We are back!!!

The day of arrival.

At ten o'clock in the morning, my little nephew Hendrik (hard to believe that he already drives a car!!!) rings the doorbell and stands in front of the door to drive us to the airport Düsseldorf.

We have already checked in our suitcases on Sunday at the 'Late Check in', so we start the long journey towards Trumpistan armed only with our backpacks.

At 11:00 am we arrive at the airport, the security check is quickly completed, and we calmly wait for the plane to Munich.

It takes off on time at 1:30 pm, and 50 minutes later we land at the airport in Bavarian province.

Since we only have just over an hour until the connecting flight to Boston takes off, we walk quickly from the domestic to the international area. For some reason, we are spared another security check here. The responsible security officer only asks us about our destination and leads us past the scanners and conveyor belts to the gate. Either he immediately recognized our official faces, or we look so harmless that he considered any security check a waste of time.

Anyway, we stood at our gate and waited for boarding. It started on time, and at 4:15 pm we were sitting in the airplane in our seats.

And what followed was the worst flight of our lives!!!

A young family with two small children sat two rows in front of us. The children were estimated to be 1 and 2 years old. And they managed to cry and scream for seven hours out of the seven and a half hour flight. They achieved this through teamwork, when one was quiet, the other one screamed. Or both at the same time. The parents seemed very helpless and looked like zombies. Probably the two terrorists rampage through the apartment at home and regularly keep mom and dad awake at night.

As if that wasn't enough, Nicole had a restless Philip sitting in front of her, who couldn't sit still for five minutes without wiggling, moving the seat back and forth, or getting up.

I had his Spanish counterpart sitting behind me, the fidget Pedro. He had to kick or pull my seat at regular intervals.

Strangely enough, I was very tolerant towards him and only mentally imagined slamming his head against the back of the seat.

But my composure was gone when the idiot sitting right in front of me suddenly and unexpectedly put his seat in full recline mode. Unfortunately, this process was stopped by my kneecap, which I couldn't get out of the way fast enough. My scream and punch against the seat then made him quickly snap the seat back to the upright position. He didn't understand my German curse words, so he told me in English that he wanted to sleep. I then - eloquent and sophisticated of course also in English - replied that he was causing me pain when he reclined the seat, and if he does it again, I would cause him pain. This statement (and my bloodshot eyes) then led him to not move for the rest of the flight. Maybe he died of shock. It certainly smelled funny...

Thanks to the screaming kids, we landed in Boston with a pounding headache.

The immigration process was smooth and fast. When we left the air-conditioned airport building, the heat hit us: it was about 30 degrees with humid air. Well, what can you do. An hour after landing, we were on the bus to the pier of the "Water Taxi". After a fifteen-minute ride to the pier in front of our hotel - past the gleaming Boston skyline in the evening light - we arrived at our hotel.

After buying some cold drinks at the deli on the corner, we went to bed.

With a beer in hand and the typical American reality crime show on TV (black or Hispanic people robbing something and being caught by white policemen), the arrival day ends...