Travel Days
We said goodbye to New Mexico and drove 10 hours to Dallas which was our assigned “Port of Debarkation” where we would drop off our car to be shipped, drop of our dog (Mabel the Sheepadoodle) to a friend, and spend a couple nights before our flight to Europe.
The car deserves its own story here! The military will ship one car when you move OCONUS (outside the continental United States). We shipped our other car on our own dime through a commercial shipper. The VPC (vehicle processing center) in Dallas has very stringent rules on accepting vehicles for shipment so it’s a stress to get things just right before delivering the car. Two of those rules are that the car has to be free from all traces of dirt and have nothing in the car — this is tricky watching the weather for rain and also we have four kids and a dog riding in the car — and, the car can only have 1/4 tank of gas or less when we drop it off.
We had the car and engine professionally detailed two days before we left for Dallas and then were very careful loading it up and for the drive. We had nine pieces of luggage, plus six backpacks, and a massive dog kennel for Mabel’s flight. Once we arrived in Dallas, we emptied the car and cleaned it again. I LOVE a clean car! I always want to keep it this way, but…life, and kids.
It will take about 30-45 days to arrive to us in Germany. Our other car is set to arrive the end of June, we think. So it will be lots of walking and using public transportation, and the kindness of new friends to get us around and where we need to be.
Before we dropped of the car to the VPC, we had to drop our beloved Mabel off to my friend’s house who would be watching her for the next 10 days. Mabel was originally scheduled to fly out the same day as us with a pet shipper (ugh, the whole process has been eye opening and painful and I know I should write it all down so I don’t forget, but it’s a little too raw right now). She ended up having her flight rescheduled because of the heat embargo. Airlines do not ship animals once the temps are above 85 degrees. She is set to fly on Lufthansa as cargo and will be picked up from our friend’s and delivered to the airport. We love our sweet dog and this has been hard, but we are praying for her safety and peace as she travels and hope she’ll look at us when we pick her up.
The day of our travel started out rough as soon as we got to the airport. The lines to check baggage were long and there were so many unhappy people. We waited about an hour and a half to check in, finally arrived at our gate, and hurried to buy some food and snacks for the flight. It was late so the airport was shutting down, but there were so many people. There had been thunderstorms in Dallas earlier in the day so there were hundreds and hundreds of people standing in customer service lines waiting to be rebooked or figure out their next step.
I should have paid closer attention to this long line of frustrated people because of what was ahead for us.
Our flight from Dallas was delayed, then delayed again, then delayed again to where we knew we wouldn’t be able to make our connecting flight. We finally boarded our flight at 1:30am, two hours behind schedule, and quickly settled in to sleep.
Originally we had a pretty long layover set for London and I was so excited knowing it was the Queen’s Jubilee that day and that we’d have some time to find our old favorite British things. Our delay changed things. American Airlines had told us a gate agent would meet us at the door as we got off with new tickets for the next flights they could get us on, but there was no one there. We followed the signs to the next terminal and saw another horrible line of all the people that had been affected by the delay waiting to rebook, but our connecting flight was not on the list of flight affected. We joined another line waiting to go on to our next flight but when we got to the front they told us that we no longer had enough time to get there so we’d have to join another line for rebooking.
Matt was waiting in a line and I went to see if I could figure out if it was the right one. A worker told me it wasn’t so he joined a different line, with all of us. We waited in that line for 45 minutes, when another worker asked us what we were in line for and told us to join a different line, all the way at the back. It was another hour in that line. I teared up a few times seeing mothers with crying babies and young children also struggling through this waiting. I wished I could help.
Luckily there was one more connecting flight to Stuttgart that evening and they were able to get us and our bags on. After another few line mixups, we made it through security and made our way to our next gate only to discover Matt had dropped his military ID somewhere. This was stressful and the worst timing for it to happen! He had his ID out at so many different desks trying to figure out our tickets we didn’t know where to start looking. We asked at the customer service desk who called some of the other desks we had been at —no luck — and then suggested we go back to check at security to see if it had been found and turned in. Matt was distraught and sick about it all already running through the difficult steps he’d have to go through at our new location to get his ID made again. It’s not easy.
But, honestly we were handed a miracle in the very moment we needed it. The security desk had just barely picked it up and had it there waiting for him. It was such a relief and I felt overwhelmed with gratitude.
We had just a few minutes before out next flight boarded, no time to relax, so we filled out water bottles, hit the restrooms and I ducked into one of the airport shops to see what I could find for a dinner of sorts. It was actually so sweet because this shop had all the familiar sweets and treats we remembered from when we lived in England. I picked up a couple sandwiches to share and grabbed the sweets which delighted the kids. The highlight was the real Kinder Surprise eggs we found! I should have bought so many more. These are not the Kinder Joy eggs you see everywhere now, but the chocolate eggs that are a shell around a capsule with a toy to put together. They aren’t allowed in the United States because they are a “choking hazard”, and finding them anywhere in Europe is less and less common. I also grabbed Jelly Baby for Matt.
We rushed to board our flight and the plane was nearly empty. It just felt good to have some space! They served a snack and waters right away and we had another sweet surprise. The water was from Harrogate, where we had lived in England. The kids were again delighted and it felt like a reward for all the frustrations we had dealt with along the way so far.
We arrived to Germany at 11pm and our assigned sponsor kindly picked us up in his van to take us to our hotel. I had messaged the hotel earlier in the day to ask them to arrange connected rooms and prepare the rollaway beds if at all possible. I was so grateful that it was all taken care of when we arrived. We all showered and sank into bed, sleeping until noon the next day!
We made it! It was such a long journey, but we made it. The next step is getting over jet lag and exploring our new town. I can’t wait!
xo
dayna
