The Jet Lag is Over

Well folks, we made it to Europe. It was truly a long and harrowing journey:

• June 11--leave for Newark--arrive in Newark at midnight.

• June 12--navigate New York City public transit system from Newark to LaGuardia airport with a mountain of luggage. This wasn't nearly as bad as we'd thought it would be. Hop on a flight to Ottawa, Canada. Here's where things get dicey. The immigration officials in Canada gave me a pretty hard time for some bad choices 13 years ago. Finally, we barely make it to our 7-hour flight to Germany, arrive in Germany at about 11 AM and, in an attempt to beat the jet lag, stay up the entire day. We went to bed around 8 PM. That's one helluva day--awake for around 30 hours straight. But Amie was an awesome traveler--which was the only nice thing the arrogant, smug Canadian immigration officer said to me as she and Dominique stood behind me during my "this guy's a terrorist" interview. Jerks.

The last few days have just been hanging out in Wiesbaden, eating good European food, drinking good European coffee, and staying out of the rain as much as possible. It's the European soccer finals right now and Germany is playing. This only happens once every four years and it's a really big deal right now. So that's been fun to see.

Amelie has been such a good girl. Today, we went out to a small German village to visit some of Dominique's friends. Between them, they have 3 daughters. Amelie played with them like they were three American girls, even though at first they talked to each other with looks of profound confusion on their faces. Eventually, it just turned into regular old little girls running around like maniacs. And between hanging out with her Oma (German for grandma) and these little girls, Amelie's German--and openness to learning it--have dramatically improved.

At this point, we're booking a last-minute hotel and rental car for Strasbourg, France. We'll be going there on Tuesday. I'm told it's a beautiful city and I'm looking forward to finally using the French I've been learning for the past year. Plus I just love France, which is the real reason we came on this trip anyway.

Stay posted, folks. What's coming is Strasbourg, the wonderful and charming French Riviera, our wedding, Italy, Prague, and Berlin. It's a lot to take in. Much love, people!