There is nothing like a little pampering in Frankfurt to break up a 36 hour journey home. We left the guest house around 12:30 in the afternoon…went through security check to get the vehicles into the airport…had my two Russian bayonets confiscated because their “museum pieces”. Then we parked and two guys with carts forced us to hire them to push our stuff to the terminal [side note about getting the bags to the terminal: It has just rained so the path to get to the terminal went by a pothole the size of a lake. Both our trolley men were fighting to keep the bags out of the lack of fecal mater, but both went ankle deep. Fortunately for one of them he had rubber boots.]

Then we went through a small security check where they just made sure you had a ticket. This was about 100 yards away from he terminal. Then there was a frisk to get into the terminal, $10 airport tax then x-ray the bags. The guys grabbing your bags from our trolleys really wanted a tip…so I gave one of them a paper worth 2 of their local currency (about 4 cents) but it was worthless cuz nobody takes those anymore. I knew it was worthless, but I thought it a nice gesture. They didn’t.

They didn’t look at the other knives I had in my bag, they just wanted to see my wedding invitations…did they think it was money? Then the guys unloading my bag from the x-ray machine and rapping it with a plastic thing wanted a tip. He spoke really good English and said they only get paid $30 a day (or was it month?).

Then we check our luggage with Indian Air, got hit with $142 of excess baggage we talked them down to a $100, which when paid went straight into the guys back pocket. We got in the stagnant immigration line but were pushed to the front cuz our flight left at 2 and it was like 1:30. We go through immigrations and do another frisk when they x-ray our carry on bags. It was a good thing they rushed us through immigrations because the flight was about two hours late.

Then we walk out to the bus that took us to the plane. I had never seen this before but they had all our checked bags lined up outside the plane. So we find our bags and tell the guy which are ours and then they put them on the plane. Lastly we walk up the stairs to get into the plane for one final frisk before getting on.

Then it was about 2 or 3 hours flight to India, 8 hour layover in India, 7 hour flight to Frankfurt, 5 hour layover in Frankfurt (with shower), then 8 hour flight to Washington. The most thorough frisk of the whole trip was in Frankfurt before getting in the extra secured section to fly to the States.

I don’t think I have been more happy to see anyone as when I saw Millie waiting for me once I got to Dulles. So great.

Photo by Andrew Borgquist. This concludes my trip blog.