Sorry, internet access here is dial up and not unlimited, and Mark is getting weird about us being onine long, even though I said I would pay our share when the bill comes. IThe following post isfrom a few days agao, and no pictures yet, sorry. I am back planning to go to tthe UK. We still have the out of our December 1st tickets back to the states, fromItaly, but we do NOT want to do this, although I am worried about money, etc... anyway..
Time just seems to be flying here, despite the fact that we are living the slow life.
We’ve been in Germany almost a month now, and I think here at Siebertal for about 3 weeks.
A typical day for me lately is sleeping in until noon, getting up, having some tea, throwing in some laundry, checking email…. If there are guests I’ll do the breakfast dishes and if anyone has left, clean the room, etc. Pretty boring stuff. In the even, Mark, the man who owns this place will open the bar up and Jess and I will just hang out, put a puzzle together, surf. I hate to see what the dial up internet bill is going to be. I think I should be going online every couple of days and checking to see is DSL is available here yet.
It looks like the end of November Nick is going to move in with some friends who will be renting a townhouse, so he will only be paying $150 a month, and should be able to afford the car payment and insurance on his own then. YES!
My mom wanted to see some pictures of US, not just scenery, so we took some pictures today, I may put one or two of me online. I’ve given up trying to look good in pictures, PLUS I want to show everyone the picture of me pulling my baggy jeans away from my legs so that you can see some of the 30 pounds I’ve lost!
I’ve decided that I am going to follow through with the Highly Skilled Migrant Program visa for the UK, just because if I get it, I can make a lot of money there, live cheaply and then save some up. Maybe even commute! Hey that would work. Fly back to Germany on the weekends, at least for a bit. Hmmm… Ideas seem to flow like crazy here. Making them happen is a LOT harder!
Mark is driving Jess into Osterode, a nearby town. A friend of ours, Nassir, owns a restaurant there named Ghandi and wanted Jess to come in this evening and earn some money doing some cleaning. The bar here is open when Mark should be going to get here, and he said something about me being able to take his car to drive and pick her up! That would be a big step for him, to lend us the car. That opens it up to the possibility we might be able to use it in the future, which would give us so much more mobility! Right now we are pretty much holed up here with no money and no place to go.
My friend Jodi, who is also my realtor……. by the way, my house has still not been sold! I feel so badly for her, we are hoping it goes soon! It’s been a real nightmare for her. She in effect bought me out of my equity so that we could leave for Europe before the house sold, so we owe her big time!
Anyway, we stand to get a bit more money when the house sells, but Nick is having a problem coming up with the last month of rent at the apt, so I rang her up and she was kind enough to advance me some money. She had mentioned possibly paying me the balance over the next two months. That would mean that maybe next month I will be able to buy a car! I have decided that even with the wonderful transportation system that the EU has, our being able to make it, as well as our sanity depends on getting a car. The transportation system is wonderful for getting to work and back, occasional long trips, but is way too expensive to use solely instead of a car. If I could get a car next month I could drive to the UK for job interviews, we could get to the bigger towns which would mean that we could get part time jobs, and get ourselves to and from them.
I am crossing my fingers that Jodi will make another payment to me next month. That would solve so many problems!!
Other than that, the Harz mountains are fantastic shades of orange and gold, but it seems to be raining non-stop the last week.
I don’t know if I have mentioned it before, but Jess and I have moved into the room next to the one we were staying in. The new one is sooooooo much nicer. It has a couch in it that the cats love, and two extra windows with sills that look out over the street so that the cats can sit there and see what is going on. They are much happoer there, though we still let them out to run the halls when possible, they need to stretch their legs.
I have a couple of pictures when we put them in the cat harnesses to let them run on the balcony outside the room, the pictures are pretty hysterical, the look shell shocked. If I had a video camera I would be able to show you what happens when they try to walk in them..It shows just how much they depend on their sense of balance, with the harnesses on the basically stand up, then fall over on their sides. Very funny but sad at the same time. Kitty and Bammy were starting to get used to them, but were still quite off balance. Kitty had taking to walking with one side up against the fence to keep her standing upright. Again, VERY funny, but we try not to laugh out loud and offend them!
