Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Happy 2024!

I’ll start this off with an acknowledgment of both not having a post last week as well as posting a day earlier. I provide zero explanation for both of these other than, “that's the way the cookie crumbles in the self-motivated blog realm”. 

That being said I shall state the obvious, I made it to Germany! Yes, there will be no recreating of “Lost” on my watch. The flight was fine, I flew from DTW to Amsterdam and then picked up the “City Hopper” to Munich. The gate agent in Detroit was rude to me, she got mad because i didn't do the check in (which apparently is now separate from checking your bags?). Call me old fashioned but I’m not particularly keen on approaching a random machine that looks a little like self-checkout at the grocery store, and giving it all my personal information. Furthermore, the gate agent laughed at me when I asked if I needed to recheck my bag when I got to Amsterdam because she thought that it was obvious that I needed to. Spoiler: I did NOT in fact need to re-check my bag, and it only took me 3 separate conversations with the Dutch flight attendants to find that out. 

As for the flight itself, the Delta flight to Amsterdam was crowded, and I sat next to a very millennial Quebecois, who would make continuous comments to herself, or maybe to me? IDK, I made an effort to immediately watch a movie (Crazy Rich Asians, the best plane movie) and then promptly fell asleep for 3 hours. I was only awoken with a screaming baby, because what would a long flight be without one? 

On arrival to Amsterdam, I got to go through passport control, in which I was asked zero questions. Which is sketchy, cause everyone else did. But maybe the agent thought I was no threat to the EU. 

On my short flight to Munich, I sat next to a VERY tall Dutchman, who must have been a frequent flier, because the flight attendants seemed to know him. TBH looking back on it, he might have been someone special, because the pilot did mention an extra thank you to someone on board for flying with them. 

Anyway, I arrived in Munich to a very small, and honestly, kinda sketchy area of the airport. There were piles of random bags everywhere. I’m not super certain, I was more concerned about the fact that they closed the line for non-EU passports and just ushered everyone through the EU passport line, which was just a door. Like a regular automatic-sliding door. 

I was picked up by the LOVELY Elena R. Tsagalidou, and her mother Kula. Given that I was running on 3 hours of sleep in a 24 hour timeframe, my memory for the afternoon does not serve me super well. We did however go to a contemporary art museum near the city center, which after waiting in line for a combined hour to get into the exhibits was quite fun. Germans know avant-garde, which is surprising to almost no-one. 

The following day, (after waking up from 12 hours of sleeping), I headed with Elena into Marianplatz, the city plaza/promenade. Elena had a doctor's appointment for about an hour-and-a-half during this time, so I wandered into some churches alone. Germany loves a good church, which means, for a while I got to play the game with myself “Is this a different church or the same one from a different angle?” I enjoyed my time sightseeing though, as evidenced by the excessive amount of pictures I will include with this post.  

The following day, (New Year's Eve). Elena took me along to a party her friends were hosting. The first thing I will say about the German New Year is that it is a lot bigger than the US. Second thing, for a country with a reputation for rationale and safety, these people love to drink and light copious amounts of fireworks. Despite liking fireworks as much as the next American, I have never had the experience of having the actual remnants of fireworks rain down from above, and get stuck in my hair and eyes. Go figure. 

I will also comment that German transportation, for all the jokes people make about it, is really nice compared to literally any US public transit. For my Chicago peeps, riding the Deutsche Bahn at 3:30 AM on NYE is like riding the Brown line at 2 PM on a Saturday, a surprisingly pleasant experience. Plus none of the stations reek of urine and trash, so Germany you, unsurprisingly, win this round. 

Well, I will cut myself off there. I don't know when my next post will be, but I anticipate it to be around Sunday. I will try to write some short captions along with the photos, but they are weirdly complicated to add so I'll probably be conservative. 

I’ll end on a slightly sappy note, with 2023 having been such a great year for me in a lot of different ways. I’ve experienced a lot of change, but it has made me a more developed person. 

Love you all! Here’s to 2024 being a great year. 

Guten Rutsch! 

• Gretchen (auf Deutsch)

Plane view heading into the EU

Marieanplatz

Outside parliment