My arrival in The Great Country

The trip began quite in a hurry since my train was leaving at 8h17 and that I didn’t hear my alarm clock, or rather heard it and fell asleep again, so that I reopened my eyes only at 7h57. Now, those of you who know Goettingen also know that we need basically 15 minutes to go from my apartment to the train station. Nonetheless, defying time, I jumped into my pants, hardly buttoned up my shirt (it was anyway buttoned up from yesterday) and grabbed my suitcase, running to the station. I actually arrived at 8h10, so that I even had time to look at some newspapers at the newsstand. After arriving at the airport, where I am quite proud to say that I answered all the questions in German (basically this means I got my name right in German), and after having gone through all the security checks and all the checking-in process, I had a last minute call from Lufthansa who had an “important message” for me, namely they wanted to know whether I had only one luggage. Apparently they were satisfied with my positive answer, and I just had to hop into the plane to find myself between a German biologist and an old Russian lady, to whom I had to translate what was written on the immigration card. For those of you who are interested, the movie in the plane was “Blades of Glory”, which I cannot but not recommend.

Anyway I arrive in Newark and I go through immigration services, where the guy at the desk apparently doesn’t believe that there is such a thing as a Summer School in Colorado, and he asks me to go to this special room, where agent Schmulowski double checks what I already said to the first guy, asks me if anyone will help me financially during the month, and wants to know how much money I have on my bank account. After this interlude, I go to the baggage claim, and Lufthansa has another “important message” for me. And guess what, it also concerns my luggage… Well, what do you know, they’ve lost it. Or anyway, it’s still in Frankfurt. Well, I just have to go through the customs, where I am again interrogated by someone different than the usual guy (but that’s because agent Schmulowski wrote something on my customs card), who wants to know how much money I have on me, asks me where my luggage is, and wants all the information about my work and the place I work and the place I go to. Did you know that they observe you behind their tainted glass offices by the way, and wait to see what you’re doing? Isn’t this perverse?

I arrived late enough in Colorado to have to go to eat at Taco Bell and not be able to finish my second Taco or whatever that was on my menu. Happily some people around me had less demanding taste than my refined French palate and gladfully accepted the remaining piece of food. Let’s call it the “remaining item” rather.