A Long Day Travelling
So, that wake up call got us out of bed and onto the bus by 6:30am in Tianjin and it took 3 hours to drive to Beijing. (The train takes 30 minutes …it took us a good hour and a half to actually get out of Tianjin).
There we were dropped off at the International Airport where we found our way easily and quickly to the Lufthansa check in and then we were whisked off to Frankfurt on a very comfortable flight which much improved food and friendly service from the last time I took Lufthansa 7 years ago (when I had said that I would not use them again). In fact the seating, the TV screen and bathroom were all superior to other air lines we have recently used (saying this, I still love getting onto Air NZ planes and hear the familiar accent. It feels as if we are almost home).
Tessa and Ben were particularly impressed with the kids’ meals. Nick had to have vegetarian as this is the only way they can guarantee milk free food, so he was not so impressed, but he ended up eating my pork dish instead so all was good.
A pleasant flight on which I made up for the movies I did not watch on our midnight flight from NZ to Hong Kong by watching three movies. I finally got to see the animation ‘Brave’ which I thought was fun. Ben watched Madagascar 3…three times! He can now quote parts of the movie.
We landed in Frankfurt at 15:00 and had to hang around until 20:00 for our connecting flight to Hamburg. That was a little hard on the children as it was 22:00 in Beijing at this stage in their day. We found our gate and sat down and Nick basically fell into a coma and when the time to wake him came he staggered onto the plane holding on to me, basically sleep walking. Tessa and Ben had also had a snooze but were coping. Then we had a 45 minute flight to Hamburg which seemed ridiculously short after our previous flights and the long waiting time at the air port.
After a couple of hours at Frankfurt Airport they all succumbed to sleep.
Then the entire Norderstedt team came out to greet us and pick us up. Ingrid was there, Birgit, Marek and Jana.
They dropped us off at the apartment and the children all collapsed into bed while I unpacked a little and then went to sleep as well. A nice relaxed deep sleep, knowing that we are somewhere familiar, somewhere quiet and comfortable. We all appreciated the fact that we could sit on a toilet rather than squat over one, that the water in the shower had a steady stream and kept the same temperature all of the time, that the beds were super comfortable and that we had a window that could be opened for fresh air rather than then air conditioning.
We loved our time in China and had an amazing experience that will stay with us and now we are very happy in deed to be in Germany and Norderstedt.
Auf Wiedersehen
Tanja