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Short, sorry
Ok then, yell at me, I know it´s been a long time since I´ve written, but I´ve been staying in a bed and breakfast in the Harz mountains,in the middle of Germany! Internet is dial-up and the man who owns the place only has 30 hours a month time online, so we have been trying to minimize the time online. We are out of money right now, so going into town ( a 4 mile walk one way) and paying 3€ an hour for an internet café is out of the question. Anyway, I am writing this offline and then going to paste it in, seem so it seems to be the only way to get this posted.
We are staying with a man who owns a bed and breakfast (excuse me if I have said this before) and I have been working hard cleaning (we all know how men clean!) and cooking in exchange for our room, but are not really making any cash, although I just made 10€ for making spaghetti, fries and a pizza for a couple of guys who live in the apartments next door. YES! Never did I think a 10€ bill would look so good! It will go for cat litter and food, and shampoo and conditioner and SODA!
Don´t feel sorry for us, we are having a heck of a time, other than being REALLY bored and wishing we had internet 24-7!
Right now we are torn between working temporary jobs in German companies or waiting to see if any of the army jobs we applied for come through. They say that if you make any money from a German company you will not be able to work at a military base, and the opposite as far as German companies go. I checked online the other day and one of the IT jobs I applied for in the army said I had made the first cut, so that is good news. Stuttgart is way south of here, but that is ok, anywhere in Germany is fine, preferably near a city please.
So things have been slow and lazy, which was fun for the first week or so, but is now starting to get old. I wish there were more people coming to stay here, I like being busy.
We are still waiting for the refund of our deposit from the apt in Italy to come through via wire, and in the meantime something I charged back in SEPT just came in, so I am minus.
We won´t even talk about Jess´ account…. UGH!
I wish the house would sell, that would be about $3500 and we could just go out and rent an apartment near a city and start looking for work locally.
Anyway, I have been sick the last two days, and now that I am actually writing, I don´t have much to say. BAD, I wanted to keep such a close tab on everything we have been doing.
Well, this is the best I can do for now……. I will try to start writing more.
We are staying with a man who owns a bed and breakfast (excuse me if I have said this before) and I have been working hard cleaning (we all know how men clean!) and cooking in exchange for our room, but are not really making any cash, although I just made 10€ for making spaghetti, fries and a pizza for a couple of guys who live in the apartments next door. YES! Never did I think a 10€ bill would look so good! It will go for cat litter and food, and shampoo and conditioner and SODA!
Don´t feel sorry for us, we are having a heck of a time, other than being REALLY bored and wishing we had internet 24-7!
Right now we are torn between working temporary jobs in German companies or waiting to see if any of the army jobs we applied for come through. They say that if you make any money from a German company you will not be able to work at a military base, and the opposite as far as German companies go. I checked online the other day and one of the IT jobs I applied for in the army said I had made the first cut, so that is good news. Stuttgart is way south of here, but that is ok, anywhere in Germany is fine, preferably near a city please.
So things have been slow and lazy, which was fun for the first week or so, but is now starting to get old. I wish there were more people coming to stay here, I like being busy.
We are still waiting for the refund of our deposit from the apt in Italy to come through via wire, and in the meantime something I charged back in SEPT just came in, so I am minus.
We won´t even talk about Jess´ account…. UGH!
I wish the house would sell, that would be about $3500 and we could just go out and rent an apartment near a city and start looking for work locally.
Anyway, I have been sick the last two days, and now that I am actually writing, I don´t have much to say. BAD, I wanted to keep such a close tab on everything we have been doing.
Well, this is the best I can do for now……. I will try to start writing more.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Wow, posting two days in a row!
Ok, where were we?
Oh yeah, at Amsterdam.... so basically I flew out of Amsterdam and into Hannover. By the time I got there, it was after 9, and Hertberg and Siber being the samll towns that they are, there were no more trains or busses going there that evening. Grrrrr..
I managed to get one to a town sort of near, and then called the place we were staying and the woner was nice enough to find me someone to come pick me up at the station and drive me back in exchange for gas money. Yeah!
