08-VII-2010.
The short day of only 18 hours - flying back to Europe. After two days of weighing our four bags and the robotic embroidery machine, we finally pared it down sufficiently to pass Lufthansa's constraints. I decided that I won't be needing my faithful tozna anymore, 26 years will be enough, and I left it on the garbage heap. Even dropped the CDs and DVDs - copied all the music and most of the movies to the disk, which I will carry anyway. Unbelievably, this plastic weighed almost 3kg.
Took seventeen shots of the chicory bushes with the little birds (tits?) in front of the house, and Fujica focused barely one where I wanted it.
The next neighbor, in #2, had a kid's bike on the lawn... but I don't remember the wife bringing kids lately, they weren't even starting a divorce, he lived alone. When his brother visited the other day, he possibly stayed overnight, to keep him company. On #1 there's already a „for rent“ sign - Les left four days ago. Number six was vacated couple of weeks ago, the realtor came to post it again the other day, after first taking whatever was of any worth to repay the back rent, and leaving the rest on the curb for neighborst to pick and choose. The #7 was vacated this week... fuckit, everyone is leaving, even we.
They had Eleese in the big room, and pitched the little tent for her to sleep in. The room is actually even messier than when we slept in it. Despite the almost new AC, they had the big box fan, because Ender is a true Virginian, it's never cold enough.
At 13:20 I signed off the platoon chat at Firriver, „ok... I see there's nothing urgent... packing my laptop now. Leaving in 40. CU all on the other side.“ - the „see you on the other side“ being among David's favorite phrases.
Ender, Nina and Eleese saw us to the ORF airport. We had to take two cars, Nina's Acura and the Matrix, because of much luggage. We were ready to pay the 700$ that Lufthansa would charge us. Turned out we paid (to US Airways) just 100$ for the two extra pieces, no matter how heavy. Grrr... Furthermore, one smaller bag, that we wanted to carry, they just diverted to the luggage compartment, at the door of the first plane, for free.
There was about zero passport control - only the lady at the check-in took a look just to check that we were the guys on the ticket, and so did the security. They opened the bag with the smaller sewing machine and swabbed it for whatever substances they were looking for.
The trip was entirely uneventful; we had a small twin engine prop plane to DC, a Volvo (or was it a Saab?), four (leather!) seats per row, two on each side of the aisle. Just when we thought we'd never set foot on american soil, they diverted us to a back staircase, down to the tarmac, to walk some 20m to the airplane.
At Dulles, saw a couple of kiosks where we'd be able to exchange some $ for €, with zero commission. Yeah, right, it would save us the 3% commission, but the rate was about 11% worse than regular, so g'bye, mr Hindu exchange. We ate something, Lena did some yoga to stretch, waited for Lufthansa's plane, boarded ("have just boarding passes, we don't want to see your passports, repeat, no passports just boarding passes thank you!") and... heard German. Their stewardesses (by the looks of it, real old school stewardesses, not the youngest, approaching forty from whichever side, but good looking, elegance, class, unlike other compaines where these were dismissed and replaced with some politically rectified girls who attend flights).
Onboard, drank German beer. Though the can was minimal, perhaps half the substandard 0,33l, but the steward made a good show. When he offered it, I said "ah, american beer..." and made a face. He said "nononono, german beer!". Then he waited until I took a swig, then saw my blessed face, then made a "see, told ya" face... and then when I went to the toilet he removed the can, assuming I've downed it in a second. On the contrary, I intended to savour it over time, so too bad. Anyway, just having that little taste improved my mood and promised a bunch of good things awaiting us on the other side.
Food was decent... and somewhere around there we crossed the date line.
Mentions: David Berton, Eleese Aquila (Eleese), Ender Aquila (Ender), Firriver Fertility (Firriver), Fujica, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Les Paul, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), tozna, in serbian