Back through the Italian countryside, into Switzerland, through the Alps, we stopped in Zurich for a spell and said good-bye. I vowed I'd be back someday. We did stop in H&M to see if they, by some chance, had that grey shirt I wanted. No dice.
There were certain immediately noticeable signs we were back in Switzerland/Germany.
On to Germany, our luggage was sniffed by dogs. That was fun. I wanted to pet the doggy, but something in the officers' expressions told me that might not be my best experience ever, so I gave the dog respectful distance.
We arrived in Stuttgart at about 7 pm, and our ride had been delayed, so we dragged our luggage around the open-air shopping plaza area for an hour or so while we waited. It had the typical bustle of such a plaza, complete with artists and a guy playing some fairly cool music on some horizontal stringed instrument with mallets.
We didn't have anything in particular to look at or shop for, so hey, why not H&M again, right? They had it! The shirt I wanted, and they had it in my size (small). I snatched that sexy thang for 15 euro. Yes! Greg also found a treasure he had been looking for. We were content.
We met our ride, Khara's husband Curtis, and he drove us out to Dettenhausen, about 45 minutes south of Stuttgart's train station. We had chicken enchiladas with Khara and Curtis and the kids, talked politics and movies, caught up on news from back in Moscow, reminisced about the old days, and even played a little Nerts before going to bed. I had a really good time with them and was glad we actually got to see them after all, even if only for a very short time.
In the morning, we awoke butt early, and Khara drove us to the nearby train station, where we were to catch a train into Stuttgart, to catch a train to Munich, to catch the S-bahn to the Munich airport, to catch our flight. There was a lot of room for error here.
The boring thing: it worked without a hitch. Go fig. On the flight to Chicago, I watched Becoming Jane (good flick), parts of Alvin and the Chipmunks ('cute' but not great), some Simpsons, and Lions for Lambs (which I actually liked despite getting heavy-handed and preachy at the end). I also had some entertainment in the form of a woman who didn't speak English repeatedly tapping the chair in front of her and motioning for the man in it to put it in an upright position because it was squishing her knees. She sat rigidly and pointed to her poor knees being crunched by the inconsiderate chair. I thought, "You could possibly sit differently to alleviate the problem," but the guy in front of her just put his seat upright with a look of bewilderment at the whole thing.
The guy right in front of me was rude, loud, disgusting, quite possibly devoid of character, and pretty much a waste of cells. If he were a slug, I would have sprinkled salt on him and calmly watched him dissolve, but he's not a slug, so I just laughed at the comedy of his existence, called him a jackass a few times and imagined him dissolving into a puddle of goo. That worked well enough.
We arrived in Chicago about a half hour early, which was OK because customs in Chicago is a bit busier than customs in Munich. Wow. And the pleasant hospitality we had experienced in Europe was nowhere to be found here in Chicago. Welcome to the States. Hm.
After picking up our baggage and re-checking it for the next leg of the flight (don't ask--I don't know either), we went outside to meet an acquaintance of mine, Nate, who took us to a nearby restaurant for some authentic Chicago-style pizza. Nice. We had a good, quick visit, and he took us back to the airport to catch our flight to Salt Lake. It was delayed. 2 hours. So we found a free outlet in a corner of the airport and set up camp with our laptops.
Side note: in Chicago, I was overjoyed to see that THEIR toilet seat covers are a plastic tube around the seat in an automatic dispenser...it's hard to describe, but I was happy to see I wouldn't have a repeat of my magical disappearing toilet seat cover incident.
This story has become rather boring, so let's just say we got our flight, and I was home and in bed by 2 am, and off to work at 10 am that same morning.
And I still miss Milan. And Zurich. And Munich. And cool architecture. And the Italian language. And aperitivos, gelato, and other Italian food. But not so much the pork knuckles. But hey, I am grateful to be able to get free water wherever I go. I missed that.
No comments:
Post a Comment