To Germany

So... check out picasaweb.google.com/piqueen for the photos of my trip. I've spent one night here thus far and my system is still utterly and entirely out of whack. I left the evening of the 28th just exactly as the second horrible blizzard was moving in. When we boarded the plane the expanse of concrete was still just glassy with melted flakes, but by the time we taxied to position to takeoff, I could barely see out the window -- and what I COULD see was only white. We sat out there for an hour before we took off, which was long enough for the passenger beside me to reveal a large number of personal details whose revelation I intentionally did nothing to elicit. The airport was a miserable cauldron of exhausted and unhappy travellers who had waited too long and who knew they were apt to wait much longer. Here's a picture taken from the line waiting to get into the maze waiting to go through security, which I stood in AFTER I spent an hour and a half getting my bags checked.
This next picture was taken under the Frankfurt Airport somewhere, after the delay from Denver caused me to miss my connecting flight to Munich. In the three hours I had to burn there, I managed to get my passport stamped twice -- one saying I came in and one saying I left again, but I couldn't get the customs fellow to stamp it a third time. My friend Bernd met me in Munich and we got on the Deutsche Bahn (DB) straight back to Frankfurt, then on to Mainz, where it is currently 11pm (or 23).
Today we went to the Gutenburg Museum, where I saw the oldest objects I had ever seen -- handwritten Bibles from the 15th century. Johannes Gutenburg invented the printing press in Mainz in the 16th century -- Mainz has been around since 50 BC, and by the 1400s it was a big place on the map (though Munich did not exist yet at all). After that museum came some bread with cheese, then we walked to see St. Stephan, the church whose stained-glass windows were actually painted by Marc Chagall -- they didn't photograph well, but you can see them here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Chagallfenster.jpg
After the church I saw what now rank as the oldest things I've ever actually seen in person: the remains of Roman ships, unearthed when the Hilton was being built in downtown Mainz. (There are two pictures from that museum on PicasaWeb, but the Gutenburg Museum was very strict about people not taking pictures.) Bernd says that Roman artifacts are underground so commonly in Mainz that construction projects have been known to pretend they hadn't found them, just so the contractors can get their work done.
An hour ago Bernd's dad blew out the candles on their Tannenbaum. I need very much to go sleep now -- tomorrow is Silvester, New Year's Eve, so it is doubtful that I will make a blog posting, but probably I should be able to get some more pictures up. Thanks for reading -- and may your Neues Jahr 2007 be exactly the mix of adventure and peace that you most prefer.