2003-11-20 - 10:35 p.m.

Good to be back!!

Have arrived safely in Jena after the usual endless travels, this time by subway, shuttle, plane, train, and taxi. My flight on Monday was blissfully eventless - even the baby directly behind me stayed quiet all night, and I managed to sleep for at least one hour and 51 minutes - the entire length of the Harrison Ford action movie.

The only hitch occurred on the train ride to Jena - some poor soul decided to through him/herself in front of a train. Not ours thankfully, but the one just before ours, which meant that the entire line was closed, and we were stuck for two hours on the tracks in Eisenach waiting for the police and cleaning crews to finish their work. Funny how incidences like this make you forget about the misery that this person must have felt to commit this gruesome act - their pain is easily lost in the inconvenience one feels when forced to sit in an ICE train for two hours. And then when the train finally moves past, you watch all of the people remaining in the train craning their necks out of curiosity, to see where the person actually did it. ugh.

But anyway, I have made it home, I am alive and almost well (still struggling with this cold). And, I am still trying to get back to a point where my life here feels routine. But unfortunately I have a sense that my German routine will never return. These next few weeks seem only a segue into the move, into the stay at K's house, into the trip to my new apartment...It makes me very sad to realize that soon I won't be coming home to this house and garden that I love so much.

But speaking of German routine - I did manage to go to my concert band rehearsal this evening. HOt Damn! whoever said that concert bands didn't have culture??? In addition to a rousing rendition of Pomp and Circumstance that brought me right back to my pimply high school days...We stuck right in there with that Barry Manilow classic: Copacobana! "Her name was Lola...She was a show girl.." and finished with the ever-snappy Theme from Brazil. YYYYES! It doesn't get much better. I might have to fly back to Germany for the Spring concert!

Think I'll go look up those lyrics right now....