Melissa's Amusings: Germany Vacation-Not A Picture Perfect Finale

    We had planned on one more sightseeing excursion for the day before our flight back home. As we were pulling out of the driveway, the dreaded light on the dashboard lit up indicating some kind of radiator leak.We were able to get the car to his town's gas station/mechanic. They were able to figure out the problem, but parts needed to be ordered.
    We had planned on Justin driving us to the airport the next morning and he would need a car for getting to work, so the next issue was to find a car. The car service people were very friendly and helpful; they knew our speaking German was very limited, so they called around for us at the various car rental agencies until they found one that had a car available immediately.
   There was one problem, the only car available was a manual transmission. Justin now had one afternoon to learn how to drive a stick shift on hilly, narrow German roads...nothing like pressure to make you learn fast!! Geoffrey prefers manual/shift cars, so he and Justin went out and practiced. By early evening, they decided that Justin had gotten proficient enough; he was able to start up the car and drive while being parked on a steep hill.
   To relax and get our minds off tomorrow's adventure, we played some games.

This is Geoffrey's favorite game....build your own spaceship and see how it holds up against random attacks.

My spaceships never did very well :-(

May is the the season for weiss spargel (white asparagus) and are so popular that restaurants have special menus just for them!!! I had bought some at the market to try out. They were pretty good sauteed :-)

Fresh weiss spargel- not sauteed yet.

No one slept very well, and we got up extra early to leave for Frankfurt. We wanted to have plenty of time to get there and have less traffic on the autobahn.

discussing shifting strategies ?

There were no problems getting to the airport, and now we have to say our 'good byes' :-(

airport waiting area

We flew in to Chicago with a connecting flight to Springfield. The weather was a bit stormy and our landing in Chicago was quite rough. As we waited for our connecting flight, the storms were coming and going, and our departure for Springfield kept getting pushed back. Many hours passed and they finally cancelled our flight. Our airline was the last to do this and by this time all rental cars were taken, but Jim was able to line one up for the morning. The airline had discounts for us at some hotel and it felt very good to finally relax after a kind of ' trying' ending to our vacation. The next morning....