From: Rainer
Subject: Rainer's Europe Trip 1998 -- part 33
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 02:17:52 EST

Monday, 10/26 -- part 33

Today is the last day in Europe.  My early morning access to AOL finds
Chris there.  We chat a bit.  He confirms that the house is still
standing and that I now have a Jetta -- the van is gone.  One of
Monika's classmates is also online.  I wake her up and she jumps right
on chatting about school.  Her teacher is at home now with a baby due
any day.

We've got an easy morning.  I feel a bit bad about getting everyone up
earlier than they may have wanted to.  But it will help tonight when we
sleep in Portland again.

We have a leisurely breakfast.  We pack and double and triple check the
room for stuff.  We'll be checking one more bag than on the way over and
have repacked things well.  Some of the backpacks may even be a tad
lighter.

It's raining lightly as we get into the taxi and head for Charles de
Gaulle airport.  The lines are short where we are although the airport
is very busy.  Our plane is on time and we get our original seat
assignments.  The flight isn't as crowded as on the way over.  I luck
out with an aisle seat in the center section with the two seats next to
me empty.  Vera and Monika are across the aisle in a two-seat
arrangement aisle/window.  We're flying an Airbus 340 this time.  The
food turns out to very weird.  Everyone in this family will leave the
flight hungry, I think.  There are three crying babies on board in this
section of the plane, but the head phones cranked up on Afro-pop music
drowns them out pretty well.

The movie is The Horse Whisper.  We've all seen it before, but enjoy it
again.  A funny note about this movie, we say it advertised all over
where we travelled.  In France, the movie, when literally out
translating the title becomes "The man who murmurs into the ears of
horses."

We're about 45 minutes out of San Francisco now.  Our internal clocks
are all screwed up especially since this flight was all in daylight.
There were some pretty neat views of Greenland.  This flight is much
more like what I'd originally envisioned our flights to be.  I've
finally caught up on the journal.  The double batteries on this laptop
are getting very low.  I plan to write some sort of summary in a couple
of days -- we'll see.

Cheers.