Our journey to the US

Thursday, 28.September

Where we finally start making money out of the airline

• It is 4 o’clock in the morning when our alarm rings, and 5h when we get into the S-Bahn to Pasing, from where our Rail and Fly “flight” starts – in the form of an ICE that takes us to the Frankfurt airport.

• The connection, which Lufthansa suggested (from Augsburg), looks as follows:

• Already in the booking process we think, “Ui, that will be tight, but OK, if they believe it works”, especially because you can drop off the luggage until at least an hour before departure and we arrive pretty much exactly an hour before planned departure by train at the airport.
• Rosi, with whom I spoke on the phone the night before, asked incredulously, “You’re taking the German train there?!” And that sums up the whole situation – our ICE is of course delayed due to a signal malfunction and because -according to the conductor- “our train driver has a technical malfunction that has to be fixed” and arrives at 09:49 instead of 9:09, which means that our 10:10 flight to Dallas is an utterly lost cause.
• The guy at the Lufthansa counter agrees and while we are waiting – in a really nice relaxed waiting area – we already get the email with the rebooking to the same flight to Dallas the next day
• In the Lufthansa service area we meet a couple, who had the same experience as us – they missed their connecting flight to San Francisco due to a train delay. Funnily they are also flying there for a wedding – however, the wedding they are invited to is already on Friday.
• We remember that Julian is supposed to arrive in Dallas on Friday at 13:04 – suspiciously at exactly the same time as our flight arrives. We write to him and it turns out – he does indeed arrive on exactly the same flight we were rebooked on.
• So all in all, this has now turned out great and unbelievably Julian is, just as we write to him, checking in for the flight – we coordinate our efforts and manage to get seats in the same row – MEGA!
• In the meantime we are stuck at the beautiful Frankfurt airport, where Lufthansa books us a room in a hotel to which we go by shuttle service and where we chill in the lobby until our room is ready.
• The TV is on and when I ask the lady from the reception if it can be turned off, she comes and tries. After trying with the remote control unsuccessfully for 2 minutes, she does exactly what I would have done – she simply pulls the plug out.
• We decide to use our relaxed day to plan and book flights and soon have efficiently organized a whole USA round trip – which I am really looking forward to! Rental cars and flights are booked and in between we leave some flexibility, which should be fine thanks to rental cars, tent and sleeping bags
• After a power nap we head out for a run, past an airplane memorial and a lookout point right next to the airport, from where we can watch planes approaching. I’m thrilled and just as Julian puts it “As soon as I see a plane, I feel like a kid again” – exactly that

• Back to the hotel, where we are invited by Lufthansa for dinner, which we enjoy, before we do some more planning and then go to sleep – good night!

Friday, 29.September

The Austrian Lufthansa crew and wedding champagne

• Next try: we go to the airport, check in our luggage and get into the unexpectedly long security queue, which leads to us arriving at the gate even after Julian (who was stressed out about making it to our flight with his plane from Munich landing only at 9h).
• We are not at height of our performance today and while Matthew runs around like a headless chicken, I follow him like a sheep without using my brain at all – so it’s astonishing really that finally we find the gate.
• Julian welcomes us with (highly unsatisfying) sparkling wine and (unexpectedly good) gin and tonic from the duty free store
• We board the plane and take our three seats next to each other (me at the window, Matthew in the middle, Julian at the aisle), which is really super nice

• Here we go – after a long period without drinks, the beverage service comes by and there’s food
• Julian finds the perfect Motto for my blog:

• The screen that is supposed to show us where we are and other flight data lets us down today, which doesn’t stop a guy two rows in front of us from letting it load for about 4h, which then looks like this:

• Julian has the great idea that everyone who goes to the toilet must bring three beers from the galley in the back – which leads to the fact that we constantly have to go to the toilet, which leads to….Well, all in all spirits are high
• Halfway through the flight, Julian and I inevitably strike up a conversation with the crew while fetching beer again and find out that half of the crew consists of half to whole Austrians – of course we get along great and when we tell them that we went together to the Sacre-Coeur, one of the stewards says: “Ah, right by Rennweg”
• We tell them that we are on the way to the wedding of a friend and shortly thereafter one of the stewardesses disappears to the business class in the front and comes back shortly thereafter with a bottle of champagne – a gift for the wedding couple.
• Shortly we are tempted to toast to the wedding couple with it, but then we decide that we can only open the bottle with Julia and Michi and Julian packs it into his spacious hand luggage bag.
• We arrive on time in Dallas, move into our hotel (SOVA), which has super small rooms; so small that if you come through the door you immediately fall into bed – in addition there are no windows in the rooms, because someone thought it a great idea to put all the corridors around the outside of the rooms, so that you have daylight in the hallway, but unfortunately not in the room
• Immediately we find out that Deep Ellum, an artificial, a bit run-down but at the same time very charming neighborhood, is just “around the corner” and we immediately make our way there.
• Our Uber driver explains to us that the name Deep Ellum came from the fact that there are a lot of music venues in the neighborhood and when people came here asking where the music was playing, the locals would tell them “You just need to go deep on Elm” (Elm Street is one of the streets that run through the main axis of Dallas Downtown and deep specifies which direction to follow – to the deeper numbers).

• The path to Deep Ellum is one we will regularly use in the next days and we find our waypoints:
• 1. the red bear – a statue of a red bear sitting on a crossing right in front of our hotel
• 2. the crazy crosswalk – a crosswalk that leads across a multi-lane road, with no lines on the street, no traffic lights and conveniently located right behind a curve, so you can’t quite see if and what’s coming your way
• 3. the bike left behind – some kind of OV Fiets that was parked under the huge highway bridge in a fenced area and has been sitting there abandoned ever since
• Some of the crosswalks are -for our peace of mind- at traffic lights where there are buttons that -when pressed- result in a loud, almost military voice commanding you to “Wait!” -completely regardless of whether or not it’s green.
• In Deep Ellum we briefly look into a second hand clothing store before chilling in a rooftop bar where we drink a Welcome Margarita
• We reintroduce “Buffalo” (and if you don’t know how it works or what it is, don’t ask), which results in Julian narrowly escaping the fate of having to down his Frozen Margarita right after ordering it.
• After a short stop at the hotel, we go to an Asian restaurant, where we get some food, before we go to “The Factory”, at which we go to a concert of the British rock band “Nothing but Thieves”.
• Funnily enough, Julian told us yesterday that he was going to the concert and I was hooked as I also love listening to the band – so Matthäus and I didn’t hesitate to get tickets.
• Of course I have no ID and nothing with me, so instead of the green wristband I get a big black X on my hand.
• Nevertheless, Matthäus and Julian organize beer, which I then drink totally illegally – as watery as the beer is, I would say it was half legal though

• The concert is really great, despite our jetleg and small fits of tiredness, we enjoy it very much