Yes, Trepidation….. that’s what I was feeling as we started off on this Adventure. COVID has become a specter that just causes worry…. worry not so much about severe illness in our cases since we are fully vaccinated but about having the trip impacted. Was everything we read in websites and heard from officials and airlines true? Will we be one of the ones who will need a PCR? And if positive will we need to quarantine? How hard will the Immigration officials be as we come into Germany?
I kept telling myself that I’ve done my “Due Diligence” and that things would be fine. But you still get that nagging feeling that something will be wrong. But what can you do at this point?
There is nothing else we could do but trust that all will be fine. So…. at that point, the best thing to do was to relax on the flight and stop worrying. One of the first things I saw to allay my anxiety was this little card tucked into my amenities kit on the flight….
It was a nice reassuring reminder that you make a difference to someone in the Delta corporation. I love flying Delta because of little things like this…. a simple recognition of the loyalty I have for Delta. And little things like this make me even more loyal to this particular airline.
We left Atlanta on time heading to Frankfurt. I settled back with a Bloody Mary (or two) and watched some movies… Animal House, McLintock and Patton. I had a nice beef tip dinner and even chocolate ice cream for dessert. Then, in between movies, I managed to get a 2 hour nap!
We got closer to our destination….
But looking outside, the weather didn’t look all that great! Cloudy….
On landing in Frankfurt, things really couldn’t have gone better! Immigration was a piece of cake!! Passport, Vaccination Card, and Digital Registration were looked at and we sailed right through. Baggage claim was a bit of a problem…. I swear our bags were among the last dozen off the plane. But they all came!!
After getting the bags, we discovered the Sixt counter in Terminal 2 was closed and we were sent to the Terminal 1 counter. We hopped on the bus and went to T-1 and made it to the Car rental area. That is where the wheels came off….. there was a line of at least 20 people waiting for their cars. With the earlier delays waiting on bags and taking the bus to T-2, we were looking at a 2 hour wait. By the time we got our van, we wouldn’t be able to get to the Cargo Van rental office!! As we always said in Navy Medicine…. Semper Gumby, always flexible.
I changed our plans to pick up the cargo van tomorrow morning and we loaded the passenger van and headed to the hotel to unload quickly. Once finished, we headed to the Bike Shop, Intra Rad und Sport, to pick up the bikes. Since that went without any glitches, we headed back to the hotel and unloaded the bikes.
With today’s work finished, we decided it was definitely “bier thirty” and went for a beer. 
It definitely hit the spot! The only problem was it gave us all a need for a nap.
So after an hour nap we went to dinner at a Tapas restaurant next door to the hotel.
And to kick the week off well, we all had Wiener Schnitzel and a couple of more beers. 
A perfect end to a slightly stressful day!! Tomorrow will be better!!