ammogirl

Monday morning, we woke up bright and early (or I did, anyway) and got ready to go home.  Don’t you hate how awkward bathroom situations are at somebody else’s house?  I mean, if EVERYONE uses the same bathroom, when is it okay to shower?  Where do you put your wet towel?  How long should you take?  Is it okay to use their soap, if you’ve forgotten yours?  Can I ask anymore questions about this? 

Of course, it’s a little different when it’s your family, but still, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen them, and I don’t know…what if they are VERY PROTECTIVE of their soap?  Anyhow, I circumvented this whole situation by waking up three hours before anyone else.  This sucked less than you would imagine, because when I got out, I was all clean and relaxed and just stuck a towel on my head and went back to sleep until it was time to go.

So we made it to the airport, and subsequently back to Germany.  Customs was a piece of cake, baggage retrieval even easier, we were on track to make it home in record time when…the trunk of the car wouldn’t open.  And then once it did, the doors wouldn’t unlock.  And then once THEY did…the car.wouldn’t.start. 

You guys.  Do you realize that the worst place ever to have a dead battery is in an airport parking lot?  People just arriving are in a hurry to either meet their plane or the person they are picking up, and people leaving have just travelled and want to go home or have just picked someone up who has just travelled.  Nobody wants to help you.  Let me repeat: nobody.wants.to.help.  We asked every single person in the parking garage, but either they didn’t have the time, didn’t have the jumper cables, or didn’t want to use their Mercedes to jump our BMW.  No, I’m not kidding.  I would say something about how elitist that is but it pretty much says it for itself.  Anyway, no, we did not have our own jumper cables but in our defense, we have just bought the car.  I think you get a grace period, right?  And having them wouldn’t have made a difference anyway, what with the no help stance people were taking.  Of course, we COULD be a bit a fault for not immediately enrolling in ADAC, which is Europe’s answer to AAA.  I mean, we kept SAYING we needed to enroll, but saying is not doing, unless you are in a debate or perhaps, a talk show host…or an audio book reader…you know what I mean.  We dropped the ball on this one, big time, and had to suck it up when the ADAC guy showed up (having been called for us by a kindly on-his-way-homer) and we had to pay 75 euro for a jump.  That’s $98, or thereabouts, if you are wondering.  For a jump.  Annual membership in ADAC?  Oh, 90 euro.  So.

At this point, we had been in Germany for two hours, and all of it had been spent in the parking lot of the Hahn airport, and only now do we get to tackle the thing we had been worried about the whole weekend.  Remember in part one when I mentioned we stopped at the first parking we saw, because we were late and by the way, there was a hurricane outside and close seemed really, really worth it?  Well…four days later, it didn’t really seem like it: 100 euro.  I was like, okay, FINE, super expensive parking, and started shoving my money in the slot, because at this point, I didn’t CARE how much the parking was, I just wanted to go home, right?  Well, except I only had 97 euro in my wallet, of which the last 17 was coin.  And there was a line behind me.  And now I was panicked, and the people behind me were all "no..no…it’s okay" but I freaked out with my feeling guilty for holding up the line and hit "end" or "stop" or "refund" or whatever that button said and out came…17 euro.  And that’s all.  It gave me back my coin, and kept my bills…and now instead of being short 3 euro, I was short 83.  As I waved my arms around frantically trying to get John’s attention, I thought, you fucker, you stole my money!  But only after I got out of line.  I mean, I didn’t get out of line, I got out of THE line.  And I didn’t think that at John, the part about stealing my money. That might have been a bit unclear, but I really dislike hitting the back button.  Anyway, John came over, I yelled at him a bit because hi, it’s everyone elses fault when I am panicked, and he went off to get more money.

When he got back, I stuck my ticket back in and…guess how much I owed.  Well, only 20 euro, because, ha ha, the machine didn’t "steal" my money so much as "keep track of how much I’ve already paid". 

Anyway, we took off, and as we drove through the part where we had been blocked (ten!miles!away!) there were literally hundreds of fallen trees lined up on the side of the road.  It was insane.  I wanted to take a picture but with the dead battery and all, couldn’t really stop the car, so just imagine hundreds of fallen trees (big trees! deadly!) and try not to remember I tend to exaggerate because I’m totally not this time.  You guys, it was a lot of trees.  After that we got home with no excitement at all.

Okay.  So, on this trip, we had a horrible time on the way there and back, but a fabulous time in between.  Also, we spent no money while actually AT our destination, but made up for it at the airports, where we dropped a total of $380.  On snackpacks, parking, and a jump. 

I have come to the conclusion that we should just stay at my cousins house full time.  This will be cheaper and in the long run, once I work out the bathroom dilemma, much less stressful.  And, there you have it.  My four day weekend, in three parts. 

Sunday finds me BACK in the UK, for work-related purposes only, which means: no karaoke.  Crap.  I don’t know how often I’ll be able to post, but I WILL try.  I mean, because I know you can’t live without me.

Tschuss!!