Travelling....to Our First Day in Germany

Getting to Germany was the hard part. We got to the airport in Baltimore just fine...and then had to wait in line forever to get to the counter all the while slightly freaking out about moving across the world. We get to the counter and are checking in and the lady asks us about Justus and whether he was scheduled to fly in the cabin or under the plane. She checked and said yes he's supposed to go under the plane but he couldn't because he was in a soft carrier. We flew AA from Dallas and pets can't go under the plane if the weather is over a certain temperature so we put him in the soft carrier for that flight. So of course they are now telling us he can't go because he's not in a hard carrier for under the plane.

I'm standing at the counter in Baltimore having a heart attack and near tears because I have no idea what we are going to do if we can't take him on the plane with us. I'm in a strange city, I don't know anyone, what are we gonna do? I'm seriously panicking and praying desperately at this point...until the lady says just a minute I think I can do something about this and goes in the back...and comes out with a hard plastic carried just the size for him. It was bright pink and said Property of BWI. She said we could use it and once we got to Germany we would give it to an agent and they would make sure it got back to Baltimore. We folded up the soft carrier, shoved it in Patrick's carry on and we were good to go. Once we had that everything else went smooth we got checked in and hung around until we had to drop Justus off with all the other pets.

The flight was incredibly long, I was worried about Justus flying under the plane, couldn't sleep well, legs cramping from sitting so long...etc. etc.  What felt like an eternity later...we landed at Ramstein Air Base. It was incredibly confusing once we got off the plane because lets face it, the Army isn't the best at giving clear directions and letting us know where we were supposed to go. Once we got through Customs we headed to the baggage claim where we got to grab Justus and our luggage. Then of course per the military we sat around forever filling out paper work and waiting. And thats when the fire alarms went off. We left everything and walked outside and across the street.

Evidently some dummy decided to smoke in the bathroom and that wasted a half hour of us waiting to go back inside and wait some more. By the time everything got done that needed to it was too late for them to bus us to Vilseck. They put us on a bus and sent us to stay at a hotel in K-Town (Kaiserslautern) not far from the base.

Once we got to the hotel and checked in we took our stuff and dumped it in the room. I grabbed the camera and we took Justus for a walk to stretch his little legs.

We went to the Irish pub for dinner and had some awesome steak and french fries. Well I did and Patrick had a wings platter of some kind. And his first German beer :) After dinner went back to the hotel and hung out...Patrick didn't make it very long before crashing. I tried to stay awake as long as possible and I think I made it to like 9:30 before I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. We both crashed and then woke up at 3 am and couldn't go back to sleep. Oh Jet Lag how awesome you are...not. And that was our first official day in Germany!