It is the evening and I feel like I haven’t slept for a week. We are in our new flat celebrating our successful immigration to Germany by drinking a glass of Californian Zinfandel, 3 euro at the local supermarket. Zinfandel is uncommon in WA but not impossible to find. I like it because of the way it sneaks up on you, lulling you into a false sense of security until you try to stand up. Munich greeted us with a light shower of snow as a welcome to our new home. Our route here was not particularly direct and looking back on it I am amazed that we managed to pull it off without too many hitches.
Our first hurdle was checking in at Perth with a little bit of excess baggage. I was travelling with 32kg of check-in and 26kg of carry on whilst Annika had 28kg of check-in and about 15 kg of carry on. We had successfully upgraded to business so our allowances had been increased but by my calculations we were still 13 kg over on our carry on and I was preparing myself for a little bit of last minute chaos. However the lovely lady behind the counter was more concerned with the fact that my passport was due to expire in 2 months time and didn’t notice the size and quantity of the carry on bags sitting at our feet. I dispelled her passport consternations by revealing my brand new EU passport and that was that we were through.
Our first hurdle was checking in at Perth with a little bit of excess baggage. I was travelling with 32kg of check-in and 26kg of carry on whilst Annika had 28kg of check-in and about 15 kg of carry on. We had successfully upgraded to business so our allowances had been increased but by my calculations we were still 13 kg over on our carry on and I was preparing myself for a little bit of last minute chaos. However the lovely lady behind the counter was more concerned with the fact that my passport was due to expire in 2 months time and didn’t notice the size and quantity of the carry on bags sitting at our feet. I dispelled her passport consternations by revealing my brand new EU passport and that was that we were through.
The next hurdle was Heathrow, London. Unfortunately Qantas has two options for flying to Munich neither of which are great . One involves landing in Frankfurt and catching a train to Munich and the other is via Heathrow. As the thought of loading our belongings on to the ICE didn't thrill me too much we opted to travel via Heathrow. We would still have to catch a train from the Flughafen to our flat but this was always going to be the case.
Heathrow, London, setting the bench mark in customer service and efficiency. There is nothing better than clearing security at Heathrow to make one appreciate the simplistic elegance of a large calibre belt fed automatic weapon. We were scheduled to go back to cattle class for the last leg of our journey and thus relinquish any claim on multiple carry on items. Once again a certain amount of brazen swagger allowed us onto the aircraft with the crew thinking we were business passengers. I even handed over my 12kg suit bag to steward and asked him hang it up for me, disappearing down the aisle before he knew what was happening.
The final part of our odyssey involved catching the S Bahn and the U Bahn from the airport to our flat. We were met at the station by the brother of our landlord who led us back to the flat. I became quite emotional when I discovered that the flat was only 1 minute away and almost broke into tears when I found out it had a lift.
Heathrow, London, setting the bench mark in customer service and efficiency. There is nothing better than clearing security at Heathrow to make one appreciate the simplistic elegance of a large calibre belt fed automatic weapon. We were scheduled to go back to cattle class for the last leg of our journey and thus relinquish any claim on multiple carry on items. Once again a certain amount of brazen swagger allowed us onto the aircraft with the crew thinking we were business passengers. I even handed over my 12kg suit bag to steward and asked him hang it up for me, disappearing down the aisle before he knew what was happening.
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| The last stop. Annika with our 100kg of luggage |
The final part of our odyssey involved catching the S Bahn and the U Bahn from the airport to our flat. We were met at the station by the brother of our landlord who led us back to the flat. I became quite emotional when I discovered that the flat was only 1 minute away and almost broke into tears when I found out it had a lift.
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