The place we are staying is in a little town in the middle of Germany. we want to own this place badly, but it isn´t going to happen. We have a room with a balcony, and our own bathroom. A double bed, which in Europe means two singles put together. The Eurpeans obviously know the meaning of a good nights sleep, not feeling the person next to you tossing and turning. The place is old, when the owner said over 120 years old, we had to laugh, saying that in Italy that would be new, but then he reminded us that most of Germany was flattened in the wars, so this was pretty old for a house. That shut us up!
We have no transportation, the bus one way into town costs about $5 American, so we are walking, it´s about 8 km into town, takes us a bit over an hour to walk it if we need to shop and use the internet. We finally got on the internet yesterday, abotu a week after the owner of the place we are staying kept promising his would be up and running.
Yesterday we started applying for the civilian PX jobs at all the Army bases in Europe, Jess already got one reply saying she should stop in to get interviewed. Only problem is that it costs €30 one way for her to take the train. We should have stayed closer to the part of Germany we were job hunting in, but we couldn´t turn down the offer to stay here, we had no place to go at the time.
i also received a great email from the rental place in Italy. They were suprised to get the keys in the mailbox slot, but the woman was able to rent the place within a week, so we are getting a €314 refund!!!! yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so we are just a little less close to being broke.
Anyway, that is sort of up to date on everything, plus I am tired of typing. I will try to update this every other day, or if jobs happen, etc.
Love to you all!
Oh yeah, at Amsterdam.... so basically I flew out of Amsterdam and into Hannover. By the time I got there, it was after 9, and Hertberg and Siber being the samll towns that they are, there were no more trains or busses going there that evening. Grrrrr..
I managed to get one to a town sort of near, and then called the place we were staying and the woner was nice enough to find me someone to come pick me up at the station and drive me back in exchange for gas money. Yeah!
The place we are staying is in a little town in the middle of Germany. we want to own this place badly, but it isn´t going to happen. We have a room with a balcony, and our own bathroom. A double bed, which in Europe means two singles put together. The Eurpeans obviously know the meaning of a good nights sleep, not feeling the person next to you tossing and turning. The place is old, when the owner said over 120 years old, we had to laugh, saying that in Italy that would be new, but then he reminded us that most of Germany was flattened in the wars, so this was pretty old for a house. That shut us up!
We have no transportation, the bus one way into town costs about $5 American, so we are walking, it´s about 8 km into town, takes us a bit over an hour to walk it if we need to shop and use the internet. We finally got on the internet yesterday, abotu a week after the owner of the place we are staying kept promising his would be up and running.
Yesterday we started applying for the civilian PX jobs at all the Army bases in Europe, Jess already got one reply saying she should stop in to get interviewed. Only problem is that it costs €30 one way for her to take the train. We should have stayed closer to the part of Germany we were job hunting in, but we couldn´t turn down the offer to stay here, we had no place to go at the time.
i also received a great email from the rental place in Italy. They were suprised to get the keys in the mailbox slot, but the woman was able to rent the place within a week, so we are getting a €314 refund!!!! yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so we are just a little less close to being broke.
Anyway, that is sort of up to date on everything, plus I am tired of typing. I will try to update this every other day, or if jobs happen, etc.
Love to you all!
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Well hey there, long time no see!
Good god, what an interesting life Jess and I have been leading the last couple of weeks.
We have been just about homeless, I´ve been flying aroung Germany via Amsterdam, we are pretty much broke, but I did manage to steal a bunch of money from Jess´ account via the ATM so that I could get back fropm the airport, etc.
Anyway, I will just start typing like crazy to make up for lost time.
Oh before that, congratulations to the people from DEED! They won $4 in the lottery (with $75 worth of tickets)
Well, last I remember I was renting a car from Milan to bring Jess and I into Germany.
We drove up and decided to go to Wiesbaden instead of Darmstadt, I just had a feeling a really wanted to see the city. It was a LONG ride and the cat´s cages really didn´t fit into the rented car, but we managed. We ended up leaving Italy at about 11 pm, quite a few hours later than we wanted to, but we really wanted to leave the apartment in Italy clean. Well I did, Jess just wanted to leave. We did the cowards way out and slipped a note with the keys through the mail slot of the rental place. I haven´t heard back from them, so I am guessing they figured the one month deposit would cover everything.
