Gate B17 has a rude surprise.

I confess, I’ve been back from Germany since Monday evening, arriving at home here on Tuesday. I just didn’t want to blog. Mainly because I’ve already told about my trip to my sister and then father and then mother and at this point, I don’t care if I ever relate anything again.

In this grouchy vein, then, I shall tell of my trip in my favorite of all methods of writing: listing. In no particular order. Because I’m too lazy to pull together anything coherent.

Chicago O’Hare

• Great in that it has a Starbucks almost every five feet.
• Too bad they’re all staffed with 97 percent ineptitude.
• Particularly at gate B17 in which, after a 15 minute wait while watching the law of thermodynamics take place before my eyes, I returned my cup of hot chocolate sans payment because they couldn’t figure out how to get my Starbucks card to work and my flight to D.C. was boarding and I wouldn’t have time to drink it anyway.
• The trains between the international terminal are fun.

Washington Dulles

• Pretty dirty and worn out for being in our nation’s capitol.
• Please see about keeping the soap dispensers full.

Amsterdam Schiphol

• The tower of Babel without the tower.
• It finally struck home, despite knowing it from high school biology, that dark hair is the dominant hair color in the world.
• Funny how all the languages just sort of flow around you.
• They have a mini-art museum which is great for killing layover time and enjoying the 400 year celebration of Rembrandt. Gotta love Europe.

Zurich Airport

• Very clean.
• Early morning.
• Jet lag.
• Can’t remember much.

Hamburg Airport

• Noisy and confusing.
• Put way too many stickers on my luggage.
• Lufthansa has good snacks with their beverage service, though. A small sandwich made of that good, dark German bread with thick cheese and then a candy bar.
• United had yucky cheese snacks.

Security

• I confess that I had a tube of mascara in my carry on.
• No one found it.
• I had it in my pen/pencil bag.
• It’s my one vanity.

Chocolate

• Standing in the vast and seemingly unending candy aisle in a typical German supermarket is one of the greatest wonders of the world.
• My luggage home was 20 percent candy. Some by request for others, some as gifts for others, and some that I will have to run off.

Perfume

• Bine insisted on taking me shopping.
• Said I needed to “get some nice perfume.”
• I did.
• Gaultier.
• Very nice.
• Quite a few Euros.

Shopping in Kiel

• Also got some shoes.
• And watched two street performers in kilts, mohawk hair, punk boots, a bagpipe and boudin drum crank out the most amazing music that had everyone gathering to cheer and leave money.
• You can’t walk on cobblestone with heels very easily.
• Bine bought me an ice-cream cone.

Christian, Bine’s new husband

• Looks like Ethan Hawk.
• Super nice and polite.
• Was nervous the day of the wedding, pacing.
• It was kind of cute.
• Has an exceedingly nice sister who “practiced her English” on me at the reception.
• I’m happy for Bine – she has a fine husband.

Cake

• The Germans know cake.
• They’re skinny people, true, but they know cake.
• We’re talking huge, wedge-shaped slices of all kinds of cakes and creams and fruit mixes…cake upon cake.
• When they say there will be “cake and coffee” after the wedding at the church, they are not kidding.
• Three long tables. All desserts. Cake. Glorious.

Sabine and Christian’s wedding

• Beautiful and disarmingly laid-back with a minister who seemed humorously absent-minded.
• He had to consult Bine and the wedding program to make sure he was following the program. Which he didn’t remember to do, always.
• There were some other funny moments, like a guy yelling from the balcony for the minister to turn his microphone on, a small boy yawning loudly at the moment when the minister paused in his talk, et. al.

Wedding Reception

• It was held at the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Haus in Preetz.
• Fabulous religious education building with a large theological library of books written in German which I could not understand though I did run my fingers over them late at night when everyone else was in bed and I sneaked downstairs in the dark into the library and pretended I was part of something bigger.
• Met some Lutheran ministers leaving after a session of study and Bine told me that some of them were probably even Christians! Imagine.
• Took notes on the building. Could use it in a short story.

Magistrate

• Bride and groom met at the “city hall” in the town of Wittensee for the legal part of the marriage to take place.
• I rode there with Bine’s sister, Dorothy, and her mom.
• Doro and mom did not know the way.
• There was a lot of German conversation in the car as time counted down and we were lost over by Eckenford, conversation with a heavy reliance on the word ScheiÃ?e. This is one of the words I know.

German

• I don’t speak it.
• I started to understand a little of what they were saying.
• It is a hard-edged language, like waves slapping against the ears. Cacophonous.
• Most people there speak a little English.
• Bine’s friend, Lief, an architect student, took pity on me and spoke English with me during the reception and dance. Appreciative I was. He was also exceedingly polite and attentive. What a difference from being ignored.

Oliver Martin

• Christine’s boyfriend. (Tine is Bine’s sister.)
• Managed this hotel before coming back to Germany.
• Very handsome, smooth, smartly dressed, confident. Thought he might be a jerk at first.
• Very self-confident, took charge of every room and situation he was in.
• Turned out to be extremly, extremly, extremly nice.
• He brought Tine and I our food without us asking, always asking people if they needed something more, if he could get someone something, translated and spoke English with me…I tell you, I’ve never met anyone so polite and self-assured.
• Wow.
• Could take a yes or no answer to his offers of help without taking it personal.
• Wow, I tell you.
• Opened doors for us.
• My gosh.
• Ruined me. Because I’m going to expect that supreme gentleman-like behavior from guys instead of the usual. I’m serious. I never even knew this was out there. But NOW I DO.
• Wow.
• Wow, I tell you, wow!
• Too bad he was such a Mac fan.
• Want to win the ladies, men? Be like Oliver.

Bine’s dad, Klaus

• Likes to dance.
• Danced the waltz with Bine.
• Danced the tango with Tine. (Tine is tall and beautiful and looks like a model, as well as being loads of fun.)
• Kissed me on the cheek multiple times because he doesn’t just shake hands.
• A pretty cool guy.

Bine’s mom, Heidi

• Knows English a bit.
• Afraid to use it.
• But she does.
• And does a fine job.
• Very cute lady.
• Hard-worker.

Spaghetti and the floor

• I had spaghetti every night I was there.
• I slept on the floor every night I was there.

Screaming Baby

• As soon as I saw you at the gate, I knew where you’d be sitting.
• Next to me.
• Of course.
• Thanks, God.

Very, very, very, very large man

• As soon as I saw you at the gate, I knew where you’d be sitting.
• Next to me.
• Of course.
• Thanks, God.

Drive Home

• Love Europe. Love hearing all the languages in the airports, seeing all the different people.
• Always want to go back for a visit.
• But always want to come home.
• Can’t take all the smartly dressed people, all the fashion-concious men and women for too long.
• Too many shiny shirts and suave shoes.
• Something seems out of touch with what’s real, what’s important.
• Popped in the last Johnny Cash CD, put the Jeep on cruise control, and sped up the interstate with the dust of harvest coming off the fields around me.
• Just me and Johnny.
• The Cash sound very much unlike the smooth and surface electronic sounds of European music.
• I love being back in the States.
• If only we had their chocolate.
• And men with such gentleman-like behavior.

Luggage

• The TSA managed to rip the final zipper pull from my suitcase.
• My carry-on died somewhere between Hamburg and Amsterdam and the handle would not retract.
• I got home, took the clothes out of my duffel, and the cat peed in it.
• Real nice.

So that’s about it. My luggage all made it, I missed no flights, and all flights were on time. I had a great time with Bine and her family, and enjoyed myself a great deal. It was the best “long weekend” I’ve had in quite some time. Maybe I’ll post some links to photos here later.