We're here!

 Well, we arrived in Frankfurt mostly in one piece.

The flight over was brutal. We left Knoxville at around 2:00, and flew to Dulles International in Northern Virginia. Our flight out was delayed by an hour, so our layover was a little longer than we planned, but not too bad overall.

Let me mention a humorous part.... well, it's humorous now, but my wife was a little freaked out at the time. When we were packing our suitcases we each were packing our own stuff. Rebecca took charge of all of the important papers, and put them into the carry-on suitcase that she would take on the plane. The planes that fly out of Knoxville are the little planes, and most carry-on suitcases end up getting "gate checked," and you get it back when you get off the plane.

An important aside (I'll circle back around momentarily): Over the past few years, we've accumulated quite a collection of those TSA approved luggage locks, but unfortunately, the keys between different sets don't match, even though they look identical. This becomes quite important later in our story. We ended up getting a huge set of locks with matching keys, so that we could just carry one or two sets of keys and be able to secure all of our luggage.

When Rebecca was locking up all of the luggage, she used locks from the huge set of locks that we had, including a lock on her carry-on with all of the important papers (since we were pretty sure that piece would be gate checked). All was well until our slightly extended layover at Dulles, when she tried to get into her carry-on. Turns out, she had used a lock that wasn't from the set to lock that suitcase, and we only had access to keys from the set with us (one set of keys each, to be safe). That was the only carry-on that had a lock on it - all the rest of the locks were on the checked luggage, so we wouldn't know the extent of the "damage" until we got to the apartment in Frankfurt.

Turns out, the keys we were each carrying opened every other lock, on every other piece of luggage - just not that one particular one. Her boss happened to have a set of bolt cutters at his house, so we stopped by before we came to the apartment and were able to get into the most important of the bags. A little funny now, but at the time, Rebecca was quite perturbed. We didn't know that we'd be making these kinds of memories on day one, but here we are.

The flight over.... took what seemed like forever. This felt like one of the largest planes I've been on (including when we flew back and forth to Rome). In our section alone, there were over 110 seats; according to seatguru.com, there were 350 seats, and the flight was 100% filled. Our section had three seats outboard on each side, with four across the middle - ten seats per row. We'd paid a little extra to all sit together, me on the aisle, Cori in the middle, and Rebecca on the window. The seats were just as cramped as you'd imagine, and none of us got much sleep. The flight was around 8 hours long, and we arrived here first thing in the morning (local time), so it's been a rather long day, especially with no sleep last night!

Our apartment is a little north-northeast of Frankfurt, in a little burg called Bad Vilbel. The community seems like a sleepy little suburb, mostly walkable - which will be handy, as our car won't be here for a few months. Our apartment is a good size, three bedrooms and two baths, all on one floor. Seems like plenty of room for (right now) the three of us, should be quite spacious for just the two of us when Cori returns to the states.

Housing assignments are made based on full time residents, and Cori isn't considered a full time resident - she's just here accompanying us for a month or so. As a result, the housing department only gave us supplies for two people. We brought sheets with us because we knew the sheets that they would be providing would be "Government Issue," 250 thread count or less... lucky we did, or we wouldn't have enough sheets for the three of us! As it is, we had to borrow a set of towels from Rebecca's boss until our fast shipment arrives, hopefully next week.

Becca's office is in Frankfurt proper, and transportation shouldn't be too bad - there's a bus stop at the end of our street where we can catch a bus that takes us directly there, with no transfers. Her check in isn't for a couple of days, but at some point we'll probably venture out and take the bus into town.

I think I want to get a "granny cart." The stores around the apartment are all relatively close, but carrying groceries back and forth will be much easier if I can just drag them.

That's all for now, but I expect that there will be a continuing flurry of posts over the next week or so. Until then, auf wiedersehen!