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may 12, 2011 001
Anna waiting with her backpacking luggage.Hello from Dresden!!
Well, it was a long and arduous journey to get here. I woke up at 6:45 AM so we could get to the airport on time, which turned out to be good because Anna's reservation was screwed up when we got there, so they had to fix that. The flight to Newark was REALLY turbulent, which was strange, and when we got there, we had no gate information on the kiosk so we just hung around and wasted some time until it got closer to take-off. When we STILL didn't have gate information an hour before boarding started, we asked a representative, who told us that we had to go to another terminal. What we didn't realize was that going to another terminal meant having to exit and then RE-ENTER THROUGH SECURITY again, which took another good 40 minutes. I was a little concerned about our timing, but we ended up making it right in time for boarding.
As we were standing and waiting in line to board, there was a girl that kept catching my eye over by the information desk. Finally, I said to Anna, "Doesn't that girl over there look a lot like
may 12, 2011 002
On the flight to Germany. J-WOWW?" and she was like, "Um, maybe?" and it wasn't until Snooki turned around that I realized oh, that really is J-WOWW. The female cast of Jersey Shore was getting on our plane. They ended up sort of next to us in line and I oh-so-steathily snuck a picture with my phone. They were, of course, in first class, but during the 7 hour flight I played both The Situation's and Pauly D's songs and giggled a lot.
The problem was Dusseldorf, which was our second connection. Once again, we had to GO THROUGH SECURITY- yes, this does mean that I went through those blasted, stupid security lines three times today, and we already only had a 50 minute layover. We ended up behind the Jersey Shore girls at the passport check counter, which made me laugh all over again- what is with me and celebrities in airports? And why can't it work with anyone awesome, like Ryan Reynolds? They ended up having to HOLD our plane for us, because we were late due to it taking forever and a day to get through security.
We get to Dresden, and lo and behold, to absolutely no one's surprise,
may 12, 2011 004
Flying over the United Kingdom! they lost our luggage (mine, Anna's, and Nadeen's, who was on another connector into Dusseldorf but had the same layover time as us). So we had to go and file claims and they gave us some "overnight" packages to get us through. Dr. G picked us up and drove us around Dresden giving us the scenic tour, which was really cool- there's so much history here. I mean, in America, you've got MAYBE 200 years and that's on the high end, but here, everything is completely saturated in so much history. And not even old things; he was pointing out buildings that used to be barracks and places that were bombed during WWII, so there was that. It was really cool. There are CASTLES in the town I am LIVING in, what is this. I'm just- asjfkdjsfkjaskfjksdfkjdsk. So much of my time has been devoted to this history, castles and kings and queens and I'm just so overloaded (plus all that art history).
Our apartments are really cool- Anna and I aren't together, unfortunately, but I've got a single room and it's really nice. The first thing we did was hit the grocery store, which was an ADVENTURE. Because
may 12, 2011 005
Anna and J-WOWW, who is totally to her left in the security line. we speak absolutely no German. We ended up with a rule "only buy what we can carry home" since we walk home, and we ended up with sandwich food, hand soap for the bathroom, toilet paper, and beer. Epic. We're making a list of every beer at the grocery store and ranking them with a 1-5 star system. We've already got paper lists started.
Then we set out on a number of quests. First, the only thing of mine that didn't have multiple voltages was my hair dryer, and Anna's too, so we had to find hair dryers. We were thinking we were going to have to buy them, but when we went down to ask Herr Braun where exactly we could do this, he said "or you could rent them here" and let us rent hair dryers for no cost at all! We just have to give them back when we leave! He is our knight in shining armor~ <33333
After that, he gave us directions to the mall to get Anna a converter, and so we set off. We walked pretty far and finally found the mall we were looking for, feeling pretty much BAMF-tastic since
may 12, 2011 006
On our weird bus to the small plane that took us to Dresden from Dusseldorf. we'd done everything on our own so far. We found the media store and waffled with the converters (I had one, but I wasn't sure about it, and since they were like 3 Euro, I got one here and it works great!) and then we REALLY waffled with the prepaid phones. We couldn't understand what they were saying, and no one spoke English enough to help, haha, so we are going to ask Dr. G tonight what he thinks we should do instead to get super cheap phones just so we can call each other. It's a bit of a problem having to say "okay, come to my room at 4:30" because we have no way of contacting each other.
Speaking of phones, my phone worked and got reception in Japan just fine, but it can't even pick up a signal here. Weird.
Then we got food! Oh, language fail. We asked the guy at the bakery if he spoke English and there was a laughing, emphatic no in response, so we had to point and use exaggerated gestures for everything to order. I felt kind of bad. We REALLY should have gotten a German phrase book or
may 12, 2011 007
What was inside the "overnight" bag they gave us for losing our luggage. something, and neither of us thought of it. But we got through, and got our food, and then there was this HILARIOUS moment when we were trying to find a trash bin and Anna walked up to one and was like, "oh, that's just for cigarettes!" and we walked with our trash past 10 more before we realized that they were just normal trash bins for everything. LMAO WHAT. Her fault.
At this point, we were dying and running on total empty- we didn't really sleep at all on the plane and we arrived at 8 AM after everything, so obviously the correct thing to do was crack open the first beers. I should remember that drinking one beer and being so tired makes it REALLY strong, haha. We still had no luggage, and we are meeting Dr. G to walk around at 5 PM, so I decided to take a shower with the provisions we got in the overnight bag. It actually really helped. I feel a lot more like myself again, and ready to pull myself through these next 5 hours. I WANT TO SLEEP. T_____T But I can't. Must adjust.
For how much I love
traveling, I'm not a great traveler in general. I tend to get uneasy when I'm anywhere unfamiliar, sleeping-wise, so I got my bed ready and I'm hoping once the rest of my stuff gets here I can make it feel a bit more like home. I just need to feel comfortable to enjoy this to its fullest. I don't like having the vague, uncomfortable feeling in my stomach all the time haha. I'm glad I brought Jin the stuffed puppy. 😊)))
I have no make-up and luckily I brought an extra shirt and pair of underwear in my carry-on, so at least I have those, but I really wish I had my crap. aksdjfkdkfjsa ugh. Way to fail, Lufthansa.
Anyway, we are meeting Dr. G at 5 PM to do some walking, I guess, even though we've already found our way around like the awesome people that we are. I'm assuming we are going to just DIE tonight around 8 PM and the biggest problem is that I don't have an alarm clock, since my little travel battery one is in my CHECKED LUGGAGE (along with everything else, sigh). FORTUNATELY, I brought my heart meds in my carry-on.
may 12, 2011 009
A parliament building in Dresden. And Jin the plushie. And my sweatshirt. And all my charging cords. lol but I still have absolutely nothing that can function as an alarm clock tomorrow. We'll have to see what we can do about this, I guess.
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anonymous
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Omg all the pictures are so pretty~ Also at some point you should totally say "Zurich Lake......WO?" to keep Nagase's legend of German fail going strong. 8Db