Driving wasn´t bad, i had Jess as the navigator, so I was set. We got to Wiesbaden about noon, and I had made a hotel reservation, we were allowed in ealry, which was good because I was dead on my feet.
I decided that since the hotel had advertised as pet friendly, I was not going to ask if we could have four cats in our room. Of course that meant having to feel REALLY guilty (thanks mom) trying to get them into the room with a miimal amount of noise.
We managed and asked where an internet cafe was and walked down. Wiesbaden is a NICE city. Clean, cute, big enough but not too big.
We seem to be camerally challenged the last couple of weeks, so no pictures, sorry.
We had gone to try and find an apartment rental, then apply for jobs at the local Army base. we true to forom, the Ortega luck was running as bad as usual, we could NOT find anything.
we ended up staying a couple of extra days, and then our luck changed. Everytime I looked online for apartments, in Germany, I would run across this site for a hotel/hostel for sale, but it could be rented for €695 a month and you could pay €15,000 for the furniture. Well, in the back of my head I´ve alwasy wanted to own something like this, (no, we have not bought the place, at least not YET! ) BUT i kept thinking that maybe this guy would rent a room to us where we could have our cats.
Turns out he answered, said give him a call. I called an spoke to him, an Englishman, and he said that although he was closed for the season, we coudl come up, rent a room, have our cats with us, he could earn a bit of money, we could get the job and apartment business sorted out, etc. YES!!!!
We ended up driving up to his hostel in Sieber, Germany, kind of the middle, in the Harz mountains, which are really just BIG hills, but beatiful, all the trees have been turning wonderful colors, and the weather is perfect Indian summer.
It sounds peaceful, but lots of things have been happening during the last week or two.
I dropped Jess and the cats off and then had to turn around at 2 am the next morning and drive what Mapquest SAID was going to be a 9 hour drive down to Milan to bring the rental car back. Yeah, RIGHT! I even padded the driving time by couple of hours and was late.
The night I started out, I was having problems with one of my eyes and had been wering my glasses. I was going to bring the contacts with me, but forgot. Well about 2 miles I realized that in my old age, my eyes ahd REALLY changed since I had gotten my glasses about 9 months ago, I could not even read the road signs unless I sort of tipped the glasses forwardwith the ear pieces riding high on my head. By te time I realized this I was about 20 minutes away from Jess, and decided I would wing it, that it wouldn´t be too bad.
What followed next were about 15 of the most excrutiatingly HORRIBLE hours of my life.
The entire way down to Italy was horribly foggy, and I could not see the signs at all. I was probably a major danger onthe road, but I didn´t want to add another day´s rental to the car. (Everyone PLEASE give a HUGE round of applause to my mother, who was willing to pick up the rental car bill on her visa so that we would have a little cash. YYYEEEAAAHHH mom! I love you!!!)
I had booked a flight backup to Germany using my emergency frequent flyer miles because we truly did not have ANY money. I ended up bringing the car back with an empty tank, which I thought would go on my mom´s visa, but which went on mine, since it was the visa that I reserved the car on. i was TRULY lucky that the were reversig the charges for the rental and putting them on my mom´s visa, and that the reversal actually came in time so that nothing bounced.
Anyway, the directions mapquest gave me had me driving THROUGH the Alps, which has just received one of the first snowfalls. It was so amazing, (what I could see of it) it brought tears to my eyes. I could only imagine what it looked like had I been able to see clearly! I was so happy to be drivgn that way.... that is, until I realized that mapquest did NOT make allowances for driving through mountains behind very slow moving cars.
After a while I could tell that making my 1 pm flight was going to be too close for comfort. So close that I was pretty sure I was NOT going to make it.
With 45 minutes left, and being half blind, I saw a sign for an airport, and HOPING it was the one I was looking for, in desperation followed it. i found terminal 1, which was where the rental car place was, screached into a parkign spot and looked for the rental place. I asked a man in the lot and he said inside the terminal. I asked if he knew if the KLÖM checkin was in terminal 1 or 2. He gave me a funny look and said something I couldn´t understand, so I just ran for the termial, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, stopped the first person I saw and asked if this was the Malpensa airport near Milan. She said no, this was on the Swiss side of the border and the airport was probably an hour away, maybe less.
