Arriving

I've made it to Germany but it was an exciting 20-something hours!

I left Bleheim for Christchurch at 715 am with a party of devoted friends who braved the dawn to wave me off. When I got to ChCh, I discovered that the 3 extra kgs I was carrying would cost me over $ 240! So I ran about the airport for about 40 minutes, stressing and trying to locate the mysterious post office. I managed to find it in the end, and boarded my plane to Singapour with no other dramas.The flightwas very boring, I watched 4.5 movies and did little else. The airport at Singapour is enormous! I walked for over half an hour to get to my terminal. There were three giant shopping areas, which I didn't explore since my body thought it was midnight. When I finally found my terminal, I had three hours to kill and was terrified to fall asleep in case I missed my flight. The plane was delayed, apparently, but I didn't notice because the announcements were made in English as undecipherable to me as the German. The plane had no individual tv screens, which I only realized after I sat in my window seat. I did not want to disturb the two men beside me, so I didn't get up to get the one book I was allowed to bring. During one of my fractured fragments of sleep, my blanket got ninjaed. I was only using it to bulk up my pillow, since the plane was boiling, but it was still upsetting. I ended up craning my head to look out the window at the lights and trying to figure out which country we werre passing over without looking at the flight path on the tv's cabin. When I finally made it to Franfurt, I had to go through a labyrinth to find baggage collection, then another to find the right train stop. Then I had an hour to wait. That hour made me truly appreciate my new puffa jacket. Germany is cold. The train was delayed about 20 minutes and when it did come, the sign on the outside displaying the train number and destination wasn't working but I figured it out. When I got off at the Kassel train station, Manu and Martin only recognized me because of the Lake Chalice falcon screen-printed onto my suitcase, phew. I had arrived in Frankfurt at 7am ish local time, and had to last all day to get used to the new time zone. I started to wilt about 3 pm.

But I survived my big journey and my adventures in Germland just have started!