Halfway Around the World in 2 days

Luckily by Friday, my headache finally dissipated and I left for the airport around 1 am. I didn't bother going to sleep at all, looking forward to stretching out in my own row on the flight to Frankfurt, which often has fewer than a handful of people. Surprisingly, the flight was almost full - I've never seen so many people on it - but given the shortage of space, I was lucky to only have one other passenger in the row with me and was still able to be moderately comfortable although sleep didn't really happen.

At some point I noticed that we were quite a bit behind schedule. Then I noticed that for some reason, on the screen that shows the flight's progress, the time to destination had dropped by about an hour. Of course, at the time, I was pretty pleased, thinking that there had been a glitch and we were actually on time. No such luck.

Shortly thereafter, the pilot came on and said that we were almost out of fuel and had to land in Budapest to get more because we couldn't make it to Frankfurt. Turns out there was a strong headwind and they used more fuel than expected. Lovely. And I'm not sure which was more disappointing, that we were going to be even later getting to Germany, or that I was going to Budapest but not going to be able to see the city.

When we finally landed in Frankfurt, we were almost 5 hours late. I got through the airport pretty quickly but there was no longer enough time for the side trip I planned for a boat trip on the Rhine. But I still made the best of it. Rather than staying in Frankfurt again, I had booked a hotel in Mainz, which is about equally distant from the airport.

Mainz is a more traditional German town and the weather was gorgeous, (upper 70s), so I spent the day seeing the sights and hunting for a good meal. The sights were everywhere, from the beautiful blue stained glass at St. Stephen's -

- to the impressive Mainz Cathedral -

then on to the old city with it's medieval architecture.

The German food was a little tougher to come by - lots of Thai, Italian, and pizza places, but it was 2:30 pm by the time I found a restaurant that offered some traditional fare. Starving by then, and knowing I probably wouldn't be ready to eat again until quite late, I decided to just eat a whole day's worth right there. Some type of German pizza, potato pancakes, sausage, fried potatoes, sauerkraut, dessert, and very dry cider - heavenly.

After lunch I completed my walk, mostly passing from church to church. Two that stood out were the ruins of the oldest remaining Gothic church, (9th century) -

- and one near the river that was exquisitely decorated inside.

Without sleep, I was pretty bushed by then, and had seen everything I wanted to see, so I returned to the hotel to kick back and relax.

The next morning I made the most of the excellent free breakfast, (when I make the most of food, that's saying something) and made my way to the airport. I've never waited so long at an airport to check my bags - I made it to the gate halfway through boarding. I know they say to arrive 3 hours before an international flight, but it NEVER takes that long and I end up sitting forever in a boring airport, so I've been arriving more like an hour and a half before. I don't think I'll change my policy, but I wish they could suggest a narrower window of time and stick to it.

The flight to DC was wonderful. The seating on Lufthansa was comfortable and they had the individual monitors on the back of the seats. I literally spent the whole flight catching up on movies I haven't seen. It definitely made the flight go faster and we arrived right on time in Washington. On Sunday afternoon, I was able to get together with some of my family in the local area, which was really nice.

I'm not going to talk about training because it's boring - although useful. So my main mission remains to eat all of the things that I can't get in Tajikistan - which is impossible in just a week, but will at least hit my favorites. I was reunited with McDonald's for the first time in a year for lunch on Monday - did I mention that August 20th was our 1 year anniversary in Tajikistan? Wow. And then it was sushi at a business dinner Monday night. I've got Chipotle scheduled for lunch today and then wings tonight. I still have to get a good burger, Arby's, Cold Stone Creamery, good BBQ, and a few other items, and will try to make it work with my busy schedule. Oh and of course, I have my obligatory tube of cookie dough in the fridge at my hotel. In fact, the jet lag has me up at 5 am so I think I'm going to go have some now.

Oh, and here's the link the the rest of the pictures as always.

Mainz 2010 JPGS