We saw the sunrise at 11:30pm

Written by: Lisa

So...we are actually here, in Germany, except I keep typing ''Germanz'' because the keyboards are funky and the y and z are in each other's places (among other oddities).

Anyway I had wanted to post before we left Doug and Nalini's but we had so much going on those last few days that I just didn't get a chance. We had the most wonderful time there and seriously met the most wonderful people ever. Our final evening was spent with Bob and Carol, who scrimmaged against us in our 2k on Wednesday, on the veranda of the Potomac Boat Club overlooking the river. They packed a delightful picnic dinner and we had such a nice time. It was my first time to DC since my eighth grade class trip!

We had some good last practices on the Occoquan and had some fun times painting the oars in the USA colors. We then packaged them up in millions of layers of bubble wrap and ceran wrap. We bid a sad farewell (but really, just a goodbye for now) to Doug and Nalini and headed off to Newark airport yesterday morning. We left at 8am, drove for almost 5 hours, returned the rental car, and went to check our luggage. We were all decked out in our USA rowing gear that had arrived the day before and carrying our long set of bubble wrapped oars. We went up to the Northwest counter, hoping that the guy would let us check the oars for only a small fee (or free, would have been even more ideal!). However, to no avail. I knew as soon as the guy said my 50.5 lb suitcase was too much (the max is 50 lbs) he would not be lenient at all. Despite the fact that Josh's credit card nearly was lost forever behind the kiosk and gave us a minor panic attack, they managed to fish it out and STILL charged us the $450 extra fee for super long luggage. Vowing never again to travel on Northwest, we headed to the terminal and waited a couple hours for our 4:20 flight.

Nearly 20 hours after we had left Doug and Nalini's (after a brief layover in Amsterdam), we arrived in Berlin right as the sun was rising. My watch still read 11;30pm but it was 5:30am their time.

Anyway, Josh and Kristin want me to hurry this up so we can go eat dinner but besides the fact that we're exhausted and can't wait to go to bed, everything else went smoothly. We got a great Filippi 2x to row in, so our boat is taken care of, and we had a good practice this afternoon. More to come later!