welcome to the united states
in short: i made it!
i’m in the office right now :)
long version:
after about 3 hours of sleep i got up at 2am CEST to drive up to stuttgart. even tho i got told to be there 2 hours early, maybe even 2.5h the air france booth wasn’t open.
check-in wasn’t a problem at all.
the flight to paris/cdg took off almost on time.
paris was the place where the fun started.
after getting the passport checked, walking along endlessly long hallways, and riding the shuttle bus to terminal 2C i had to wait in line for quite some time.
i began to wonder what was taking so long.
when i got the metal detector and x-ray thingy where i even had to take off my shoes to get them x-rayed i kind of got the answer to that question.
but this would not have been the end of the fun.
around the time the plane was scheduled to take off, we got told that there would be “some delays” due to the fact that everyone gets “body searched”.
OH JOY! i was so looking forward to this.
when the plane was finally in taxi, it suddenly stopped.
cause: runway locked down. awwww
the plane finally took off about 2h late.
the flight was a little more than 10 hours.
now the really funny part.
US customs.
i got warned about them. more than once.
so i put on the friendly smile, and waited in line.
i guess i got lucky that day, the customs officers all seemed pretty happy, and it was no problem at all to get thru customs. took me like 3 minutes, 2 fingerprints, and a digital mug-shot.
waiting for the baggage took a little while.
the cute beagle didn’t find anything in my bags ;)
and even the extra attention, getting the baggage x-rayed again, was no problem at all.
i got picked up by jon, the office manager, at the airport lounge and we went straight to oakland to check if i can move into the place they found for me.
more about that later ;)