Impatiently waiting

As you might have guessed, Maren and I are stranded here in Germany, unable to fly due to the volcanic ash. It feels silly, because our original plan was to leave on the 14th instead of the 17th. If we had, we would have made it to Istanbul with no problem and be well on our way through Turkey right now. Oh well, such is life, no way we could have predicted this one. This experience has just further reinforced my view that trip planning is a futile endeavor. I would much rather travel on the fly, change plans at the last second, and be flexible in case something like this happens. We have been searching for days now all our options for getting this trip started. We even considered a 48 hour train ride from here to Istanbul! Unfortunately it is way too far out of our budget...

I have spent the last week hanging out at Maren's house here in Marx. We have done a few day trips to Oldenburg and Wilhelmshaven nearby. Maren got the last of her vaccinations she needed to travel, and we picked out a new travelling backpack which I bought her for her birthday. We also went to an amusement park with her younger sister and her two friends. Other than that, we have just been relaxing outside in the nice weather, going on bike rides, and following the (bad) news.

We haven't gotten any information at all from our airline. We decided on Sunday that it wasn't going to be worth it to wait around for them to tell us when we can fly to Istanbul. And every day we wait to fly is one day less in Turkey, which would make it more and more difficult to get to our next destination in a reasonable amount of time. We didn't want to rush through Turkey, so we decided to just forget it and go some other time. Instead, we booked a new flight to leave this Sunday to Tel Aviv. We will just pick up the trip from there. We will even have a couple of extra days, so we might make a short trip to Jordan as well. I am a bit disappointed as I was very excited to see Turkey, but Maren and I are thinking we could make a trip to both Greece and Turkey on some other future trip. Hopefully our airline will refund our money from the original flight.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that the crazy volcano lets up by next Sunday so we can fly. I am anxious to get this trip going, this one week delay is long enough as it is! Maren and I are going to go see Hamburg in a couple of days and stay at her sister's place. Then back here this weekend to pack (again) and get ready to leave for the Holy Land!