The Beginning of our European Adventure

Day 1

Our adventure began bright and early on July 11, 2010 at 8 am. It felt even earlier as I had not slept at all the night before. A day of going away parties, casino outings and slumber parties made sleeping almost impossible.

We arrived at Tulsa International Airport for our first flight of the day. We were surrounded by 7 bags, 7 family members and 2 very close friends.

We checked our luggage and waited around until the very last second. I certainly did not want to say goodbye to my family. We huddled to say a quick prayer, then with a tearful goodbye headed off. My mom took pictures until we were so far into security she couldn't see us anymore. By the time we were patted down, x-rayed and searched, I was receiving text messages from my family. I'd only been out of sight for 10 minutes :).

We hurried to grab some food and make our way to our first terminal. I prayed the entire walk from gate to gate. I was nervous about the flight, to say the least. We sat down ate our food and then it was time to board the plane.

As we approached the plane my heart began to race. Then I saw the 'plane' or at least that's what they called it. Yes, there were wings, an engine and a pilot but it was the tiniest excuse for a plane I'd ever seen. We had to check our carry on bags last minute as the plane did not have adequate spacing for our personal property. As if I wasn't scared enough, I was stuck riding in a tiny little, 57 passenger (yes, I counted) plane. I prayed for almost the whole flight but after an hour and fifty minutes we landed in Chicago, Illinois, The Windy City.

Chicago was really pretty from the plane. As we approached, we could see Lake Michigan. It was the by far the biggest lake I'd ever seen. Our layover in Chicago was short and sweet. Before we knew it, we were on the next plane in route to Baltimore.

The flight to Baltimore was the shortest of the day. We barely got into the air before we were on our way to land. We arrived and immediately had to grab our bags and re-check them. It only sounds easy. The 7 bags we had in Tulsa were now in Baltimore and it was just my husband and me. We had to rent a cart to get around. We immediately went to our airline check-in area. That's when we noticed not only did we have to wait 2 hours to check our bags (which meant staying in the public portion of the airport with 7 bags) but our flight had been delayed an extra 3 hours making our Maryland layover a whopping 8 hours.

We decided to make the most of our situation. We searched for a sit down restaurant that could house 7 bags and two very hungry travelers. We were lucky to find a cute little bistro with just enough space to wheel our cart in and sit.

After dinner, we went back to check our luggage. We waited in line for an hour and finally were able to ditch the cart and our luggage. By this time, my husband and I were both drained. We immediately went through security, grabbed a drink and sat down to watch a movie. The 8 hour layover went by relatively fast. Before we knew it, it was 1:40 am and we were in route to Germany. Two nighttime Excedrin and a few airplane meals later and we were landing in Deutschland.

We had to go to a briefing on what our next move should be. Then we went through immigration, customs and grabbed our bags. We immediately left the airport. We drove around the base for a couple hours, got some food and then headed to our hotel to check in and sleep.