Jermany... my first customs search...

I made to the airport at Chicago and without any trouble got on my plane. It was scary saying good bye to everyone as this is the first part of my journey where I venture out alone. The flight was uneventful and I did manage to sleep for some of it. However the highlight of my travel was German customs... I must have looked stoned cuase they pulled me aside to empty my bags. Now had this been Tere of past this would have been a nightmare but having found in the states these wonderful vaccuum bags for clothes, this was relatively painless. They kept asking me 'what´s this?´ (at least I think this is what they were asking). They were very suspicious of the two sets of 8 ´nooma´dvds, and the 8 cds I had bought at the conference. I shoudl point out at this stage that neither of them spoke english. So for an entertaining (not) 15 mintues or so I tried to explain to them that they were christian teaching resources for young adults - not pirated hollywood movies. I thinkit helped when he pulled out my bible case and said ´what´s this?´. Now, the word for bible is the same in german as it is in english (for that matter so is dvd but they didnät understand that either) and he looked at me blankly for a few moments and then said ´bible?´ ´ja´as I opened it to prove that it wasn´t a very clever way of smuggling drugs.

The funny thing is, that although you know that there is nothing illegal in your bags you get very nervous that somehow something appeared from another dimension just to cause you trouble.

After my flight I had to catch two trains to get to bamberg and I can only put down my success to the grace of God. I got stopped at customs which should ahve made me late but my flight was early. I had carefully written down all the instructions and contacts numbers for Gerd and for Michael and put them in a very special place... when I find that very special place, I´ll let you know. I have the most terrible jet lag after 4 time zones in three weeks and was falling alseep on the train only to wake up after we pulled away from the stop where I would look frantically for a sign letting me know that i´d missed the stop to bamberg.

But thanks to modern technology I was able to kept entertained by texting a friend back home and when I got to bamberg 3 hours late I was able to call mum, wake her up at 5am and ask her to call Gerd for me... ain´t life grand?

Bamberg is beautiful. I get to go clubbing tonight but i´m not sure if I´m going to be able to stay awake... or how you order ´lemon lime & bitters´in german...