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!