Saturday, 12 October 2024
We arrived on Tuesday later than expected due to slight airline delays. Our first experience with German culture was trying to get a cart at the baggage claim for our luggage. We watched others walk right up to the carts, insert a coin and free their previously chained cart to use. Someone watching us trying to figure it out said, "You need a coin!"
We have no eruo coins, and we have too much baggage for us to haul easily...
Ed left me with the chained carts and our baggage to go in search for some way to get coins. Then, a sweet young German dad who had traveled on the same plane from the US came to me with a coin in his hand and said, "Here, we just came from San Francisco and we saw carts all over the place. This is why Germany does this; it's much better. It's this way at stores too." He smiled and extended his hand with the coin as Ed came back with an airport helper. I thanked the still smiling German traveler but said we were all good now.
The airport helper had a "magic" key that unlocked the chains so we got two carts for our bags. We thanked him profusely and headed out the doors to the relief of the office couple, Elder and Sister Wulfenstein, who had been waiting around for our delayed flight to take us to the mission office.
At the mission office, we signed a lot of papers required to get us registered in Germany, had other documents copied, learned that our car was in Frankfurt and would be delivered by our supervisor next week, ate a sandwich with the office couples (Elder and Sister Young joined us too), and learned about the miracle of our apartment which I will post later.
While Elder Wulfenstein was driving us around, he kept constant instructions about driving in Germany, including describing the meaning of every traffic sign we came upon. Everything was coming at me so quickly, I became more and more nervous about driving here! I am the primary driver and I will be responsible to keep us safe and to not get tickets which Elder Wulfenstein has said in no uncertain terms is impossible...we will get tickets!!
After my experience with one ticket in Belgium last year, I am so nervous about how many I will be responsible for. (With the Church owned cars, the Church receives the ticket in the mail at the mission office, pays it and then the office person sends the bill to the individual missionary to reimburse the Church.)
We then spent our first night in Germany at a hotel often used by the mission.
The next morning our first priority was to buy a cell phone for use in Germany. The mission provides us with a SIM card and a phone plan, but our US phones don't take SIM cards. Using Google, we found a place withing walking distance and bought matching phones.
I just thought it was hilarious that we came from the US and bought a cell phone for use in Germany from shop owned by a man from Turkey who spoke English and was very helpful!
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