Germany, Day One

My Ryanair flight for Frankfurt-Haun was scheduled to leave around 4:30 from the Pisa Galileo Galilei Airport on Saturday and I had trudged out in the rain the day before to buy a train ticket from Florence’s Santa Maria Novella directly to Pisa Aeroporto. The train was to leave at 11:00. I spent the previous day/night doing laundry, etc as I usually do before a trip. Unfortunately, due to the humidity from all of the rain, my clothes were not quite as dry as I had expected them to be when I got up around 8:30 Saturday morning! I packed them anyway with the rest of my things and witnessed what I regarded at that time as a miracle of sorts—that is, I got the zipper to actually zip! But trying to get everything to fit (clothes, purse, videocamera, book, shoes, etc) had taken so long that by the time I reached the train station and had waited to see the platform posting, it was already 5 after 11:00. That is when I noticed the permanent sign under the platform-announcement board which plainly read: Pisa Aeroporto Binario 5. I hadn’t known that the trains to Pisa always left from platform 5! The next straight train to the airport was leaving too late for me so I had to take a train to Pisa Centrale and then a connecting train to the airport. Even after all that confusion, I was still arrived an hour before check-in began (as I was informed by the woman at the information desk). This, then, was enough time to have a sandwich and coke and intermittently people-watch and read.
Check-in went very quickly (I was sandwiched between a Bulgarian girl and a German family), and I spent a bit more than an hour reading at Gate 4 until the announcement was made that priority boarding (I had not paid for this option) would begin. As a line began to form for both priority and non-priority passengers, I quickly got near the front of my line, having been informed that Ryanair often over-books. There weren’t any assigned seats (I don’t think Ryanair ever has assigned seats) so it was strictly on a hope-you-get-into-the-plane-on-time-to-get-a-seat basis. When my line was allowed to begin boarding, I made for the staircase leading to the plane’s back end and quickly dropped my book into a window seat before heaving my carry-on in the storage compartment above. Soon, a German lady asked if the seats next to me were free (several times, in fact, because I could not at first understand her accent) and, as they were, sat down with her husband. She was a very nice lady who eventually offered me both a stick of gum (cherry-mint) and a Kleenex (I had a cold) during the one and half hour flight. When we took off, we curved over Pisa and I got a good aerial view of the Leaning Tower and the rest of the Campo dei Miracoli. Before we landed, I saw a silhouette of the plane ringed by a perfect-circle rainbow.
Stepping off the plane, I could see my breath! “This is a novelty,” I thought, since the weather in Italy had not been nearly that cold. Walking into the airport, it was only a little strange to be directed through the doors for EU Citizens only (this was not an international flight in the sense that a flight from America would be considered international, therefore no passport-stamping was to occur). I looked around for my uncle Jim but didn’t see him until he called my name (he had been standing practically right next to me). Soon we were back outside and loading my bag into his SmartCar (they just drop the “Car” when talking about it). Pretty soon I was able to see what a deceptive name the airport had been given! Though it was called Frankfurt-Haun, it was really just Haun airport as Frankfurt was quite far away (on the order of an hour, perhaps). We stopped at a giant grocery-general store (“Another novelty—this looks like a Super Wal-Mart.”) so that I could purchase disposable razors and, for the first time since I had left home, women’s shaving cream.
We drove the rest of the way to Jim’s apartment in Taunusstein. By then it was quite dark and I saw little but city lights and at one point a dark void which was the Rhine. I noticed that on the mailbox outside the building’s outside door, our name had been spelled “McMhorter.” Germans apparently have a hard time with “McWhorter,” although this is generally because of the “Mc,” as observed by my uncle. We climbed the stairs to the top, opened the front door, and were greeted by their two dogs, Zoe, a muscular Jack Russel, and Lily, an overweight Chihuahua. Lily began to bark at me and I was afraid she wasn’t going to warm up to having me as a guest. Walking into the living area, I re-met my Aunt Christine who I had seen even fewer times during my life than my uncle, the last having been 10 years prior. We ate dinner that night at their favorite local restaurant. It was Italian-style and no, the humor in that did not escape me. I had a delicious baked-pasta dish which I have never seen offered in a restaurant in Italy that was, perhaps, all the better because of it (for variety’s sake). When we got back, my cousin Erin was there and after re-uniting with her, I noticed that Lily had warmed up to me already. After nearly falling asleep in one of the living room chairs, I dragged myself into the bedroom designated as mine for the week. I did feel bad about using this room since I soon realized that I was displacing just about everyone. But I was absolutely not “allowed” to sleep on the couch instead. I fell asleep quickly (after setting all of my damp clothes out to dry), wondering what Germany looked like in the day.