Another day, another country. I flew on Wednesday to Germany by “plane, train and automobile”. My flight to San Francisco was on time, and I had a longish layover so got lunch and sat in Terminal 2 for quite a while, nice booth type seating, a table and no crowds. I then crossed to the International Terminal and had to go through security again since to access the A gates at SFO one has to exit the airport security and re-enter on the other side of the International terminal. Interestingly, at SFO one cannot buy bottled water…no plastic bottles allowed. There are lots of bottle fillers, but keep that in mind if you fly out of San Francisco or Los Angeles (which has the same rule). I flew on Condor airlines. We had to wait on the tarmac in SFO for an hour while they found a working machine to pull the plane out of the gate, or something like that..at least it wasn’t the plane that had an issue!

After landing in Frankfurt, walking quite a ways, and clearing passport control I bought a train ticket to Dusseldorf Airport where my car was waiting (originally I was to fly to Dusseldorf but Lufthansa moved the flight by about 6 or 7 hours so I cancelled it). I changed trains in Koblenz to a regional train which was pretty empty till the penultimate stop where hoards of passengers boarded. I was still sitting with my luggage and a nice German man sort of blocked for me so I was able to exit the train at the airport! Without help I’m not sure where I would have ended up but probably not so soon at the airport.

I had checked in online at Sixt so was able to quickly get my car. At the exit to the carpark, the entire car is lit up and photographed!

I am here in Germany to play a couple of German team matches for ETUF Essen on the Baldeneysee. Today I hit with our captain and teammate Sabine Schmidt, and tomorrow we have our first match at a club about 2 hours from Essen.

Yesterday there were thunderstorms but it wasn’t too cold; today no thunderstorms but it’s in the 50s and overcast.

My first stop was Lidl for Feldsalat (lambs’ lettuce), bread and fruit. White asparagus (Weiss Spargel) is in season now too.