Our flight was scheduled to depart from Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson Airport at 4:25pm on Wednesday, 1 June.  Our oldest son Eric served as our transporter and got us there around 2:00pm.  Didi and I were able to confirm out flight and get our itineraries and e-tickets at the self-serve kiosk and just drop off our bags, but Dean’s reservation had some sort of hiccup and we had to stand in yet another line to receive further assistance from a Delta customer service rep.  After Dean was ticketed, it was then that we realized that the self-serve kiosk did not allow for our luggage to be checked through to the next leg of the trip.  Didi and I would have to claim our luggage in Munich, Germany.  One long hour later… we met up with Sandra and Haley at the gate and discovered that Haley had the same issue as Didi and I, but Sandra and Charlie in their wisdom had gone straight to the ticket counter and Sandra’s  luggage -like Dean’s- had been checked through to Timişoara, Romania.

Full to capacity and overbooked, the flight itself was not without event.  The heating and cooling system was not working properly and we would migrate between periods of extremely cool air and extremely warm air for the duration of the 9 hour flight.  We flew near/around numerous thunder storms and had several periods of mild turbulence.  Didi watched the latest Disney animated movie Tangled and encouraged me to do the same.  My audio didn’t work properly and I had to keep rewinding it; so halfway through the movie Didi offered to share her iTouch earbuds with me and we attempted to synchronize our two screens.  We got pretty close, but it was still like watching a dubbed over 1960’s Godzilla or martial arts movie at times.  Dean did card tricks in the galley for the flight crew for a good 3 hours during the early morning.  Apparently, Didi watched Tangled again and I’m pretty sure that she and Dean never slept.