It's now been over two weeks since I posted anything. There was the run-up to our departure from Madeira on July 27, which is always a busy time. The night before we left, the church arranged a get-together, ostensibly to "say farewell" to Jackie and Jaime's house, which they have sold. It has been the scene of many a church function over the years, and will shortly be unavailable any longer. But Abbie and I both suspected that the real reason had to do with our 40th wedding anniversary, which we will be celebrating this coming Saturday here in the US. The church wanted to surprise us with a party, and they were partially successful. We were not surprised they did something, we just didn't know what it was they would do.
(1)We were greeted immediately by Pedro and Lidiya, who sang a song of blessing in Ukrainian and presented us with a traditional Ukrainian cake topped with sprigs of wheat to represent our four children.
(2)Several of the members got up and spoke, some of whom were not even teen-agers when they first came to the church. Now they have their own children.They arranged flowers in the yard,and there was music and special cakes, and Marcia asked different members to get up and say something. Many of those who spoke are the age of our own children, and they said they regarded us as their own parents. We are very blessed to have such a loving church, and truthfully, the love they show is as strong as any family ties on earth can be.
A First in FrankfurtFor the first time in our transatlantic travels, our route took us via Frankfurt, where we had an overnight stay. Being our first contact with Germany, our short time there was a treat. We ate dinner in a typical German restaurant (had to walk blocks and blocks past Italian, Chinese, and Korean restaurants to get to it) and since our flight was not until 2:30 the next afternoon, we had enough time in the morning to do a bit of shopping. To tell the truth, I did the shopping...I completed my set of harmonicas, and what better place than in Germany, the home of Hohner?
(3) The main train station in Frankfurt, with a beer garden set up on the plaza in front of the main entrance. 
(4) Scene inside the train station...a group of young people wait for their train, setting up camp, as it were, in the large, open area near the entrance.
We caught the train to the airport, which should have taken only 10 minutes. After 20 minutes had gone by, I realized that we had caught the wrong train to Wiesbaden from the main train station. One line passes by the airport, the other loops to the north. It took some fast reading of the railway posters (all in German) and getting off at the right station to catch the right train coming back that would take the south loop to the airport. We might have enjoyed the extra hour riding across the western countryside of Germany if we weren't worried about getting back to the airport in time to catch the plane to Chicago. Good thing we had left the city earlier than we had thought would be necessary. We made it to the gate on time. The departure, however, wasn't on time, so we had some time to kill and not much way to kill it.
Fortunately, the evening before, when we arrived, I had asked which terminal our flight to the US would leave from. The next day, as we were running very close on time, we knew to go directly to Concourse C. It must be the new concourse, as it was still under construction. There was very little seating, the corridor was crowded with people sitting on, or beside, their luggage. No shops had opened in that wing, and there were a few stalls set up provisionally in the corridors where one could buy a souvenir or a drink or something to read. It was the one negative impression we had from our stay in Frankfurt, and unfortunately, it was our last one. I must say, however, that it was not the lasting impression. We would enjoy going back for a visit.
Chicago, another storyThe 9-hr. flight to Chicago was one of the best crossings we've made. Although we left Frankfurt behind schedule, we arrived in Chicago just about on time, which was good, because we only had an hour and a half between flights. It had probably been 20 years since we had been in any form or fashion "in" Chicago. Of course, being in an airport doesn't really count as having been in the respective city. Chicago should be thankful for that, in our case.
Because we were arriving on an international flight, we had to go through immigration, then pick up our luggage, go through customs, then re-check the luggage for our on-going flight. This we have done many times in NY, for example, with relatively little hassle. Not so, Chicago.
Following the passport check at immigration (which did go fairly quickly because we are Americans), we were directed to a carousel to pick up our bags. I noticed all the bags coming through were from an Air India flight, and we were finally informed that our bags would be coming in on carousel 1, not 4. And they did, although the flight number never appeared on the monitor at the carousel.
There were only two officers checking the customs forms, and the lines coming from the various carousels all bottlenecked at the counter. Apparently, it was not only the Air India flight and ours from Germany that had arrived at about the same time. There must have been four or five wide body flights that dumped hundreds and hundreds of passengers into the immigration and customs lines, so that there was no semblance of order or line to queue up to the customs checkpoint. One officer even left his post and ordered a group of people to go around and get in the back of the long line we had been waiting in for 15 minutes without moving. People from other flights were merging into the line at the bottleneck, and we had no chance. The poor officers could do little more than verify that each passenger or family had filled out and signed a customs declaration. Actually checking what was written on the card, or checking the baggage was impossible.
Finally we got through, but the clock was ticking, and we had to get to the other terminal for our connecting flight. As we left the customs area, there were airline representatives getting the incoming passengers re-directed to their flights, and seeing that the checked baggage was put back on the conveyor belt. This room, too, had a zoo-like atmosphere. All the confusion, all the shouting---it was obvious that the airport personnel were overwhelmed by the number of passengers coming through at that moment. This was not the model of efficiency we expected of America.
We did make it to the other terminal within a few minutes of boarding time...and discovered that that flight was to be delayed an hour. In the end it was delayed two hours, so we got to Joy and Mark's close to midnight, rather than 9:00 p.m. We had made such a good trip across the Atlantic that, had we left on time from Chicago, we would have felt pretty good after being up for over 20 hours. The two-hour delay in Chicago was the crowning blow. There went our reserve strength.
But listening to the news today about the terrorist plot foiled in the U.K., and the disruption in air travel across the board, we're thankful we are not scheduled to fly in the next couple of weeks. I'm sure there are 10's of thousands of travellers who would gladly settle for a two-hour delay, sitting in a coffee shop, instead of standing two hours or more in the line for the security check, or having their flight cancelled altogether.
(To be continued...)
