Our departure date for our trip finally arrived, and we woke up this morning at about 6:15 AM to get ready for the flights to Berlin, Germany. We did the final weighing of our luggage last night and both suitcases were about 46 -1/2 pounds, well below the 50 pound limit for the airlines.
Mom picked us up promptly at 7:45 AM and I drove us to the airport in her car. There was a little bit of daily commuter traffic this morning, but not too bad, and we arrived at the airport by about 8:30 AM.
Columbia Airport
We checked in, handed off our luggage to security, and went through the personal security scanning with TSA. After re-dressing, we arrived at our gate by about 8:45 AM. There was not much passenger traffic at the Columbia Airport this morning and we found it was actually a stress free process to go through check-in and security
We boarded our small commuter jet and left on time from Colombia. It was a smooth flight to our first stop at Dulles Airport in Washington DC. We had about an hour and a half layover there and then boarded or flight to Newark, New Jersey, We boarded on-time, but the flight was full and they were trying to get the last few standby passengers onto the plane, so we were late leaving the gate. The pilot made up the delay in-flight and we landed in Newark on-time.
Our Plane to Berlin
Unfortunately we had almost a four hour layover in Newark before our flight left for Berlin. They had some nice waiting areas in the airport with charging stations and you could also order food and drink electronically from tablets located on the tables at each seat, and you then your food would be delivered to you by the service personnel. After charging our phones, we went over to another location that served draft beers, and had a beer each. We met a couple there that was also flying to Europe from Newark. They were travelling to Copenhagen, and we chatted with them for a while before we headed over to our gate to board our flight. The flight to Berlin on our 767 aircraft was only about 80 percent full.
We took off a little late due to the number of aircraft leaving Newark at the same time. We had two side by side seats next to the window on aisle 25. About 45 minutes into the flight they served us dinner and we chose the chicken selection that was was some type of a Chicken Curry. It was not that bad. They did serve white and red wine with dinner, or, your selection of beers. We both chose the red wine. After dinner we both started watching our individual movies on the screens on the back of the seats in front of us. The flight attendants did come around with another beverage service, so we both ordered a couple of cans of ginger ale and cups of ice so that we can have that with our smuggled on mini bottles of Seagram’s VO that we brought from home. We know that most airlines do not stock VO, and if they do, there is only have a very limited supply, so we just bring our own.
Almost Night Time
We settled in and finished watching the movies and had one more round Seagram’s VO drinks. It was starting to get late, and we knew we needed to try and get a little bit of sleep, so once our movies were over, we “tucked in” for the night.
Neither of us got that much real sleep, probably less than two hours each, if even that much. The flight was bumpy, not rough, but just enough to shake you out of an almost full sleep state.
Landing in Berlin
They woke us up about 90 minutes before the flight was landing in Berlin to serve us a light breakfast, consisting of a croissant, jelly and a small yogurt. After we ate, we used our portable toothbrush to brush our teeth and then packed away our headsets and travel pillows into Stephanie’s backpack. We landed in Berlin about 20 minutes early, and deplaned, glad we had made it safely.
We were barely off the plane, before there was a back-up of passengers waiting in the jetway tunnel for immigration. Immigration was done right at the arrival gate, and there were two officers processing European Union passports, and two processing “other” passports, including our USA passports. It went fairly quickly, and while strange, it was faster than anything the USA does to process people through immigration/customs. No special forms, or customs declarations, just present your passport and get an entry stamp.
Then we proceeded to our luggage carousel, which was also in our arrival gate area, just past immigration, which was really nice. Unfortunately, since we had arrived so early to Newark for our connection to Berlin, we knew our bags had probably been loaded first, and they were almost the last to come off of the plane in Berlin, but both arrived, much to our delight.
With luggage in hand, we headed outside of the terminal to the bus stop to catch the bus for the ride to the Berlin train station.
This ends the first day of our travels, we will pick up the remainder of today on the next post, titled, Heading from Berlin to Rostock.