Jet Lagged

I am back home in Mexico City after my 18 day trip to Europe.  Jet lag has hit me harder than when I would travel from Ohio and back.  There is an additional two hour time difference between Mexico and Europe, plus the flight is longer... almost 12 hours.  My body is still on German time.  Hence, even though I didn't sleep much last night, I am already up and writing this at 6:30 AM.  My body says that it is 2:30 in the afternoon.

On Saturday I was up at 6:30 in the morning (that would be 10:30 Friday night Mexico time) to shower, do last minute packing, and have breakfast in the hotel.  At 10:00 AM I took the hotel shuttle to the airport.  

This dinosaur found Frankfurt airport to be very confusing. I had checked in online the day before, and Lufthansa sent my boarding pass to my cell phone.  But I still had to check my suitcase.  At the airport I couldn't find any counters with human beings.  It's all automated.  I scanned my boarding pass at a machine to get my luggage tag.  I put that on my bag, and then went to another machine that took my suitcase and spitted out my receipt.  I finally found one Lufthansa counter that had people, and waited in line to ask if I could have a paper boarding pass.  (I hate fumbling with my phone when I am boarding.)  They sent me to a kiosk, where an employee helped me print off a paper pass.

Then I had to go through the security process which took almost an hour.  First I waited in a long line to scan my boarding pass.  Then I had to wait in another long line to go through passport control where they put an exit stamp in the passport.  Then you go through security, but at least in Frankfurt you do not have to take off your shoes, or remove electronics from the carry-on,

Then I had to make a long trek to my gate.  By the time I got there, my 1:35 PM flight to Mexico was posted on the sign.

We were all lined up to board. (I was in boarding group 3 for Premium Economy class.)  But then boarding was delayed by about a half hour, apparently because of staffing problems to clean the plane.  Once again, I had a window seat over the wing, so I was not able to take very good photos.

  Around 2 PM we left the gate, taxied to the runway, and finally were in the air.

The flight was long, but fairly comfortable.  The Premium Economy seats on Lufthansa have more room than Economy Plus on United Airlines.  But nevertheless, I was unable to sleep.  We were served two meals that were rather good.  One of the meals was typically German with small bratwurst and red cabbage.

Nearly twelve hours later at 6 PM Mexico time, we descended for our arrival at Mexico City International Airport.

The line at immigration at the airport was not too long.  Because I have a residency visa, I was allowed to use the line for Mexican citizens which was somewhat shorter.  The long wait was for the luggage.  The bags started coming out on the carousel shortly after I got there, but there are a lot of suitcases to unload from a jumbo jet.  So, I waited a long time before my bag appeared.  I walked through customs without any questions, and on the other side of the sliding doors, Alejandro was there waiting for me.

We drove to the apartment.  It was raining heavily, and there were, as usual, flooded spots on the roads.  Traffic was terrible.

I was not hungry, but Alejandro had not eaten, so we went out for some supper.  By the time we got to bed it was 10:30 PM... 6:30 Sunday morning German time.  So, I had been up for 24 hours.  I was tired, but I woke up at 1 AM (9 AM in Germany).  I managed to fall back to sleep for a couple more hours, but I was awake again at 4, and finally got out of bed at 5:30.  Hopefully by tomorrow my body will be back in sync.

Tomorrow on the blog, I will write more about my travels in Europe, taking up where I left off in Zurich, Switzerland.