Day 1...ish

It is only fair to begin this experience at its actual beginning point. Unfortunately, there are a million mundane details involved in beginning at the beginning, so I will not. The important things to know are 1) it sucks to know you're going somewhere for five months before it is officially recognized that you're going there... nothing can be accomplished without official recognition, so knowledge (in this case) is USELESS... 2) it's a little bit worse getting only partial official recognition because a lot of legwork can be done but the *most important* things cannot be accomplished without that last single sheet of paper... 3) last minute documentation will get the job done, but will be very frustrating, time consuming and all around agonizing to deal with. THEN you get to sit and wait for your flight(s) out.

Rob is the fortunate one in this part of the story: he gets to travel alone, live in the barracks with guys who have all the same (PARTY) interests and in general enjoy the life of one who has only the responsibility of going to work every day. This is an excellent break for him and he definitely takes full advantage of it.

Felix and I are left with the packing up and transporting of household goods, selling of items unwanted or unshippable, storage of secondary vehicle, release of rental and finally, all the lovely details involved in getting from one side of the pond to the other. Naturally, this means *I* am left with these responsibilities, plus those associated with a trying-to-be-helpful-but-still-severely-egocentric 9 year old. Fun times, for sure!! Needless to say, all of these things are accomplished with a limited amount of stress on my part, thanks to the gym membership I chose to take FULL advantage of during my last few weeks in NC. The final part of this tasking found me in one of the happiest places (for me) on earth: Ponte Vedra, FL. Felix and I spent a lovely couple of weeks there leading up to our departing flight from Charleston, SC (yes, this is Army logic for you) on Sunday, May 1st, 2011 at roughly 1pm. We made it onto and through our first flight (1 hour) with no troubles. It was smooth sailing and fairly fun and at the end of it was a 2 hour layover in (of all places) Charlotte, NC. Our second flight (the long one, of course) arrived late and departed even later, turning our layover into 3 hours. I admit to feeling absolute panic once in the air because in a perfect world, the 45 minute layover I was supposed to have in Germany would have been plenty of time for me to go through customs - for the first time ever - and get to my flight to Venice with no trouble at all. I still consider it fortunate that we do not live in a perfect world (how boring would that be!?!?!) but I knew that we were not going to have time to do what we needed to do. I underestimated German efficiency - hopefully for the last time - because they were very particular about finding us and getting us where we needed to go. We arrived 15 minutes before our flight was due to depart and the lovely young man who led us in and out and up and down got us there with about 5 minutes to spare. He sped us through employee entrances/exits, jumped us onto and off of vans saying "we get off here, you follow me" as the van slammed to a stop where ever it was we were supposed to be going. It was quite an experience. Once seated on the plane, I allowed my brain to catch up to my body and was able to breathe again. The pilot announced first in German, then in Italian and finally in English that we might be starting our flight a few minutes late, but he'd be damned if he was going to get us to our destination late. During his announcement, he was peeling out onto the tarmac (the safety brief happened the second we were on board!) and we were in the air in just about no time flat to start our 1 hour flight. He was right, by the way, we arrived exactly on time (9:35 am) despite taking off about 15 minutes late. Our luggage, however, did not quite make our flight.

In Marco Polo airport, after registering our lost luggage, we linked up with Rob and had a nice little lunch while we waited for the shuttle to Ederle at noon. This is the point at which I learned that Osama Bin Laden was dead. I still haven't processed that bit of information. The ride took about 45 minutes and I tried really hard to pay attention to Rob, but after 12 hours of actual flight and the craziness in between I was not mentally functioning the way I'd hoped to be. Perhaps if I had been able to sleep on any of the flights, I would have been a little better but the sleep thing just didn't work out for me. Arrival in Ederle meant immediate in-processing. We had to go to three offices within the same building (THANK GOD) and do some paperwork to keep us in the country and get us into the system on post. This was followed up with a trip to the px for clothing for me and Felix then we had to get to Rob's room to pick up what he had purchased for the apartment (a side note for Ana: he made me use his roommate's bathroom because he didn't want me to see his own... he said he hadn't cleaned it since he got there! hahahaha) and finally we were on the road to our apartment.

The apartment of a thousand keys... holy CRAP are there a lot of keys to this place! According to the paper attached to the key ring, they do each actually go to something but I haven't verified that as fact yet. I've found the important ones: entry gate, entry door, laundry room storage, garage and front door. There should be one to the little green common area and probably one to the mailbox we're not supposed to use... I think possibly two others. Anyhow, we arrived, brought stuff up then left again to go buy food at the local market. While shopping, we realized that Rob would not be able to accompany us home as he had to catch the bus back to Ederle, so he left me with some cash for food and took off. Felix and I wandered around trying to find bread, pb&j (we were unsuccessful at that) and cereal for quick nourishment before passing out. Better shopping would have to be done after getting some rest. So we got to the apartment and I asked Felix what he wanted for dinner. Not surprisingly, he asked for the cereal that we bought (some kind of puffy wheat flakes and chocolate shavings) so I let him have cereal for dinner. Then he showered in his brand new elevator shower (oh yeah, let the imagination be FREE!!) while I made myself a lovely bath in the huge tub, locking the bathroom door with the adorable old-fashioned keys provided. After the bath (did I mention how lovely it was?) I found myself most assuredly locked in the bathroom without hope of escape. My guess is that the wood expanded just enough because of my bath steam that the key no longer fit properly to turn the lock back. Felix and I both tried, passing the key underneath the door to one another. Then I tried on my own again for awhile. About half an hour into it, I decided to have Felix go look for a knife in the kitchen and maybe if it would fit under the door I would be able to unscrew the knob and get myself out that way. While looking for the knife, he found two more keys (much more recently made) and brought them to me. The first one I tried let me out. I decided at that point that all three keys would be put together in a drawer in the kitchen and never used again while I live here. Finally, I went to bed... at roughly 9pm on Monday, May 2nd, 2011.

How many days was that?

oh... here are the keys I won't be using anymore!