... halfway home ... well, almost.

I'm in Frankfurt, and I'm not COMPLETELY screwed, just mostly. As you may (or may not) remember, I had an issue with my debit cards yesterday. Seems they both chose this as an opportune time to just pass away. Die. Kaput. Shuffle of their mortal ... err ... ok, never mind that.

So I had this laughable notion that maybe one of them will work here in Germany. I mean, the Germans are known for their precision engineering, right? Well, it seems the ATM can read both cards, but both of them are being rejected now. The funny thing is, both those accounts have signficantly more money in them than they did, say, a year ago. Hell, 3 MONTHS ago... I'm not bragging, I'm just trying to express to you my pain. I am well acquainted with rejection for inadequacy... monetarily of course. But now that I HAVE the money in the there, I'm being rejected for some other reason I can't fathom...

As a result, I'm sitting here at some over-priced bar in the middle of the airport (Goethe-Bar), with like 18KD (about $62) and $30US or so... Fortunately, despite opinions to the contrary, cash is NOT king world-wide; Mastercard and Visa are pretty much universal.

WOO HOO! I just slapped in my wireless card and found that T-Mobile is active. 18 euros later and I'm online for three hours!!! That should help pass the time a bit. I'll probably burn through at least one battery while I'm here.. but since I seem to have forgotten to pack my DVD case, it's a moot point.

Speaking of things that I'm missing... here's a partial list at this point:

The aforementioned DVD case... I think I left it on my bed...

A 512Mb Titanium memory stick (brand new)

All my bathroom items... presumably still in the bathroom (where else?)

Sidenote: why does everyone keep trying to speak German to me? I never had people assume I could speak Arabic ... think it has something to do with the fact that I look a helluva lot more German than Middle Eastern? Nah...

Well, that's all from now. I have a 3 hour layover in Denver, so I might try to get online there. No promises though!