In Germanz

I'll leave Germany with a 'Z' because that's what shows up on these crazy German keyboards. It's going to take a while to get used to typing in 'German.' So here is the saga of arrival in Germany:

After a few days of furiously attempting (somewhat successfully) to organize my life and packing I went to the airport with Mom and Dad. Saying good to my amazing parents was really tough, but I was a little shell shocked in general so the enormity of it's just hitting me now, at 3:30am German time. But more on that later.

I flew Aer Lingus, which I do not recommend, for the sole reason that Dublin airport is an insane, disorganized mess. Plus it looks like it comes out of a 50s movie. I had to sprint to make my flight and navigate through thongs of distressed, also late people. Including the lady going to Portugal who cut in line! Some people just have the guts to edge into the front. While somewhat territorial of my place in line, I can't bring myself to brazenly cut. The other Aer Lingus criticism is a dreadful lack of beverage service, leading to severe dehydration when your traveling for half a day.

I had two major concerns pre flight. 1 was being over the weight limit - no problem! The other was being deported from Germany for not having proof of health insurance or something. Luckily, my two immigration officials (one in Dublin, one in Frankfurt) decided to flirt with me instead of interrogating me and there was no problem. I wasted probably hours of my life worrying about this stuff, but you never know.

So, once in Franfurt my wonderful fiance was waiting for me with open arms. He was very enthusiastic. I was too, just a little too half asleep and exhausted to be very demonstrative. It was wonderful to see him and be in Germany again. Then we went and I slept for a few hours, before heading to Freiburg.

In Freiburg I caught my first glimpse of our beautiful apartment. It's really nice and Jan has done a good job of decorating. We're going to have to make a few compromises - like he wants turntables and I want book shelves...but I think that we'll be ok.

And the kitchen that Jan and a carpenter built is amazing. Beautiful new appliances, wooden cabinets...totally incredible.

I met our neighbors who invited us over for dinner which turned into chatting till 2am. I love having them as neighbors already. They are a recently married couple, she's Russian and he's German. In our apartment building (a renovated house) there's a Croatian, an American, 3 Germans, and an Austrian dating a French man. Pretty diverse! I think it will be a wonderful place to live and I hope that we can socialize often.

During dinner we drank a few too many classes of wine leading to a headache. Once in bed everything really hit me though and the tears started flowing. Not distressed tears, just wow my life has just changed incredibly and it's pretty shocking. Also, probably PMS tears and majorly 'I miss my mommy' tears. Reading just now this article: Mommy is truly dearest at - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/fashion/28mommy.html?em&ex=1183176000&en=d21df09bdbd6e1d4&ei=5087%0A
did not help!!

Well..I guess it's time to try and sleep! I have a feeling this blog is going to be excellent for processing what's going on. I anticipate being overwhelmed for some time to come!