Eliot (left), Katharina (middle), and Tom (right) in front of Tom's apartment in Chicago, about to embark.(Who is this?)

(TOM) T minus about 3 hours until we leave for Germany. I can't speak for anyone else, but I could barely wait to leave. I could think of nothing else for about a week before we left. If the plane would have been delayed, I would have started swimming the Atlantic. Our plane left O'Hare late, and we had to run to make our connecting flight in New Jersey. Once we got on the Boeing 777, the fun began. The flight left at around 7pm, and we found ourselves on one big party plane. The drinks flowed, I often found myself double-fisting it because the girl from Texas next to me couldn't handle her liquor, but she kept ordering more. After a couple of hours, everyone settled down. I got drunk, but I couldn't sleep, I guess I was just too excited.

My friend Danni was supposed to meet Eliot and I in Frankfurt to help get us on the train that would take us to Leipzig, where Katharina would be waiting for us. There was some kind of protest going on, so no one was allowed in the airport without a ticket, so Eliot and I had to find our own way. Katharina gave us some good directions, so we found our way to the subway, and arrived at the train station in Frankfurt, and found the train that would serve in the last leg of our jourey. We had a couple of hours, so we had some coffee in Frankfurt, and hung out. The train ride was 3 hours, and I still couldn't sleep, even though I'd been up for about 24 hours, and spent about 5 of them drunk. The train ride was smooth, but the weather was cloudy out. I tried to talk to a native on the train, but I failed to communicate. Finally, we arrived in Leipzig.