Plant Trek Day -1 (day 8 of my unofficial trek)

Day 1 - Travel from Boston to Berlin

This blog is actually starting above the Atlantic ocean at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. I am on my way to Europe to spend a week in Berlin and Warsaw before we begin the official International Plant Trek. I’m traveling with five other LFM class of 10 members and I expect to have a great time. This will be my first time out of North America and my first time out of the US if you don’t count crossing into Canada at Niagra Falls and going to Windsor near Detroit to gamble.

Side note: Does Canada count as a country or are they just a little sister to the US? They don’t have to pay for a military because they live next to us…and it is really cold there. Thankfully the Stanley Cup has not been won by a Canadian team since 1992-93 when the Habs took the cup in 5 games against the LA Kings (poor Barry Melrose and Gretzky).



The players may be mostly Canadian, but the cup sleeps in the US.  Deal with it!

Second side note: Ha ha Canadiens, you sent Roy packing to Colorado where he won 2 more cups!



That is what Canada gets for being Canadian. More on that when the hockey playoffs start. Simply stated, as a US hockey fan I am not a fan of Canada.

Back to the trek. This is my first international flight and I am excited about getting my passport stamped. This is also my first time in a plane with more than 6 seats across (a dual aisle plane). Many firsts for me. The time change should be 6 hours difference but the US decided to do day lights savings at a different time than the rest of the world so right now it is 5 hours. The day lights savings difference with the rest of the world is about as stupid as our countries unwillingness to adopt the superior metric/SI system…if only we could convince Americans that America thought of the metric system, then we would love it…but of course then the French would not be on board with it. To get the French on board, we had to let them think they created it and name a number of units after famous Frenchmen for example, Coulomb, Pascal, and Ampere.

I plan to approach Europe like any other obnoxious and ignorant American would (I am Southern, it’s only natural that I be ignorant…it comes with the territory…we spend our weekend recreating the civil war because we still can’t face up to the fact that we lost).

I will assume that Europeans do not bathe, do not use deodorant, do not have running water, ALL speak English (and more grammatically correct than I do) and that menus and signs are written in English, etc. Hopefully I am in for a rude awakening. Nothing like a little culture shock to get the blood flowing!

I love the smell of culture in the morning!