August 30

We woke early this morning at 5:30am, dressed and packed briefly then headed to the train station.  We got to our train with no problems, got our luggage stowed, and found some good seats.  Everything was going fine until 9am, when we were notified that there was a problem between stations, and we would be delayed.  After quite a while of waiting nervously, and a lot of praying for me, we were eventually told that we would arrive at Frankfurt Flughafen on time…they thought.  We just stayed on the train then, because that was all we could really do.  It ended up not taking quite as long as they had thought, mostly because we were moving at around 300km/hr, which is faster than typical, even for an ICE.  So, with plenty of time, we entered the station, found the place to go and then went through Passport Control.  I should say here first though that we had to drink all of the CapriSonne that I was bringing back for Brian, because my suitcase was over the limit.  I was quite sad about that L.  About Passport Control then.  Marc made it through just fine, then Joe and I were stopped because we had apparently been in Germany for a week too long.  Technically I was in Germany for under the three month limit, but due to me saying "we", referring to Marc and I, what Joe and I were saying did not match up, so we had to sit for a while so they could check things out.  Eventually we ended up having to sign a paper saying that we acknowledge that we were in Germany for too long, for legal reasons I presume.  The officers said that we shouldn't worry about not getting into Germany again though.  I hope they are right.  The summer in Europe has turned me into an international criminal!  That was our last big hiccup, which was good.  Eventually we met up with Marc after the security checkpoint and boarded.  Of course I had the last seat in the plane, but it was an aisle seat, so not so bad.  I also got to talk with a girl from Wisconsin (Amanda), who had been in Europe for a month, mostly in the Ukraine with TeenChallenge, hanging out and loving Methadone addicts and kids in orphanages.  She was really cool and it made the flight go a bit shorter.  We had some pretty good meals on the flight, including a nice little soft crust pizza.  Getting into Chicago went well.  Customs was a breeze in Chicago as was Passport Control.  We had plenty of time to spare and arrived at our gate with some time to wait.  The flight back to Grand Rapids was very short and quite uneventful to boot.  We arrived back and I was met by the wonderful sight of Mom, Jeff, Katie, Aunt Linda, Aunt Shirley and Steve.  It was pretty great.  We got our bags, said brief goodbyes to Marc, Joe and their families, and were off.  On the way home we drove to Calvin and said hi to Dad as well.  It was nice to see the whole family again!  At home I unpacked very few things, went online for a while then went to sleep.  Home sweet home.  Deutschland war schön, aber ich bin glücklich wieder Zuhause!