CRIPES! I have driven all this way UNABLE to see a street sign clearly, and now I am goign to miss my flight. SHIT! I may have said FUCK, but either way I was not happy.
By now the car has had the gas light on for about 25 minutes, and I knew I would have to put some amount of gas in it. I has stopped a couple of times to put €5 in just to keep going. I had no idea how much was in my bank account now, but was pretty sure it was close to zero, the same with Jess´ account. I drove into a gas station, and on the pump it said something about visas, and what I thought was after hours. i mean, I am so frazzled by this time, I assume it say you can pay by visa after hours. COOL! Maybe I have €5 still in my account.
I put 5 in the gas tank, and go to pay. The man behind the counter looks JUST like the Mr Bean consulate guy. UGH. Even worse, he is Italian and when I hand him my visa say, "DID you not read the sign outside, it says that we do NOT accpect visas!"
Yeah well Mr, I thought, that´s the way my luck is... But that´s ok I think, I have €5 on me. I hand him the money and he say no, it´s in Swiss Francs. SHIT!
Ok, how much in €? It was somethign like €10. I didn´t have it. Here! I say, I have €4......... No go... Well, what do I do? I could just TELL he was going to call the police. I FINALLY convinced him to let me go to an ATM to get cash (like I HAD any in there) by giving him my license, which he was NOT impressed with, he wanted the rental agreement from the car place.
TAKE it, I though. After roaming around 15 minutes liking for the bank, I finally find it. By now it is a little after 1, and I am hoping for some sort of mechanical failure on the plane I was supposed to be on, and that I would get there an hour late to find the flight had been delayed and everything would be wonderful.
I fnid the bank, and there were two ATMS. Oh, by the way, this bank was in the World Trade Center building, which was either 3 or 4 stories high. I thought this was hysterical, but when I think back on it now, they were VERY smart, should someone fly a plane into it, hey, only three stories go down in a blase. hmmmmm.....
Anyway, the one ATM will only let you take out like a minimum of 250. crap, then I notice it only dispenses Francs. SIIIGGHHHHH....... I want my MOMMY!
I ask the man at the other ATM, hoping to God he speaks English, how much 10 francs would be in Euros, he says about 15. ok, these numbers may be a bit skews, but you get the general drift. So now wait until he is done, and try to take out 20 francs. YES! some unknown God has let me do this. i´m pretty sure I don´t have that money in there, but you think I am going to question it at this time? NOOOOO..
So now, instead of 10 francs, (that was the amount now that I think of it, I have 20)
Being the smartass that I am , I drive up to the pump, go in, flash the 20 franc note at him and say. "ok, I´m going to go ahead and put another 10 francs in the gas tank!"
I know he thought he was never going to see me again, and trust me, I was thinking of the odds of getting to the border before the police caught up with me..
So now I´m set, 20 francs worth of gas in the car I head towards the border, and there´s aline there. There is no way in hell I could have ever gotten tot he airport on time. I get through, head towards Milan and pray to the gods that there are signs to Malpensa airport.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say, when i was getting the directions, the airport didn´t really have a street address, or I couldn´t find it, so I used the zipcode of it, and those were the wrong directions, I had even gone the right way according to the directions I had, they just weren´t the right directions.
So now I had no directions, but was really lucky and found the airport by going towards Milan, there were great signs, and managed to get to the airport, to the Europcar rental place.
I drop the car off, argue with them for a while, they want to charge the whole thing to my bank card. I explain that I had changed the billing with the US office to be on my mom´s card, and if they charged mine, they would not be getting their money.
I finally had to make her cal the US, I spoke to them and they were kind enough to send a fax to Milan saying the retal was on my mom´s card.
Unfortunately they had to charge the gas to my card. Whatever I thought.
I eaded to the terminal, thank heavens I had no luggage, etc. Squinted my way in trying to find the KLM desk. When I get there I explain I missed the flight, what can I do. I was soooooo lucky, there was another flight goign to Hannover at 4 something.
BUT there was a €45 penalty for changing the reservation. "Charge it to Mapquest" I thought, and explained to them i was broke and that was why I had used my frequent flier miles. Well, he said no exeptions. I told him that if he didn´t issue the ticket to me I would me forced to live in his termial like Tom Hanks in the movie "Terminal" I kid you not, I actually said that to him.. He wasn´t to impressed, but did send me to their account dept to talk to them about the fee.
