Hallo! Well, let me not fool you, my German is nowhere near good or even decent yet.
I am currently about to take off from Tampa Airport to fly to Frankfurt, Germany, where I will catch my connecting flight to Vienna.
If you want the truth, saying goodbye was hard, but in a way, also not hard at all. It’s such a weird feeling, one I’d heard so much about but never understood until it was my turn. Now, I finally understand the struggle the Rotex had at orientation when trying to explain the emotions they felt on departure day.
When I tried to look up a word describing my emotions, the closest I could find was the term emotional ambivalence , meaning experiencing two opposing emotions about the same situation. It’s hard to grasp how my mind can go from extreme excitement about the journey ahead to sadness about what I’m leaving behind in the span of a few moments.
However, the feeling I’m experiencing THE MOST right now is nervousness. Not about arriving in Austria or even about this flight, but about my connecting flight in Germany because I know the airport is HUGE. I also know I’ll have to go through security again. However, I’m sure everything will work out, and I’m probably just being a worrywart.
Sitting at my gate, the environment around me has me excited. A lot of people traveling all over Europe have connecting flights through Frankfurt, so I’m hearing German as well as many other languages. I don’t understand any of them yet, but somehow, everyone knows English, haha! I’m very thankful for that.
I’m finally boarding after a 30-minute delay, which has me even more worried about my connecting flight because that means I now have only 45 minutes to make it to my next gate!
I have a window seat with one person next to me, a middle-aged gentleman who helped me put my bag in the overhead compartment and asked me about my blazer. He seemed very interested when I explained Rotary Youth Exchange, and, like many people hearing about it for the first time, he told me he wished he’d done something like this at his age.
I am now about an hour into the flight, and the flight attendant just came around with drinks.
I tried asking the flight attendant in German to throw my cup away since I’d poured the water into my water bottle, but I must have said something wrong because she filled it again and handed it back to me! She then told me in English that I could refill my water bottle at the back of the plane in a few moments.
Although it was embarrassing, I’m not too mad about it because the second cup of water means I probably don’t need to make the trip to the back anymore.
About three hours into the flight, they brought around dinner, and the choices were pasta or chicken. I chose pasta, and BOY, am I happy I did! Because the guy next to me got the chicken, and it looked way too healthy for my liking. The pasta was good, not great, but good enough!
I’m going to eat my dinner and read a bit before trying to sleep since I’m flying through the night.
All right, it’s now about 2 a.m. Florida time and 8 a.m. European time. I actually slept a decent amount, but I have about an hour and a half left, and I think I’ll be awake for all of it.
When I woke up and looked out of the plane window, it finally hit me for the first time that I’m actually ON MY WAY. It sounds silly, but it doesn’t feel real at times. Now, though, it finally does.
They served breakfast a few minutes after I woke up. It was a fiesta potato and egg wrap type of thing, which was very good! I had that and a black coffee, which I definitely needed because I was TIRED.
The coffee, unlike the egg wrap, was definitely not my favorite. I prefer coffee with cream and sugar, but I’m sure that by the end of this experience, I’ll adapt to drinking it black.
Also, every time I get up to use the restroom, I keep letting people skip ahead of me in line. For example, I let an older woman and a woman with her young son go ahead of me. I’m doing it mostly out of the kindness of my heart, but also because it gives me an excuse to stay out of my cramped seat and stand a little longer…
Frankfurt Airport experience
I just landed in Frankfurt!
Throughout the flight, it felt like it was never going to end, but looking back, it actually went by pretty quickly.
Now I need to get through security and onto the next plane because I won’t have much time!
… A bit of a jump in updates …
I’m just now taking off for Vienna!
I was running VERY behind because of all the lines. Frankfurt is a HUGE airport, and I seriously only had enough time to update my family that I’d landed and made it to my gate before I was suddenly rushing to board before the gates closed.
I hope that somewhere out there, the sweet German woman Vicky sees this journal somehow, someday, because she helped me SO MUCH!
Without her, I seriously think I would have missed my flight. I wish I’d gotten her phone number or some way to stay in touch, but sadly, we didn’t have time to exchange information. I’ll always remember her, though. She was my lifesaver! She helped me find security, get through the lines in time, and make it all the way to passport control.
TIPS FOR FUTURE EXCHANGE STUDENTS!
First off, I assumed there would be plenty of airport staff around whom I could ask for help navigating the airport. Truthfully, though, there weren’t nearly as many as I’d expected. Be prepared to ask people around you for directions and hope they’re kind enough to help. Most people are, as long as they understand what you’re asking.
Also, if possible, request a layover of at least two and a half hours if you’ll be connecting through Frankfurt.
The airport is enormous, and you first have to find the correct area for your connecting flight. Then, depending on your itinerary, you may need to go through security again, which, in my case, had a VERY long line. After security, I had to complete passport verification and fingerprint checks, which also involved a line, followed by another queue for border control to approve my travel.
I’m not telling you all of this to scare you, just to prepare you and encourage you to request longer layovers rather than shorter ones if you’re connecting through Frankfurt. Otherwise, you’ll probably be VERY stressed, with a random but extremely kind woman named Vicky helping you along the way and telling you not to worry.
With that being said, as stressed as I was, now that I’m on the plane taking off, I can look back and laugh because I figured it out!
On the not so bright side… my knee brace is completely gone. I have absolutely no idea where I left it. It’s okay, though. I’ll just have my mom ship my old one to me.
I’m now taking off and will be landing in Vienna in a little over an hour.
I’ll write again once I land! :)