I made it… I am sitting in an internet cafe in Hamburg, near the suburb of Altona… I think I have the keybord sussed out now, and if this is the second entry fom here, you have my apologies, but I think I wiped out the first entry somehow, so here is trying again!

The plane trip was long… that is about all I will say.  I don´t like flying at the best of times, and 20 hours in the air was… well… I am sure you have all been there at some stage.

I had no trouble at Frankfurt airport and managed to get through customs and onto the shuttle bus from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 without any problems.  Buying a train ticket to Hamburg-Altona was easy and cost 102 Euro.  I called my Uncle from Frankfurt and told him what time to expect me in Hamburg… This proved to be an interesting conversation as I don´t speak German well and he does not speak English well.  Still we worked it out and my Aunt and Uncle met me at the train station.  They do not live too far from the train station so it was a quick drive to home.  It took four hours by train from Frankfurt to Hamburg.

The afternoon was spent in the Garden block, lazing in the sun.  The weather here is fantastic!  The evening was dinner with a group of friends in one of the gardens.  Everyone has wonderful gardens.  All the apartments have balcony gardens and there are flowers everywhere.  We ordered take away for dinner.  Everyone at dinner spoke a little bit of english so I was not left out of conversations.  People here are very friendly and very polite.

The sun sets at about 10:00pm so it was quite a long day for me.  I had very little sleep on the plane.  By the time I went to bed, I crashed and had a good sleep.

Day 2

The morning started at about 8:00am with breakfast.  My Aunt and I then went for a walk down the street to the markets and the shops.  We were gone for a couple of hours before I felt the first signs of jet lag and needed to return to the house.  After a short recovery, we then ventured down to the harbour and walked along the Elbe river for the afternoon, finishing the walk with Italian ice cream… yum.  Upon returning home, my Cousin, Steffan joined us for dinner and the rest of the evening… It is taking a while to get used to it still being daylight at 10:00pm…

Day 3… today.

I have been left to my own devices for the morning so have come down town again and found the internet cafe… a good bit of luck as there are not that many here and we do not have a computer at home.  It is easy to find your way around here.  Where we are is not the city, but a ´small´suburb.  Everyone speaks at least a little bit of english, so it is not hard to be understood. 

Cass