15 minutes later, after saying the same thing about having to live in their terminal forever, as offering my mom´s credit card number even though I didn´t have the card (sorry mom)I had a boarding pass in hand. YES! I did not have to live in their terminal.
So off the Amsterdam I fly. From Amsterdam I switch planes to Hannover, Germany.
While waiting for them to say that boarding will start, i realize that I have no money to take the train down from Hannover to Siber, where the hotel is.
One note, in the Amsterdam airport, you wait to board, then you go into a bus and they bus you over to the plane out on a waiting area where all these planes are lined up.
I think, I NEED cash, it will cost around €30 to get from Hannover to Sieber. I go to the cash machine. I start with trying to pull out €50. No go. €40? no go. €20? No go.. I pull out Jess´ card and try €70, just for the fun of it. HOLY crap! It gave me money! Now I know for a fact theat there is not that much money in the account, but desperate times calls for desperate measures.. I try taking out another €50.... It gives it to me. I try another €70. It gives it to me, but by bnow I am looking over my shoulder and have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I´m trying to remember just how much money will make it a federal offense, and once again the guilt my mother instilled in me wins. i stop.
Standing in line waiting for the train i honestly feel like I have killed someone.
This will ahve to be continued in another day or so, sorry, almost out of internet time.
we are fine, out in the middle of the boonies in Germany, but will try to get back into town tomorrow. Buses stop running here at 6:30, so I have to run... LATER!
We have been just about homeless, I´ve been flying aroung Germany via Amsterdam, we are pretty much broke, but I did manage to steal a bunch of money from Jess´ account via the ATM so that I could get back fropm the airport, etc.
Anyway, I will just start typing like crazy to make up for lost time.
Oh before that, congratulations to the people from DEED! They won $4 in the lottery (with $75 worth of tickets)
Well, last I remember I was renting a car from Milan to bring Jess and I into Germany.
We drove up and decided to go to Wiesbaden instead of Darmstadt, I just had a feeling a really wanted to see the city. It was a LONG ride and the cat´s cages really didn´t fit into the rented car, but we managed. We ended up leaving Italy at about 11 pm, quite a few hours later than we wanted to, but we really wanted to leave the apartment in Italy clean. Well I did, Jess just wanted to leave. We did the cowards way out and slipped a note with the keys through the mail slot of the rental place. I haven´t heard back from them, so I am guessing they figured the one month deposit would cover everything.
Driving wasn´t bad, i had Jess as the navigator, so I was set. We got to Wiesbaden about noon, and I had made a hotel reservation, we were allowed in ealry, which was good because I was dead on my feet.
I decided that since the hotel had advertised as pet friendly, I was not going to ask if we could have four cats in our room. Of course that meant having to feel REALLY guilty (thanks mom) trying to get them into the room with a miimal amount of noise.
We managed and asked where an internet cafe was and walked down. Wiesbaden is a NICE city. Clean, cute, big enough but not too big.
We seem to be camerally challenged the last couple of weeks, so no pictures, sorry.
We had gone to try and find an apartment rental, then apply for jobs at the local Army base. we true to forom, the Ortega luck was running as bad as usual, we could NOT find anything.
we ended up staying a couple of extra days, and then our luck changed. Everytime I looked online for apartments, in Germany, I would run across this site for a hotel/hostel for sale, but it could be rented for €695 a month and you could pay €15,000 for the furniture. Well, in the back of my head I´ve alwasy wanted to own something like this, (no, we have not bought the place, at least not YET! ) BUT i kept thinking that maybe this guy would rent a room to us where we could have our cats.
Turns out he answered, said give him a call. I called an spoke to him, an Englishman, and he said that although he was closed for the season, we coudl come up, rent a room, have our cats with us, he could earn a bit of money, we could get the job and apartment business sorted out, etc. YES!!!!
We ended up driving up to his hostel in Sieber, Germany, kind of the middle, in the Harz mountains, which are really just BIG hills, but beatiful, all the trees have been turning wonderful colors, and the weather is perfect Indian summer.
