Do you Einfahrt?

After traveling over 36 hours, the plane landed in Germany and the first two signs I saw said, "Einfahrt" and "Ausfahrt." In German this meant one or two things, for me I had to giggle like a school boy who just got his friend to say he ate "Under Wear Under There."

Landing at the Frankfurt airport, I knew zero, zilch, nadda about the language of the country where I had just touched down. I was so dumb, I knew less than nichts. All I knew was I had arrived in a country where "fahrt" jokes probably would not be funny. What I should have seen but did not realize is that what comes after a fart is the moment when it all goes to shits.

This is my first trip to Europe. Flying over the Atlantic I tried to channel the ghost of Charles Lindbergh. Wondering how he felt as he piloted his Spirit of St. Louis over the Atlantic for the first time. Sure there were differences, like the GPS showing my exact location on the back of the seat in front of me, the small fact I wasn't flying the plane and his movie selection was probably better than mine (Wilson Brother Hell: My Super Ex-Girlfriend or You, Me and Dupree).

I recall remembering Lindbergh packed a lunch, but was so nervous or focused he barely touched his meal. I packed pills. After flying from the Cook Islands and spending 36 to 48 hours in airports all I wanted to do in flight was to sleep. I ate everything I packed.

However, even in my legal-drug-induced-traveling-stupor, I slept very little on the nine hour flight. With a combination of an irritating seat mate named John who was convinced he had a friend just as clueless as the wacky Dupree (I felt like I had a Dupree as a seatmate) and the fact my body was flip flopping 12 hours on the clock--Midnight in the Cook Islands is Noon in Germany--meant sleep was just a dream. Even a handful of pills couldn't change this.

After passing the "Fahrts" and getting off the plane, I had pretty good instructions on what signs to follow to get my baggage and then get a train ticket to head south to Ulm. As I flashed my passport to enter the country, Mr. Check Point Charlie looked at my passport and asked, "How many times have you been to Ulm?" I said, "Not only have I NEVER been to Ulm before, this is my first time in Europe and you're the first European I've spoken with in Europe." I extended my hand thinking he'd either shake it or give me a welcome box of Schnitzel and Beer, instead he just said, "You're not allowed in this country for three months."

I didn't want to ask or correct his English. Not certain if this meant he was exiling me out of Germany right then for three months or if he was going to personally track me down and kick me out in 90 days, I said, "Merci" because I know no German and headed to the train station.

"Do you speak a little English?" I asked the train ticket salesman.

"I speak a lot of English," he replied.

After making my arrangements to go to Ulm, I reached into my pocket to grab my wallet to pay for my trip and my wallet was gone. I wondered who'd bumped into me and lifted my cash. I wished I'd worn a money belt, but I thought that was just for paranoid old ladies or people traveling in France. How had I lost my wallet?

Schissa!

It wasn't easy to retrace my steps, because all of the sleeping pills finally began to kick in preventing my brain from synapsing in Frankfurt. One single molecule fired in my frontal lobe and said, "You wanted to sleep. You took your George Castanza sized wallet out of your back pocket and placed it in the seat back on the plane."

Funny thing about foreign airports, they have all kinds of signs to direct you through the labyrinth to get TO the train station, but they have NICHTS signs telling you how to get back to the gate where you left your wallet.

One panicked hour later, I held my wallet in my hand. Returned to the train depot. Bought my ticket. Went to platform number five and hopped on my two hour train ride to see Bettina in Ulm. When my wallet was returned, I had three Euros and fifty cents in my pocket to put into a phone to call Bettina to tell her I had arrived. I gave this as a tip to the guy who handed me my wallet, "It's all I have," I pathetically said, "Go buy yourself a cup of coffee." He probably understood, "Bye." Because he waved when I gave him the cash.

With the few minutes in between buying my ticket and heading to the train, I did withdraw a pocket full of Euros, but nothing in change to call Bettina to tell her I was running an hour late.

Once on the train a lady came by to stamp my ticket, I figured if I was heading in the wrong direction she'd mention my ticket said north if I was headed south. So, when she punched my card, I felt safe that I was headed in the right direction and knowing I had a two hour train ride, I set the alarm on my IPod for 1.5 hours and got the first solid sleep in a few days.

The very little I knew about my train trip could be summed up in one or two cities I was supposed to see, before getting to Ulm. And a half-hour outside of Ulm, the cities the train whizzed by were not the cities they were supposed to be.

Imagine a dazed American waking up with the imprints of the seat cushion on his face saying, "English. Anybody. Ulm." A lot of Germans speak English. I know this because a lot of Germans laughed, when they said I was on the wrong train.

Now instead of being one hour late, I was going to be six hours late. But at each stop and every location, if I stopped to make a phone call, I would miss a train connection. The wheels on the train go clickety clack and the boy on the train learned one universal word in the dining car: Bier.

Six hours after I should have arrived, I called Bettina and said, "I'm here. Save me." Bettina and I have been roommates in the past, and I knew I could count on her calm, cool and clear thinking head to get me to her apartment and the sleep I so desperately craved.

Waiting on the street corner for Bettina to walk up, everything moved in slow motion. It was like that moment in the movie the Royal Tenenbaums when Gwenyth Paltrow steps off the bus and Luke Wilson (good in this movie) sees his adopted sister as a very beautiful woman. This was what it was like seeing Bettina for the first time in over a year. Germany has transformed my friend into eine schone deutsche Frau--a beautiful German woman (at least translated according to Babel Fish).

I gave her a hug that will go down on my list of Top 10 favorite hugs. She was here to save me. She looked beautiful. She later said I talked really loud, like an American. What she did say was, "You're not going to bed. We're going dancing tonight."

We got home at 4 a.m. and we still haven't slowed down.

Posted by phil at November 07, 2006 09:35 PM