Today has been a long day of travel.

My day started early as I needed to be at the train station by 7:32. I had to get up early so I was able to eat breakfast as soon as the restaurant was open. I had to leave the hotel by 7:00 at the latest to make sure I had time to walk to the station. Luckily it had just stopped raining so I didn’t get wet on the way.

Here is the train that I was on from Jena to Erfut. I had a tight connection in Erfurt, but just had to cross the train platform. The two trains are coordinated as passengers for the ICE arrive via this train and ICE passengers transfer to it. They will usually hold the train if there are small delays.

I was soon seated and ready for the fast, smooth ride to the Frankfurt Airport. The train was running about 10 minutes behind schedule, but I had no worries as I already knew that my flight was going to be delayed by about 90 minutes.

After checking in I headed through long immigration and security lines. Everywhere the lines seemed to be longer than normal today. After passing through security I stopped to hang out with Albert and take a selfie with him. They have a full size sculpture of Albert Einstein at the airport. The sculpture is of him sitting on a bench with plenty of room for someone to join him for a selfie.

From the Lufthansa lounge I took a picture across the tarmac of the United 777 that I flew home on. You can see how long this plane is. The Boeing 777-300ER is replacing the 747 on many of the United international routes. See: My Last United 747 Flight

The 777-300ER has a 3-4-3 configuration in Economy. It is nice that each seat has an individual monitor as this was one of my biggest complaints about the United 747’s. The flight was entirely packed with no seats open.

I had a miserable flight as the person sitting in the middle seat in my row was much wider than the seat. The arm rest could not even fully go down between us. I scooted as far over as I could toward the aisle, but sleep came fitfully as I was often bumped into during the flight.

I was so glad to see this view after the long flight. Luckily I breezed through immigration and baggage claim and the parking shuttle arrived only about two minutes after I made it out to the curb.

The drive home was also not too bad as the delayed flight pushed my drive to the end of rush hour. The 90 minute delay in the flight probably only set me back about 60 minutes in my arrival time at home.

Now for some sleep.

Steven