Our flight left Dulles airport about 9:00pm on Sunday with Thuraya and I squished into two seats behind my mother and father. The first leg of the flight was seven hours long, and most of those hours were filled with screaming, restless children. I think I slept for twenty minutes.

We arrived in Madrid around 10:00am Monday (Madrid time). We had six hours before the two-hour flight that would take us to Munich, so we decided to check our bags and take the metro into the city.

Unfortunately, the Madrid airport proved difficult to navigate, and the language barrier was only part of the problem. We made our way from information stand to information stand, finally locating baggage check, where we played with tokens and keys until our luggage was locked away. From there, we found the metro entrance, looked like fools trying to figure out how to get a ticket from the machine, and headed down to the trains.

One of the men at the information stands provided us with a map of the metro and detailed instructions, so I felt pretty comfortable leading the way from train to train. Even without any navigational mistakes, it still took an hour to reach city center.

At 1:00pm, we came up at the Opera, a block away from the palace. It was very hot, and we knew we couldn’t stay long because we didn’t want to miss the flight out, so we spent only an hour wandering around. The palace, gardens, and statues were impressive — filled with accordion music — and many of the side streets were interesting, curving their narrow way through the brown buildings. Still, the heat and the flight deadline kept us from going very far, and we were soon back on the metro, trying hard not to fall asleep between stops.

The second leg of the flight was brief and uneventful. My Fridericke (my cousin), Helmut (her husband) and Alexandra (her daughter), and Gerda (my aunt) were waiting for us in Munich. When we’d finally gathered all of our luggage, slipped past customs, and loaded up their two vehicles, we took the half-hour drive on the Autobahn to their house on the outskirts of Regensburg. By 9:00pm, we were unpacked and sitting outside, enjoying the view of rolling hills, drinking German Pils bier, and snacking on German rye rolls, cheese, and gelbwurst.

The full flickr photoset is here.