It sounds peaceful, but lots of things have been happening during the last week or two.
I dropped Jess and the cats off and then had to turn around at 2 am the next morning and drive what Mapquest SAID was going to be a 9 hour drive down to Milan to bring the rental car back. Yeah, RIGHT! I even padded the driving time by couple of hours and was late.
The night I started out, I was having problems with one of my eyes and had been wering my glasses. I was going to bring the contacts with me, but forgot. Well about 2 miles I realized that in my old age, my eyes ahd REALLY changed since I had gotten my glasses about 9 months ago, I could not even read the road signs unless I sort of tipped the glasses forwardwith the ear pieces riding high on my head. By te time I realized this I was about 20 minutes away from Jess, and decided I would wing it, that it wouldn´t be too bad.
What followed next were about 15 of the most excrutiatingly HORRIBLE hours of my life.
The entire way down to Italy was horribly foggy, and I could not see the signs at all. I was probably a major danger onthe road, but I didn´t want to add another day´s rental to the car. (Everyone PLEASE give a HUGE round of applause to my mother, who was willing to pick up the rental car bill on her visa so that we would have a little cash. YYYEEEAAAHHH mom! I love you!!!)
I had booked a flight backup to Germany using my emergency frequent flyer miles because we truly did not have ANY money. I ended up bringing the car back with an empty tank, which I thought would go on my mom´s visa, but which went on mine, since it was the visa that I reserved the car on. i was TRULY lucky that the were reversig the charges for the rental and putting them on my mom´s visa, and that the reversal actually came in time so that nothing bounced.
Anyway, the directions mapquest gave me had me driving THROUGH the Alps, which has just received one of the first snowfalls. It was so amazing, (what I could see of it) it brought tears to my eyes. I could only imagine what it looked like had I been able to see clearly! I was so happy to be drivgn that way.... that is, until I realized that mapquest did NOT make allowances for driving through mountains behind very slow moving cars.
After a while I could tell that making my 1 pm flight was going to be too close for comfort. So close that I was pretty sure I was NOT going to make it.
With 45 minutes left, and being half blind, I saw a sign for an airport, and HOPING it was the one I was looking for, in desperation followed it. i found terminal 1, which was where the rental car place was, screached into a parkign spot and looked for the rental place. I asked a man in the lot and he said inside the terminal. I asked if he knew if the KLÖM checkin was in terminal 1 or 2. He gave me a funny look and said something I couldn´t understand, so I just ran for the termial, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, stopped the first person I saw and asked if this was the Malpensa airport near Milan. She said no, this was on the Swiss side of the border and the airport was probably an hour away, maybe less.
CRIPES! I have driven all this way UNABLE to see a street sign clearly, and now I am goign to miss my flight. SHIT! I may have said FUCK, but either way I was not happy.
By now the car has had the gas light on for about 25 minutes, and I knew I would have to put some amount of gas in it. I has stopped a couple of times to put €5 in just to keep going. I had no idea how much was in my bank account now, but was pretty sure it was close to zero, the same with Jess´ account. I drove into a gas station, and on the pump it said something about visas, and what I thought was after hours. i mean, I am so frazzled by this time, I assume it say you can pay by visa after hours. COOL! Maybe I have €5 still in my account.
I put 5 in the gas tank, and go to pay. The man behind the counter looks JUST like the Mr Bean consulate guy. UGH. Even worse, he is Italian and when I hand him my visa say, "DID you not read the sign outside, it says that we do NOT accpect visas!"
Yeah well Mr, I thought, that´s the way my luck is... But that´s ok I think, I have €5 on me. I hand him the money and he say no, it´s in Swiss Francs. SHIT!
Ok, how much in €? It was somethign like €10. I didn´t have it. Here! I say, I have €4......... No go... Well, what do I do? I could just TELL he was going to call the police. I FINALLY convinced him to let me go to an ATM to get cash (like I HAD any in there) by giving him my license, which he was NOT impressed with, he wanted the rental agreement from the car place.
TAKE it, I though. After roaming around 15 minutes liking for the bank, I finally find it. By now it is a little after 1, and I am hoping for some sort of mechanical failure on the plane I was supposed to be on, and that I would get there an hour late to find the flight had been delayed and everything would be wonderful.
