Homeward Bound: March 28th - 29th, 2024

Saying we had "a final leg to Omaha" is a bit of an over-simplification, though. Step 1 - get back to Sofia. We saddled ourselves with all the bags but only had to walk as far as the curb, since we cheated a little and called a cab to take us the half-mile to the office where our transfer would pick us up; my back had been feeling kind of unhappy for a bit so I didn't relish the idea of waddling the whole way. We left Bansko and after another hot few hours in a Bulgarian shuttle van we spilled out back at the Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky too early for check in at our hotel in Sofia. So we had a perfect amount of time to picnic on the benches and feed the pigeons a few crumbs.

Selfie of us laden down with all the bags

More waddling brought us to our hotel near the city center, and I immediately made moves to start the air conditioner, but could never seem to turn it into more than a fan. It was concerningly hot for being just the end of March. Having already gotten a little too sweaty in clothes we needed to wear for the next 24 hours, we changed and went for a run through pretty flower gardens and Communist-era monuments in Borisova Gradina Park to stick with our training program. That evening we found an adorable restaurant run out of a house tucked down a cat-filled alley and treated ourselves to one of the best meals I had on the entire trip; I enjoyed turkey meatballs served with delicious homemade hummus while Susan opted for grilled salmon with a pair of creamy and sweet house sauces.

Final delicious meal in Bulgaria

After the near-debacle catching the Bansko bus, Susan convinced me to wake up with plenty of time before our 6:30 AM flight. Two other tired tourists stood outside an adjacent hotel and thankfully we managed not to get our taxis mixed up a little before 4 in the morning. Although we were all going to the airport, but us and our luggage barely fit in one car as it was. Driving through the dark, quiet streets of Sofia, still trying to silently sound-out the cyrillic on passing signs, I felt like I should be having some Important Reflections on this long and crazy trip, but mostly I was sleepy and hoping that this final taxi ride with our driver on a video conference call with other drivers who he also seemed to be literally racing to the airport didn't kill us.

We dumped all our baggage and fought the urge to buy coffee out of a machine, telling ourselves we'd be better off sleeping during the hop to Frankfurt. The airport terminal was roasting and I couldn't understand the people keeping their full-length winter coats on; my new stereotype is that Bulgarians really don't like to be cold. Susan and I continued to get too much sweat on travel clothes that already had a bit of a funk.

An uneventful but largely-sleepless two-and-a-half hours brought us to the Frankfurt airport, where we settled into a seating area and finally had some breakfast and coffee. With a longer layover, we killed time until shortly before boarding and then made our way to the gate. Along the way a woman at a defunct gate that seemed to have been co-opted with a bunch of other equipment kept shouting "United! Anyone on United come in this line! United passengers here!" We paused and considered for a moment, since technically our Lufthansa flight was partnered with United Airlines, but after watching her turn some other confused Lufthansa passengers out of the line and since we were at a much different gate we reasoned that it didn't matter for us.

The boarding process at our gate went pretty normally, although a couple people had to dash off to do something extra with their ticket. I thought it was just because that guy's baritone case was an oversized item and needed to get checked. But Susan and I reached the desk, the attendant looked at our boarding passes, and told us "You don't have the stamp, you need to go back there and clear the security check and get the stamp on these before I can let you on." Shit. We tried to ask - really!? The flight is literally boarding right now and we have to rush back to the shouting woman, stand in another line, and get a stamp? Yes, that is in fact what we had to do.

A sprint took us back to the non-gate, and the woman asked us "United?", and we said "Lufthansa", and she said "This is only for United", and we had to explain "Well no I guess it's actually a United because it's going to the USA". Luckily there was no queue and it was just a quick face-scan and document double-check, for some border control officer to put another stamp on our boarding pass. But then, when my passport scanned it came up with a different code on the screen. "Sir, you've been selected for additional screening, you'll need to take your documents and this paper over there and get the stamp." "But my flight is boarding now!!" "Sorry, I can't let you through". Double shit. I told Susan to make herself a physical obstacle so that they couldn't shut the door to the plane, she rushed off back to the gate, and I went across the corridor to the space they'd cordoned off with fabric panels as an additional screening room.

Unfortunately, this one had a queue. My eyes twitched between my watch and the people in front of me; 15 minutes before they close the doors, 10 minutes... one man graciously allowed me to jump him in line, but the next woman up was in the same predicament as me. Apparently we weren't the only ones to suffer a miscommunication around the Kafka-esque pre-border border check. Finally they called me up, a man asked me to take off my mountaineering boots, and he poked a little around the boots and my personal bag before sending me on my way. No other questions, no checks that, to my small civilian mind, would have made a difference in screening out a dangerous passenger.

With just a few minutes left I wove through the crowds in the terminal to sprint back to our gate. Susan was starting to protest with the gate agent that they couldn't close the gate yet because her husband just needed to complete more screening when she spotted me in the crowd and could say "Look, there, he's running up now!" The agent took a quick look at the precious stamp that cleared us for entry and passed us onto the plane, where we found our seats and got comfortable for the long haul to Denver. I spent the journey mostly going through photos and writing this blog; that was probably the closest we were to being caught up on the posts. Step 4, catch our flight to the US, complete!

Denver proved to be a hassle in its own right; we couldn't figure out how we were supposed to go from international arrivals to catch a domestic connection, and this whole side of the airport was under construction. Navigating between barriers of caution tape and temporary drywall eventually spit us out in a parking garage, where we went around the corner and back through the main entrance of the airport for another round of TSA screening. Seeing as it was already tomorrow in the place we'd started that morning, this all seemed very unnecessarily confusing and contrived. We really hoped our checked bags magically made the transition easier than we did.

Still, we'd made it to Denver, and I felt a pang of excitement seeing Omaha on the boards in the airport, eager to see all our friends and family again. We had a bit of a layover, so I convinced Susan we had enough time to do some strength exercises in the main hub of DEN and stick to the training program. Susan heard at least one child ask their parents "What are those people doing?" when they walked by, as we did push-ups and jumped and swung around backpacks. "They're just exercising." Thankfully we didn't attract the attention of any security guards.

Omaha's on the board!

Having thoroughly made our travel clothes gross at this point, and pushing our comfort zone to get to the gate for boarding (see our recent experience in Frankfurt) we snagged one last expensive airport meal to-go and hustled over to the gate. No surprise security checks as we filed on board for our last, short flight. As the plane passed Bellevue and the south side of Omaha and swooped around back to the northwest to land at Eppley I still couldn't help but crane my neck for glimpses of the Woodman and First National towers. The yellow-lit concrete river of I-80 rivaled the Missouri in size.

Greg had asked me how many bags we had, so he knew which car to bring, and I assured him we'd need the one with more trunk space. One, two, three rolled off the carousel and we breathed a sigh of relief; step 47 complete! We strapped the nearly 300 liters of baggage on and tottered out through one last airport, grateful for the abundance of signs directing us on a very clear and reasonable path through the construction out to the new pedestrian pick-up zone. Take that, Denver and Frankfurt - we know how to do signs and give instructions in the midwest!

We met Greg in the parking garage in a typically cool spring Omaha evening (it was colder here than Sofia) and he helped load our bags. On the drive to the house we talked about all the new construction going on and what money was tearing up which parts of the city to reclaim, revitalize, gentrify, or sprawl, depending on your perspective. At home we got some long-delayed hugs from my mom, talked just a bit, but promptly headed for bed to start taking care of the jet lag. We were home.