I got a camera for Christmas this year so I could document every part of my trip. I wanted to take a picture of the plane I’d be flying on, so I walked inside an airport café to get the best view. As I was taking the picture a man (looking like he’d be best friends/brothers with Federico Schneider) said “Oh, the plane is too big to fit in the picture.” After a little bit I realized he was Italian and we spoke for about 10 minutes in Italian! I was off to a pretty solid start.
The flight to Munich wasn’t bad, 6 hours and 50 minutes. I sat in 25A which was in a cool section 2 rows behind the First Class curtain, and about 6 rows in front of the main Economy Class section. Each row had 2 seats near the windows and 3 seats in the middle.
The jury’s still out about my feelings on the woman sitting next to me. I consider myself a pretty personable guy, but for some reason when I travel I’m not really a big fan of speaking to a lot of people. I don’t really know how to describe this lady - she was Asian, lived in the United States for a while so she spoke English very well, but has lived in Germany now for the past 14 years.
Note to self: Don’t tell people that you’re major has anything to do with Political Science/International Affairs. This lady started talking my ear off about all sorts of stuff. In roughly 7 hours she asked me my feelings on Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin (ha), the future of American Foreign Policy, the American’s view on Europe, the strength of the Euro in comparison to the dollar, Joe Biden, Dick Cheney, Diane Feinstein (how the f doe she know her?), the new NY senator, and more. JUST LET ME EAT MA’ AIRLINE CHICKEN AND WATCH SWING VOTE (which was terrible) IN PEACE, LADY.
She did get nicer throughout the flight, giving me her dinner roll, offering me her pillow, asking if I wanted anything hot to drink…this all sounds really awkward now that I read it over but you had to be there. Once we arrived in Munich she walked with me to the connecting gates area, gave me a hug goodbye, wished me luck, and left.
The Munich airport was really nice. For 7am it was also really busy. Almost immediately I spotted more American students, but after a 7 hour flight and a 6 hour time change I was not about to go introduce myself to a group of girls without looking like a big time creeper. I had my first experience of the trip buying a bottle of “red orange” juice. The layover was 3 hours and 45 minutes, so I did a lot of walking around and took some cool pictures.
Once at Gate G65 for Florence, a group of American students started forming, and growing fast. Within an hour, the group of 6 girls had turned into about 20 girls, and 3 guys including me after I decided that it’d be in my best interest to actually try and make friends at some point on the trip. Andd it worked! Everyone in the group was really great. It was funny/kind of awkward because they were all part of the IPA Study Abroad Program, and I was doing my own thing. But whatever. The 2 other guys were friends from Minnesota. It was cool to meet so many kids who are all my age and all setting out on this same type of experience together. The 2 guys wrote their names down for me so I could find them on Facebook and then we could all meet up sometime.
All in all, things were going great.
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I know how you feel about being around tons of other American students/people your age and knowing you should make friends and all that, but at the same time feeling like you don't want to. I get that way here in Quito because almost all of the Americans are tourists and I hate it when people think I'm a tourist. I hold a residence. I pay taxes. I don't get paid when the government decides to rewrite the constitution five times a year.
ReplyDeleteOh, and btw, Kramer would probably have been proud of you for talking to that Asian lady about American Foreign Policy.