Day 4 (I think) and 5

May 20 -- We got on the flight! They opened up 30 free seats instead of just the 19 they had originally said. We were fourth on the list, so we probably would have gotten on even without that, but it was quite comical to hear the whole terminal of people (mostly retirees) break out into cheers at the announcement of more seats. We got on the plane (another C17) around 7pm. It was full of shipping containers and helicopter blades, so not quite as much room to spread out, but still enough that we were able to lay out our sleeping bags. The young airmen (is that what they are called?) entertained us by climbing on top of a red cross shipping container to do his safety briefing. The 8 hour flight went by quickly and before we knew it we were stumbling out of the plane at 10 am into 53 degree weather, quite a shock after the 93 degrees we left in the US. One of our fellow passengers offered to let us stay at her husband's apartment about 20 minutes from base, which was a very kind offer since we didn't have any reservations for the night. We stopped at the USO for some refreshments and a recoup and decided that staying closer to base would be smarter since we would have to come back to the same area for the train the next day. We made reservations at a local hotel since the on base hotel said they were booked. Then, we walked across the street to see if we could at least store our luggage at the base hotel while we grocery shopped. When we got there, we were told that they just had a cancellation so we could stay there after all. So I ran back across the street and cancelled the other hotel. We got all our errands run and then checked in to our room...but really I should say apartment. It was four bedroom and two bathroom, with a full kitchen, living room and dining room. I'm sure it's the cheapest yet biggest place at which we will stay our whole trip. It definitely felt good to climb into bed.

May 21 -- We had a brisk walk to the train station this morning through the town of Ramstein. There was no ticket counter as we had hoped, so the ticket booth was our only (unfortunately not cheap) option. Thankfully, we have found enough people who speak English to tell us what platform to be on and at which stop to get off and on, since neither the train app nor the stations themselves are super intuitive to our foreign brains (Germany could take some lessons from Korea in that regard). Our destination this evening is Berlin (330 km or 7 hours on the train). We are excited to eat some German food this evening and experience our first hostel stay of the trip.