In Heidelburg

I have to say, on the grand scheme of things, I'm thinking I have done ok so far. I managed to land in Frankfurt about 7 am and both collect my bag and rent a car with a GPS system and then figure out where a shopping district in Frankfurt would be, esse Fruestueck, kauf' ein Haarkurler und finde ein TMobile zu eine SIM karte kaufen. Not too bad for having just arrived in the country still jetlagged. The worst part was that I arrived in the shopping area too early to do all of that, so I had to just wander around a little bit, remember that I should keep track of where I left the car, wander back and then once having noted some landmarks, wander some more until the stores opened.

I started out flying to Charlotte. I've never flown through there, and while I'm not all that wow'd by US Airways (older cramped planes), the Charlotte Airport is quite nice. In a nod to their Southern location, they have rocking chairs out in the main terminal area. Of course though, it's mostly business travelers in them, and there were plugs at regular intervals (bless their hearts for thinkin' of that!) .

As is usually the case, I realized fairly quickly that I had forgotten something. In this case, I forgot a curling iron. This is one of those things that might be a blessing. About 2 years ago Anne discovered that a mere power transformer is not always what you need for some things and started a small fire in Laura's temporary London apartment with some hair appliances. Whoops. Now, certain types of shopping in other countries is always fun for me. The first time I was in India, it took several hours and multiple stores to find a small travel alarm clock (see ErikaInIndia if you didn't read that before). It just goes to show that while some things maya be universal, others are not. In this case, my first challenge was finding the word for curling iron in my German Dictionary--the closest I could get was Lockenwickler, which was really curler--which could be something that works without electricity. The second challenge was in decoding what kind of store would carry such product.

In the US, I'm sure you good come up with 5 places that might have one--drugstore being the top of the list, then stores like Target and going down to maybe discount store, grocery store or department store. Fairly diverse list, but not hard to generate. In other countries, the mental model of certain types of shopping is different. Die Apotheke had hair ties, barrettes, shampoo and such, but no hair dryers or curling irons. The more "health and beauty" store had curlers, bobby pins and other hair ornamentation, but not curling irons. Finally I went to the department store and looked in the section sort of like a drugstore area but they didn't have it either. At that point, I was willing to go ahead and fumble through in german to ask, and was cheerfully told that they were on 4, with "elektronische". I get it, it plugs in, but it's not something I expect to look for with coffeemakers and vacuum cleaners.

That lead to my second problem. I am an exchange rate 'tard. There's just no good way to put it. In Mexico, where the exchange rate is pretty consistently 10 pesos to the dollar, I'm never sure if I just spent 5 cents on hot sauce or 5 dollars. I can remember nearly ever conference id in the department and phone numbers for virtually anything that was ever important to me, but I cannot manipulate those numbers in my head. So there I am, looking at curling irons and trying to figure out if they are about what I'd expect to pay for a curling iron, or about $80-100 each. I have to start with some exchange rate landmarks for any trip and use those to get my bearings for the rest of the trip and I hadn't done that yet. I found one, it should be ok, and I'm pretty sure it didn't endanger the likelihood that the girls will go to college. I even wrote in my little travel log that $10 = 7 Euro and 10 Euro = $14 for future reference. I know, like I said, if you are one of those people who can do that in your head, writing it both ways seems silly. I am NOT one of those people, so it helps me to write it down. Years ago, trying to figure out a tip, my dear mother in law said to me "It's just 10 % and 5%". I turned and said "I know what it MEANS, I just can't do that in my head!".

Signs... I always like them, so I always take pictures of them. The X's on the pets struck me as funny.


This looked sort of like the pose Lauren Bacall was in on the top of the piano shot.


My little car... It's not a smart car, but it's pretty darn close.



The trunk was exactly the size of my two bags.

Well, my body is informing me that I have now been up for close to 24 hours (except some restless sleep on the plane) so I'm going to chance it and get a little lie down before adding the next part.

Tschuss!