I fnid the bank, and there were two ATMS. Oh, by the way, this bank was in the World Trade Center building, which was either 3 or 4 stories high. I thought this was hysterical, but when I think back on it now, they were VERY smart, should someone fly a plane into it, hey, only three stories go down in a blase. hmmmmm.....
Anyway, the one ATM will only let you take out like a minimum of 250. crap, then I notice it only dispenses Francs. SIIIGGHHHHH....... I want my MOMMY!
I ask the man at the other ATM, hoping to God he speaks English, how much 10 francs would be in Euros, he says about 15. ok, these numbers may be a bit skews, but you get the general drift. So now wait until he is done, and try to take out 20 francs. YES! some unknown God has let me do this. i´m pretty sure I don´t have that money in there, but you think I am going to question it at this time? NOOOOO..
So now, instead of 10 francs, (that was the amount now that I think of it, I have 20)
Being the smartass that I am , I drive up to the pump, go in, flash the 20 franc note at him and say. "ok, I´m going to go ahead and put another 10 francs in the gas tank!"
I know he thought he was never going to see me again, and trust me, I was thinking of the odds of getting to the border before the police caught up with me..
So now I´m set, 20 francs worth of gas in the car I head towards the border, and there´s aline there. There is no way in hell I could have ever gotten tot he airport on time. I get through, head towards Milan and pray to the gods that there are signs to Malpensa airport.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say, when i was getting the directions, the airport didn´t really have a street address, or I couldn´t find it, so I used the zipcode of it, and those were the wrong directions, I had even gone the right way according to the directions I had, they just weren´t the right directions.
So now I had no directions, but was really lucky and found the airport by going towards Milan, there were great signs, and managed to get to the airport, to the Europcar rental place.
I drop the car off, argue with them for a while, they want to charge the whole thing to my bank card. I explain that I had changed the billing with the US office to be on my mom´s card, and if they charged mine, they would not be getting their money.
I finally had to make her cal the US, I spoke to them and they were kind enough to send a fax to Milan saying the retal was on my mom´s card.
Unfortunately they had to charge the gas to my card. Whatever I thought.
I eaded to the terminal, thank heavens I had no luggage, etc. Squinted my way in trying to find the KLM desk. When I get there I explain I missed the flight, what can I do. I was soooooo lucky, there was another flight goign to Hannover at 4 something.
BUT there was a €45 penalty for changing the reservation. "Charge it to Mapquest" I thought, and explained to them i was broke and that was why I had used my frequent flier miles. Well, he said no exeptions. I told him that if he didn´t issue the ticket to me I would me forced to live in his termial like Tom Hanks in the movie "Terminal" I kid you not, I actually said that to him.. He wasn´t to impressed, but did send me to their account dept to talk to them about the fee.
15 minutes later, after saying the same thing about having to live in their terminal forever, as offering my mom´s credit card number even though I didn´t have the card (sorry mom)I had a boarding pass in hand. YES! I did not have to live in their terminal.
So off the Amsterdam I fly. From Amsterdam I switch planes to Hannover, Germany.
While waiting for them to say that boarding will start, i realize that I have no money to take the train down from Hannover to Siber, where the hotel is.
One note, in the Amsterdam airport, you wait to board, then you go into a bus and they bus you over to the plane out on a waiting area where all these planes are lined up.
I think, I NEED cash, it will cost around €30 to get from Hannover to Sieber. I go to the cash machine. I start with trying to pull out €50. No go. €40? no go. €20? No go.. I pull out Jess´ card and try €70, just for the fun of it. HOLY crap! It gave me money! Now I know for a fact theat there is not that much money in the account, but desperate times calls for desperate measures.. I try taking out another €50.... It gives it to me. I try another €70. It gives it to me, but by bnow I am looking over my shoulder and have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I´m trying to remember just how much money will make it a federal offense, and once again the guilt my mother instilled in me wins. i stop.
Standing in line waiting for the train i honestly feel like I have killed someone.
This will ahve to be continued in another day or so, sorry, almost out of internet time.
we are fine, out in the middle of the boonies in Germany, but will try to get back into town tomorrow. Buses stop running here at 6:30, so I have to run... LATER!
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