Auspicious?

Well, that could have gone more smoothly - but no permanent harm involved.

I got about 2 hours of sleep last night between packing until late, being unable to sleep and getting up just a smidgen before 5:00am in order to get a taxi at 5:10 for the coach at 5:30 to check in at 6:30 and fly at 7:10, land at 9:45 German time and be in the office about 11:00am. That all worked out, although I was feeling fairly miserable by the time we landed. Grabbing a Meal Deal in the Boots in Terminal 2 Duty Free was an excellent idea - much as I would have loved to go to Nero, the queue did not allow it.

The adult businessmen on the flight were worse than children - twice the amount of hand luggage they should have, throwing it in under unoccupied seats, stowing luggage in the emergency exit and being told off by the stewardesses, same guy stowing his coat in the emergency exit and being told off by the bursar and when the bursar tried to go back to the front of the plane he caught someone using their iPhone.

The normal passport control desks at Frankfurt were closed for some reason, so everyone from my flight ended up milling around the terminal for a while before we could get out - at least the cases were out when we finally got to them. I took out some cash, and without thinking asked for 500 Euro, forgetting I have a withdrawal limit of £200 on my card. That was refused, but thankfully a quickly done second request for 200 Euro was successful...

No problems getting back to the office and had a nice coffee with friends before being thrown in at the deep end. I'm not doing the project I thought I would be because something more important had come up... but still translation and looking forward to it. The rush involved meant that it was 8:15 by the time I left. Himself also contacted me to let me know the bank had called about a refused transaction on my card. Must sort that out soon.

I had been told I was going back to my old flat - which was great as a) I know where it is and b) I left a lot of stuff there, like coffee filters and tupperware. However, the office had lost my keys. So I ended up with keys to another flat. I hoped? assumed? that someone would help me get over to the flat, but by the time I'd finished what I was doing they had mostly staggered home after hitting the 10-hour German time limit. So, a not entirely fun evening of dragging luggage around an unfamiliar area - my case really doesn't like the bricks they use for German pavements.

That said, I did find it first time (a miracle for me, I know) - all the credit goes to Google Maps for showing me what the area looked like, I'm much better with that than any kind of directions.

The flat is very nice, quite large and even has a bath! Don't know if I'll be staying or not. But the heating isn't on so that will take a little while to kick in. To top it all off, I have brought the wrong adaptor plug (US/NZ instead of Europe) so have no plug-in power for the laptop. I shall leave it here for tonight...