Westward for the weekend - part 1

We had a long weekend in Germany. Yesterday was Pfingsten Montag, Pentecost Monday, which the last of the May holidays. My weekend was extra long, because it started at 4:30 on Thursday morning. That's when I got up to make the first train heading to Frankfurt. My very good friend Karissa was on her way back to Washington DC after a work trip to Turkmenistan, and she arranged for an overnight layover so that we could hang out. Karissa must really like me. After 10 days in Turkmenistan, she spent an extra 32 hours away from her baby and her husband and her half-rennovated house to see me.

What, you may ask, was she doing in Turkmenistan? Karissa works for an organization that helps students who want to come to the U.S. for exchange programs or to study at American universities. They do it as a type of diplomacy - the students will enjoy their time in the U.S., then come back home to be leaders in their own countries and will not hate Americans. This work brings her to some out of the way places. Foreigners are few in Turkmenistan, are closely watched, and have a 10pm curfew.

But back to me (isn't that what this blog is all about?)... Who rides the early train out of Hannover? A lot of people do, actually. Since it was a holiday weekend there were plenty of travelers on board. I recognized an international school student with her mother, and hid from in order to avoid awkward early morning chit chat. My favorite passengers were the two older couples across the aisle from me. They were wearing their traveling pants with the legs that zip off to make them into shorts and talking away as if it were later than 6am and they were having a great day already. At about 6:30 they popped open a bottle of prosecco on the train and drank it from plastic cups. Wherever they were headed on vacation, they were planning to have a good time. 

Karissa and I did very little in Frankfurt, actually, besides catch up on all the things you need to catch up on with a friend you haven't seen in 13 months. We wandered around town and talked, cooked up some plans for our friend Julie's bachelorette party in the Twin Cities in July, checked out the botanical gardens, and I learned all about visiting Turkmenistan. We also tried to order pay-per-view movie channel at the hotel and ended up with only the "adult" channels. A very embarrassed hotel employee told us as he blushed that we wouldn't have to pay for them and bolted out of the room before we broke down in giggles.

On Friday afternoon Karissa got on a flight to DC and I boarded a train to Cologne. I sat on my suitcase in the aisle for much of the ride because the train was so packed. I probably should have brought a bottle of bubbly and some plastic cups to make it more fun.