Written: August 28, 2007
I’ve finally arrived in Oldenburg, Germany. The trip was very long and we were delayed for 2 hours in Philadelphia getting out because of some people that were going back to Spain and were redirected through our flight for some reason and because there was so much air traffic going back and forth between New York City and Washington DC that the planes taking off from Philadelphia only had limited slots of time and air space they could take off in.
Anyway, Kayla and I arrived in Frankfurt at around 11:00 am German time. After getting our baggage (which was fun because Kayla’s baggage came on a flight before ours…) and going through customs, we went down to the train station in the Frankfurt airport to get train tickets to Oldenburg. We went down there to get them and the next train was leaving about 10 minutes after we had gotten the tickets. So we found that train just as it arrived in the station and caught it. It went to the main train station in Frankfurt where we then had to catch a train to Hannover. That was an interesting experience because we ended up sitting in first class by accident since the platform was divided up into sections by letters and we were told that section A was first class. We got onto the train in section B, which was also first class, but we weren’t told that. When the guy came to check our tickets, he rudely informed us that we were in first class, but had second class tickets. To spare some embarrassment, I played the dumb foreigner and told him I didn’t understand. He then didn’t look so angry and repeated it in English. We moved into second class and ended up in a cabin with a guy and his 3 year old son.
It’s always interesting to hear young kids speak a foreign language. Mostly because you look at them and think, if they can do it, I can too. But it isn’t until you try, that you realize they can do it so well because it’s their native language. Either way, he was at the age where all he does is talk and talk and talk and talk. He asked and commented about everything. “Look! That’s a train! There goes the train!” “What is north?” “Where is Hamburg?” “One, two, six, five” (He tried to count, but couldn’t count correctly past the number 2) All of these were, of course, in German.
The boy’s father thought, of course, that Kayla and I were German and thus always used very fast German with us. I was able to get pretty much all of what he said; enough to be able to respond, anyway. In fact, we had quite a long conversation and even though I had told him that we had just got to Germany from the USA, he didn’t realize that we were actually American until I told him. He assumed we were Germans who were just on vacation in the US.
Now, back to the trains and getting to Oldenburg. Once we were in Hannover, we had to catch a train to Oldenburg. We had about a half an hour in between trains, so we found a Burger King and got something to drink. Then we caught the train to Oldenburg. A German student from Oldenburg who was on exchange at the University of Wyoming last year, Nina, picked us up from the station. She drove us to our dorms to drop off our luggage and to see them, then we went to the store to get some sheets. Unfortunately, by the time we were able to get there, they were closing in 5 minutes, so we could only pick a few things out real quickly and leave. We then went to get some dinner downtown. The downtown area is all on foot. You can’t drive, you have to ride a bike or walk. So we walked to a restaurant downtown, where I had a Currywurst (basically a large German sausage with curry all over it). That was really really good.
Nina then dropped us off at our dorms again and I went straight to bed. After being up for about 38 hours, it was time.
Oh, and I also posted some pictures of the trip here and some pictures of my room here.
I know this wasn’t posted on the first day, but I don’t have Internet yet.
