I got to DFW at 9 AM, 2 hours early to be safe. The flight took off at 11 AM CST and landed in Toronto at 2 PM (3PM EST). Then the flight to Frankfurt left at 5:30 PM EST and got to Frankfurt at 1 AM EST (7 AM German Time). THEN I flew from Frankfurt to Dusseldorf, leaving at 10AM and getting there at 11AM. After getting all my bags, I had to find the train and caught the 12 PM train to Dortmund, getting in at 12:45. After taking the underground, I ended up not getting into my room till 2 PM German time, so about 6 AM EST. So door to door that's about 22 hours worth of travel, and it took around 14 hours of sleep to recover from.
Dinner on the flight from Toronto to Frankfurt was better than I remember most Airline meals. It might not look gourmet but at the end I was full and satisfied. I don't know whether it's because I was coming from Canada, going into Germany, because I was in between countries, or just because I was on an airplane, but I was served my first (legal) beer for dinner. This seemed like a pretty important milestone in the average college student's life, so I thought I'd include it in the dinner photo-shoot.
Between watching the second season of 30 Rock, Yes Man, and Inkheart (Which was terrible, don't ever watch it, even under threat of death), I was content to sit out my ten hours of flight time. I even finished my book I've been reading since Christmas! Since I never get to read at school, and too much of my time at home is spent sleeping or otherwise being lazy, 80% of my book-reading now takes place in transit. So I finished 20,000 Leagues and am now starting A Brave New World.
Pretty sure this is the first Mars Bar I've had in 10 years:
After the three flights I took a train to Dusseldorf, and I have to say the trains in Germany (And probably all of Europe) makes the Philly SEPTA seem Amish. It was such a smooth ride, and no annoying swaying from side to side. Heiko, a PhD-equivalent Dortmund student, picked me up at the train station. The house that all of the international students stay in is right in downtown Dortmund, in contrast to where most of the regular students stay on campus. I actually like this a lot, since I'll have so little actual class this summer I'll already be downtown and it'll be much easier to get to the city. Speaking of which, after unpacking my room, I headed out to explore downtown Dortmund and see what I could find.
