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Woke up at 4 after going to bed at midnight. In the hotel lobby by 4:30 with all our stuff and people. To the airport terminal where we check in and go through security with zero line (first time ever). A coffee and a muffin before boarding to Munich.
Lufthansa is a mess at the Munich airport. They act like they have never boarded an international flight before...who ever heard of manually typing in everyone's passport information at the boarding gate? It has a bar code on it for a reason, scan the damn things! Needless to say, the plane is 30 minutes late leaving. Great... we have a 1 hr 20 min connection time in Newark...not. going. to. make. it.
The 8.5 hour flight to Newark is smooth and easy with Heather and I taking turns napping while MD naps and watches shows off and on.
Newark is the worst airport we have ever been in. We have to wait 15+ minutes to get our stroller from gate check, which puts us behind 2 more planes at passport control. 35 minutes there and then we have to retrieve our checked luggage, then the United baggage guy is a smart ass so he gets an ear full then threatens to not load our bags, which then necessitates I apologize to him so that he'll load our bags. The inter-terminal tram is broken so it's bus service to the next terminal, another 7minutes waiting on the bus. Then we get the pleasure of 45 minutes in the TSA screening line. The TSA sucks! Their security check procedures are literally the slowest in the world, they are always undermanned, no one else in the world uses those stupid body scanners, and quite frankly most of the TSA workers couldn't care less about their job...I have a lot more confidence in the security checks in Germany and China and both are 3x as fast.
On to the gate...of course it's at the far end of the terminal...not going to run, it was supposed to leave 20 minutes ago, no way they held it that long for us. Of course not, when we get there it's gone. But luckily there is another flight at 3:10 (original flight was 2:05), we're able to get 3 middle seats and then I orchestrate the largest onboard seat rearrangement in the history of United. Literally no one in the last 6 rows is sitting in their assigned seat! We end up with 2 aisles and a middle, and the rest of the flight is quiet.
Finally back in Houston! Wish we could figure out a way to travel to foreign countries without all the airports and planes.
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MIMI Would loved to have seen the seat rearrangement on that United Flight> Must have been pretty funny.