Version 3.0: Debugging Deutschland

So we finally moved to Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Not an easy feat with a garage. A garage is an excellent device to make stuff disappear. Don’t know what to do with that huge carpet vacuum? Put it in the garage. How about the kitschy cakestand-bong combo from your hippie days? Garage. Drill bits? Ditto. Paint cans from 2005? You get the picture. It is very satisfying existentially. If a box is in the garage and nobody is there to see it, is it really there?

Except: it all bites back when you have to move. Unopened boxes from our 2004 move came marching out. Unused snorkeling gear. Enough Costco stuff to feed a family of 4 for a year (well, assuming the family survives the toxic brew the expired foodstuff has slowly transformed into over the years). Rajit’s “oh-so-cute” duck-shaped onesie (“he came home wearing that”). Ketchup-splattered tablecloth from Ritwik’s first birthday (“remember how he poured juice over his head?”).

Lesson: If you want to move, ever, don’t own a garage! You know the “dark matter” cosmologists keep looking for? Offer God a new home, make him move, and the stuff’ll pop out of his garage.

Anyhoo, we show up at the airport. Six large-ish suitcases. A car seat. A crib. Two clueless kids (“Yay, we’re going to Germany. Mommy, after we go to Germany, can we go to Chuck-e-Cheese?” and “Drool”, respectively). A wife. Me. A disbelieving Supershuttle driver. And our flight is late and we miss the connecting flight to Frankfurt.

Panic. But for once, the airline customer support comes in to the rescue. We get put on a direct LosAngeles Frankfurt flight. (The same flight I cheaply did not buy, since the tickets were more expensive than our LosAngeles-Boise-Iowa City-Rejkjavik-ferry-Bremerhaven-Frankfurt itinerary. Sweet, sweet, victory.)

The plane ride was usual and uneventful: screaming babies (Rajit won the “screamiest baby” contest), cramped spaces, strangely gelatinous food. Lost luggage. Yeah, we did lose our bags. I used to think that’s a Bad Thing. But it’s really an Airline-managed Door-to-Door Delivery Service. Saved me the hassle of moving a bunch of heavy things by myself. I’m surprised the airlines don’t already charge for lost luggage!

But it could be worse. The first email I checked was from my travel insurance company:

UPDATE 1: Health authorities recall another 152 million eggs linked to Salmonella infections in the US.

This on top, apparently, of the 228 million eggs already recalled. Oh http://www.eggsafety.org, you have done it again! Scooped the liberal mainstream media! So yeah, it could be worse! I could be eating buggy eggs!