Waga to Germany

Here we are, my last journal style entry for my first trip to Burkina Faso.  This is not actually going to be my last entry about Burkina, but it will be the last like this until hopefully next summer.

Over the past eleven or so months, I have become proficient in French, and understand the basics of another lingua franca.  I have more data on my target language (Viemõ) than I know what to do with.  I was immersed in another cultural paradigm, which was both a great pleasure and an taxing transition.  It has been a year of much emotional and physical exhaustion and a year of consistent challenges.  Now it is time for a break. 

Before wrapping everything up in Bobo Dioulasso, I had to say bye to people and give out gifts.  Laura was kind enough to bring two laptops from home for me to give as gifts.  She met up with my parents before heading to Germany for her conference (before heading to Burkina).  I felt horrible that my laptops added to her weight as Royal Air Morocco messed with her travel plans and she had to lug around more weight on my account.  Your sacrifice was not in vain, Laura.  Zaki and Bakary were very pleased with their gifts.

One day before leaving for Ouagadougou, I gave Vantine her gifts.  Part of it was simple t-shirts, necklaces, and keychains.  The sorts of trinkets which I had brought with me to people.  Additionally, I paid for two years of her son’s schooling.  I did this (on Laura’s suggestion) because we have to let her go after everyone leaves in August.  Her eyes watered and Laura joined in.  I got out of that room as soon as possible because I might have started too.

I spent my last week in Burkina Faso in Ouagadougou (herein referred to as Waga because this city needs to sell some vowels), the capital city.  It started off with Zaki and Laura.  Laura left the next night after arriving.  We had enough time to schmooze with some researchers in Waga.  The woman I had been seeing arrived just before Laura left to see Laura off.  The next couple of days were spent with Zaki, Barkissa (my main squeeze), and the toilet.  As luck would have it, I got sick my last few days.  When I came to Waga last year I got sick, so this was irritating but fitting symmetry.  Zaki left a couple days before I was scheduled to do so.  This gave me a couple of days with my lady.  We had a good time for someone who was mostly confined to a hotel room.  The goodbyes were sad and I will miss her.  I gave her my smart phone as a gift and we said we would see each other again, as you do. 

At the Waga airport, on my way out, I found security to be precise but relaxed.  People stuck to the rules and I had to shift some items around in my bags to make sure both were under the weight limit.  However, they were totally fine with me taking my time off to the side to do so and generally did not hassle me at any checkpoint.  The flight itself was not comfortable but it did pass quickly for a 5.5 hour flight.  I watched several episodes of The Big Bang Theory since I wasn’t in the mood for anything too intense and I was too tired to read.  No sleep on this overnight flight, but it was no big deal.  My transfer in Brussels to my Frankfurt bound flight was very painless.

The painlessness ended in Frankfurt.  My travel agent had been inexplicably unable to send me to Hamburg so I needed to buy a ticket from Frankfurt to Hamburg while in Frankfurt.  No problem, I thought.  I had checked out prices ahead of time and I knew I could get free wifi at the airport (thanks to some information from my friend in Hamburg), so I was not worried about buying a ticket and communicating with Dasha .

The details of the operation in Frankfurt are… stupefying.  The first annoyance is the fact that my gigantic bags needed to go from baggage claim to the ticket counters two stories up.  After finally finding a cart and the one elevator in the entire airport (it seemed) I was at the ticket counter.  But, I needed to go to a separate one, which was up one more flight of stairs because I was buying a ticket.  They apparently cannot do more than one thing at a place in this airport.  Fine.  I lugged my stuff up another floor to find that their network was down.  In the time it took me to get upstairs their network went down.  After waiting 30 minutes, I was seen by someone. 

The actual price for my ticket to Hamburg and another from Hamburg for my return was more than I expected (it ended up being around 430 Euros with taxes and fees).  Then I was told that my second bag also would cost money.  But I would need to check them at the downstairs ticket counters, because of coarse.  I went downstairs to check in with my newly purchased tickets.  Apparently the fact that one of my bags was a large backpack was also an issue.  I needed to go check in at a specific ticket counter due my large backpack because…???  So I brought all my crap to the other side of the check in area and found the counter.  I checked my bags and then they gave me a slip of paper that said I needed to pay for my second bag.  I was prepared for this (another 75 Euros).  I was not prepared for them to tell me that I needed to go back upstairs to pay for my bag at the very counter I was at before when I bought my ticket.  I did so angrily and when I asked why I wasn’t told to pay for the bag when I was up there purchasing my ticket, the lady calmly explained that this was just their process.  Just before leaving to go to the security checkpoint, I confirmed that their regular process was indeed that one must purchase tickets on a separate floor from everything else, check bags elsewhere on the main floor (and in different locations for certain types of bags), and then return to pay for the bags before going to security back on the main floor.  She did look at me like I was the idiot though.  Apparently she thought this was the most sensible way to do things.

The rest of the travel process was fairly uneventful and I was in Hamburg after a forty minute flight.  Dasha and I took the train to her neighborhood.  My immediate impression of Hamburg was that they do a better job than U.S. cities and keeping greenery as a part of the actual city environment.  Dasha’s apartment is the most European apartment imaginable.  They seem to have fit a bathroom in a shoe closet and the shower and washing machine are in the kitchen.  But somehow none of it looks or feels awkward.  There is also a small patio.  I get her office, which is the biggest room in the apartment. 

I took a nap shortly after arriving while she made a very healthy dinner.  After that, we began walking the city and showed me where some important things like a large department store, the bank, and the gym are; not that I would remember their locations.  We stopped and got some ice cream, which tasted better than anything since it had been roughly one year since I had some.  I also tried a local specialty for a drink.  Dasha’s best translation was “apple lemonade” but she said that was incorrect.  We then walked through what might be the most flora diverse garden I have ever seen.  Apparently they change the actual flowers in the garden every couple of months so you can visit a few times per year and never see the same garden.  Jeff would never leave there.  Or maybe he’d hate it because the plants are not indigenous.  After a long stroll through said garden we took the metro back to Dasha’s place and I passed out around 10 p.m.

Some garden photos:

I awoke the next morning at about 10 a.m. refreshed and full of energy.  We went to the gym in the late morning and I felt great after that.  Dasha stayed by the pool dozed.  After that we returned home and ordered pizza and Beck’s for lunch, before going out to see more of the city.  We walked a good distance and saw much of the old city where the town hall and old post office are.  We stopped at very nice brewery and I had my first local German beer.  It was a dark amber and it was among the best I have had in my life.  It was smooth, cold, and rich.  I swear it tasted like life.  The reputation of German beer has not been exaggerated.  I had another just to be sure along with a plate of sausages, potatoes and sauerkraut.  I slept well that night too.

A couple shots of old structures and important beer related stuff:

Yesterday, we did more Hamburg exploration but this time by the waterways.  After a morning of making very little progress on a project I was hoping to submit to the LSA conference this year, the walk was a welcome break.  We stopped by a waterside café for a couple of cappuccinos and deserts.  My brownie that I ordered was so rich that I ordered another and split it with Dasha.  We took the ferry for a while, watched some sort of sail boating competition, and walked a considerable distance.  We stopped somewhere so that I could try another local beer.  This was also reddish in hue (it was a rotbier, after all) and was also delicious.  Six hours later we came home and rested for the today’s journey to Berlin, which I will recount in my next entry.

Selfie on the ferry and boats: