the worst thing that has ever happened to me, part II........and then i flew to poland

I landed in Munich and started to feel sick from stress. Because I had booked my flight from Munich to Poland separately, I had to check in with the new airline. Having landed (on time) at 7:30 am, I told myself, "Okay. You have from 8:00-9:00 to get your luggage and go through customs. You have from 9:00-10:00 to check in to your next flight. You have from 10:00-11:00 go through security. At 11:30, you board your plane. At noon, you take off." Can you tell yet that Chicago O'Hare has scarred me for life? (Oh, and can I just say that 99.9% of the comments I got regarding that airport only further validated my frustrations toward that place? It is official: everyone hates it!)

Well, at 8:00 am I was where I had planned to be at around 10:30, which I attribute to a) Munich not being Chicago, b) there actually aren't a ton of people at the airport at 7:30 in the morning, c) I was moving faster than everyone else in said airport, walking at the pace of an Olympic track star and d) having a visa in your passport makes things a lot easier....they were actually being a little strict with everyone at customs and I felt nervous, at first, when the woman was scanning through my passport ever so slowly, just until she saw my visa page and said, "Ach so! Sie leben in Deutschland, oder?!" ("Ohhh, so you live in Germany!") I smiled (smiling and being nice can get you so far in life...that, and crying) and said, "Ja, das stimmt. Ich liebe Deutschland!." or something to that effect ("Yeah, that's right. I love Germany!"...did I mention that feigning love for a country you don't entirely love also sometimes helps?).

Anyway, by 8:00 am, I was going through security, which was my last "task" before boarding my plane. This flight allowed 1 checked bag and 1 carry on. When I had originally packed my suitcases, I had prepared for this (items-needing-to-be-checked in one bag, carry-on-able items in another). However, when my dad informed me that my large suitcase was too heavy, so much rearranging was done that the contents of both bags were just...kind of...all switched around....and I was so flustered and in a hurry that I forgot I'd eventually have to carry one of those bags on a plane. Make sense? Thus, I checked my big suitcase and then tried to board my plane with a few......extra large......bottles of Pureology shampoo..... and conditioner....... The moment I saw them pull 4 giant liquid-containing bottles out of my bag at the security checkpoint, I wanted to cry. No, I wasn't concerned that I'd get scolded in German (I mean, that happens to me all the time, let's be honest) or be detained for security questioning of some sort. I was OBVIOUSLY devastated by the mere fact that that's, like, the most expensive shampoo you can buy and it was.....(brace yourself) thrown away right before my very eyes. And (it gets worse), they took away my little tub of Pillsbury cake frosting, too.

I called a friend while waiting for my plane and made him listen to the following monologue: "I know that it's just shampoo and conditioner but I am SO upset - like, I'm almost on the verge of tears, I mean - I've been flying for, like, 24 hours or something and I just want to be in Poland and now I am going to wait for yet another plane (albeit, a plane taking me to Poland) but I will have to buy more shampoo and conditioner as soon as I get there and those bottles I had were going to last me, like, 6 months and that's basically, like, throwing $100 into the airport security trash can!!!!!!!!!! Along with that little tub of frosting, which I don't really care about but Lord knows Germans don't sell anything as artificially made as Pillsbury cake frosting!!!!" (This is true and if you don't believe me, you can ask the airport employee who pulled it out of my bag and stared at it as though it were from the future or something...please picture me trying to describe that in German...yeah, real funny).  I then just kept repeating, "And. they. don't. have. Pureology. in Poland!!!"

  I eventually calmed down long enough to convince myself that one of the following 3 possibilities were true:

1) If I had kept the bottles/frosting in the checked bag (where they belonged), they definitely, absolutely, without a doubt would have exploded and ruined everything I own (and no, the shampoo and conditioner would not have washed right out, thank you).

2) If I had kept the bottles/frosting in the checked bag, the suitcase would have somehow weighed too much, gotten stuck on the conveyor-belt (due to its weight? 'cause that makes sense...), ending up on another plane, going to another country, never to be seen again.

3) Every day, the Munich Airport workers go through the trash and donate shampoo and conditioner bottles to the homeless.....and they just keep the frosting in the trash can because they still don't really understand what that is.

Once I accepted the above 3 theories as absolute truth (all of them), I boarded my plane, landed in Poland only 1.5 hours later and was greeted at the airport by someone I had not seen in 6 weeks! What. a. great. feeling that was. :)

And it was also a great feeling when I realized the Christmas tree was still bright and shining in the Wroclaw city center.

Oh and it was also a great feeling when I was unpacking my luggage in Poland, opened my (carried on) purse and realized that I had boarded my flight to the US and my flight back to Europe with a box of Salzburg's Mozart Cafe matches zipped away in an inside pocket. Good job, airport security.

Good job.