around the world in 180 days

It took us 2 days to get here, but last night Anna and I landed in Munich, Germany. We took the last flight out of Chiang Mai on Sunday night, spent the night in the Bangkok airport on metal benches in a quiet corner of the airport, and flew out Monday morning at 9 for Doha. We flew on Qatar Airlines because it was the cheapest flight we could find and because we’d had a previous and very positive experience with Emirates Air and gambled that Qatar Air would be comparable. It was. It’s hard to make 12 hours in coach comfortable, but the food was good (we ate 4 times), we had personal televisions with a huge choice of tv shows and movies and we actually had a little legroom. It was nice.

By the time we got to Munich, though, it was already past 2am in Bangkok and we were wiped out. I fell asleep on the train from the airport and we both went to asleep almost right away after checking into our room. We’re in dorms again, for the first time since Auckland, but the experience has, so far, been much more positive. The beds are clean and so are the people sharing the room with us.

We’ve spent much of today taking care of business. We washed our clothes, mailed some souvenirs and our hiking boots back to the US and Anna just got registered for classes at St. Thomas this fall.

We haven’t used a washing machine in a long time, and it showed today. I mean, they’re not the most complicated machines, but there are a few things you have to remember. Maybe most important is that if you wash colors with whites and you use hot water, the whites will turn colors. We turned a bunch of Anna’s underwear, a shirt that I bought in Bali and really liked and a few other things a lovely shade of lavender today by forgetting this rule. The culprits were two new items: a blue skirt Anna got in Thailand and a blue shirt I got in Nepal. We washed everything that changed color again and most things changed back, but the shirt is ruined and Anna now has purple underwear instead of white. Oh well.

We’re trying to figure out what we want to do with our five weeks in Europe. We’re thinking that we want to fly down and spend a week in Morocco and spend the rest of our time in Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary, which should help keep our expenses down, at least once we leave Germany and Austria. The end of our trip is approaching all too quickly, but I think I’m ready to go home. We’re tired. Traveling is fun and I want to do this again, many times, I hope, but we will be happy to land in MSP.