The last day in Maryland was a blur of activity and to-do lists. We had to get our stuff packed up for the trip, get the final things out of the house, get the garage door fixed, sell the car (which also involved a trip to the bank to get a lien release), return the plates, and do several other things before driving to Dulles for our flight. For the most part we kept our cool and managed not to let the stress overwhelm us, and despite a few set-backs and unexpected stops, we still arrived 2.5 hours hours early for our flight… or so we thought.
After the final stressful steps of wrestling our luggage and the dogs out of the rental, into a shuttle, and into the correct line at the airport, we were hot, sweaty, and so, so ready to be through security so we could finally relax a little. Instead, after waiting in line for a good 20 minutes, we were informed that we missed our flight. I will admit — I had a bit of a meltdown at that news, but we managed to recover pretty quickly because she was able to get us booked on a flight several hours later. For about 10 minutes though, I wanted to scream and cry right there.
The dogs were surprisingly good at the airport. We took them out of their soft crates once we were at security and just walked them through the airport and kept them loose at the gate. We wrestled them back into the crates to get on the plane, and once we were settled (which involved a quick seat switch with another kind person to give the pups more room under the seats), Minnie curled right up into a ball and didn’t make a peep until we got off the plane.
Ghost, as expected, was more difficult. I spent the first 2 hours of the flight bent over petting her with her head sticking out of the crate. She was panting and upset and if we stoped petting her she would whine and bark. Eventually we wrestled her and the crate into my lap and let her stick her head out. I assumed the flight attendants would make me zip her back in, but none of them said a word about it, and Ghost settled down to sleep with my arms around her. The flight attendants did have me zip her back in for landing, but they let her stay in my lap. As soon we were made it off the plane I took her out of the crate again so she could walk through the airport. She was so tired by them that she only managed to surprise a few people by licking their legs.
Our sponsor from work met us outside baggage claim and got us moving for our first couple of appointments. If we had made our earlier flight we would have had all day to get a bank account opened, figure out cell phones, and do some other check-ins at the base. However, with our later arrival we focused on making sure our access cards worked for base, since we would need those for getting through the pedestrian gates to access downtown. After taking care of that and grabbing some euros from the ATM, we got a brief tour of the base before getting dropped off at the Army Lodge.
Once we got settled there and took the dogs out again, we decided to walk towards town for some food and a beer. It turns out that most of Wiesbaden seems to be in a hill, so the walk towards town (Mitte) is almost completely downhill, thus making the walk back to our room up the hill. Luckily we found a small restaurant a few minutes away, so we didn’t have to go too far with our sleep deprived brains.