Uhlfelder News

 June 18, 2008.  Today was our last day in Barcelona and the boys’ last day of school (there was a half day tomorrow, but not worth the time).  So after some hectic packing and trying to organize our luggage, do everything that was left undone, including banking, getting the manager to come and see the apartment, getting the broken car window replaced, we picked up the boys at school.  Then went back to the apartment and put everything in and on (bike in box) the car and went to the airport.  There we met the car rental guy, who took the car back.

We stood in line for our Lufthansa flight, which was actually Spanair.  As it turned out, the person who helped us was new to the job and couldn’t process our tickets for close to 20 minutes.  If the plane was on time, this would have been a problem. 

We left Barcelona, over an hour late, with two tired boys at 8:40 at night for a two-hour flight to Munich.  We arrived, put seven bags in left luggage, and went into town on the S-Bahn, another 40 minute affair.  We arrived at our hotel at midnight, probably the longest day ever for the boys.

June 19, 2008.  We slept late, thankfully and went to a nice hotel breakfast.  Then we made our way to go to Mike’s Bike Tour of Munich via the Uhlfelder plaque on the Stadt Museum (it’s still there!). 

The bike tour was a cruising bike that I was not used to – long wheelbase, very uncomfortable “comfort” seat.  We went for the four-hour tour, and had a nice history lesson from our guide.  There were lots of jokes that you would expect a demographic in the 20-35 year old age range would find funny.  Mike was there and seemed kind of uptight and corporate, not the image he was trying to portray as part of his marketing of the bike trips.  Anyhow, we had fantastic weather and a great day touring around Munich.  The guide, Tommy (?), did a nice job.

Then everyone went back to the room, we made a stop to see the Glockenspeil, which the boys thought was a waste of time.  It’s very crowded in the streets with tons of tourists and by far most of them are Americans.  We are wondering about the recession since these people are here.  There are others too, Russian, Spanish, French, Germans, but Americans are everywhere.

June 20, 2008.  We are on our way home.  Today is the longest day of the year, June 20, summer solstice.  For the four of us, it will be even longer by eight hours or so.  We got out of Munich without incident, more or less.  For the first time – leaving the EC – a German passport control officer actually started questioning us about how long we stayed in the EC and, low and behold, we had to show our German passports since we would be illegal without them.  He asked me why I didn’t show them first.  Anyhow, we made the flight and here we are.  I am in the row behind Anne and the kids next to a lawyer from Washington and a Air Marshall.