from a plane. The photo I took, like most such photos, captures only a fraction of the actual beauty.

Sadly, the seat beside me was empty. Joleen ended up cancelling a few hours before we were to be at the airport. After a moment of sad silence though, I decided to make the most of it, lifted up the arm rest, and stretched out across the two seats.

The landing was so smooth the entire plane erupted into cheers and clapping once we touched down. They erupted again when the clearly Quebecois flight attendant concluded a valiant attempt at making an announcement in German, complete with plenty of rolled r’s.

Coming in for landing, I got a great view of Frankfurt. There are only a dozen or so high rises in the downtown area. Though Frankfurt is reputed to be modern and skyscraper-ey, it would likely not be classified as such by North American standards. As we were coming in for landing, the plane flew parallel to the autobahn. It was hard to gauge how fast the cars were going, except in relation to the others, but I did notice some cars in the fast lane weren’t going much slower than the plane itself…

I was greeted at the airport by Shar and Jonas. Was it ever good to see them! Shar sat with me in the backseat of their car and showered me with gifts in the form of croissants, pastries, cookies, brownies and coke! I am certain those gifts were straight from the heart.

We stopped at IKEA on the way home for a snack and finally made it to their adorable little apartment in Pforzheim. I sleep on the sofa bed in the living room, which I fell asleep on at about 11pm German time, which would be 2pm in Vancouver. I slept straight through until 5am, about an hour ago, which is actually a rather tame jet lag so far. I’ve found myself a croissant and am now set up in Jonas’ office while the others still sleep.

This morning I’m going with Shar to her integration course on German politics and society. It’s entirely in German, so I’m not going to understand a thing, but I’m going to try.

On my way through customs into Germany, I thoroughly confused the border guard by explaining I was visiting family, but was unable to explain this to him in German. First task of the day: learn German!