We flew out of Chicago on July 31, 2006, one of the hottest days of the summer, 99 degrees F. Because we were flying with Oscar, our Lab, we were able to check in separately of all the crowds waiting in line for international flights. All went smoothly until the woman checking us in looked at her cage-spec sheet. She told us we couldn't use the carrier we had brought with us, because it was designed for domestic flights, not international. For domestic flights, the pet carrier needs to ventilated on only three sides, whereas for international, it needs to be ventilated on all four sides. We had borrowed the carrrier from Bob's sister and brother-in-law, who had flown their Bernese from Chicago to Connecticut, and we wouldn't have borrowed it if we had known about the different specifications, which could have easily been posted on United's website but wasn't. I learned from their website about the health certificate, which is not the same as the health certificate required for importing a dog into the EU--more on this another time, required for traveling with a pet, and that because of his size, he would have to travel in baggage instead of in the cabin (when we moved to Erlangen in 2001 and back again in 2004, our cat, Nigel, flew in business class with us). I don't understand why they couldn't add a paragraph about the pet carrier requirements, or why don't they just have the same requirements for both domestic and international--are pets more likely to suffocate during longer flights than shorter?

We ended up buying a pet carrier from United, and leaving the borrowed, domestic carrier behind at the airport. The woman at check-in wanted to ship the extra carrier with us, but what were we going to do with two carriers in Erlangen? One of the baggage handlers overheard this, and offered to hold it until someone could pick it. Bob tipped him $10 and called his parents, who came later to O'Hare and tipped our new friend a couple of extra dollars.

We arrived in Frankfurt on the morning of August 1, and we were met by our friend Sigi and his daughter, Pauline, and son, Jasper. Because of the dog and all of our luggage, we decided to rent a car instead of catching a connecting flight to Nuernberg. It was definitely easier than transferring planes, but driving for two hours jet-lagged, is probably about as wise as driving drunk. We had to keep pulling over for coffee, and Sigi kept us awake via walkie-talkie from his car. Sigi also helped us by transporting some of our luggage, since we had extra bags due to Bob's shopping sprees before leaving Chicago.

Before leaving the airport, I was worried about getting Oscar through customs. When we brought Nigel into Germany, it was no problem. He was in a small, black carrier sitting on top of all our luggage. I had all the paper work ready, but the customs guy told us to just go on through the gate. I don't think he even realized we had a pet with us. Oscar, at 60 pounds and in a large carrier, was not going to go unnoticed. I wasn't worried about the paper work, because I did have an official animal exportation stamp from the USDA, which is a story in itself. I was worried about his microchip. All animals coming into the EU must be microchipped, but American microchips use a different frequency than European chips. I called Avid, the company that made Oscar's chip, and they recommended that I rent a scanner from them since they were not certain whether the scanners at Frankfurt's airport would pick up his chip. I spent $38 and a day waiting for FedEx to deliver the scanner, only to find out that the veterinarian at the airport had no problem scanning his chip.

After arriving in Erlangen, we went to Gasthof Strauss, which serves really good carp in their restaurant, to get the key to our temporary apartment. This was a small, three-room (by three rooms, I mean one kitchen/living/dining room and two small bedrooms) apartment in a building that was built in the early 1700s. For six weeks, I looked at the wooden beams sandwiched between thick plaster in the walls of this apartment, and asked myself, "Are these the original beams? Have they been holding this building together for three hundred years?" In Madison, I lived in a house built in the late 1800s, and I thought that was old. In Europe, some buildings are 1000 years old.

The days in that apartment seem like a dream to me now. The shock of moving to another country and an entire ocean away from home hit me, and I spent our first month and a half in Erlangen walking in quicksand. Every step I took, everything we did seemed so difficult. I felt as if at any moment I would sink into oblivion. All I wanted to do was sleep. For the first two weeks, I blamed the jet lag, but then realized it was remorse. We had moved away from a nice house in a nice neighborhood to a foreign (okay, so we had lived here before, but it was still foreign in all meanings of the word) city, thinking it would be a better place to raise our kids. But what if we were wrong?