[18] The Weekend in Luebeck

The old gate and symbol of Luebeck. You don't realize until you get close that it's a painted tarp to hide the scaffolding for refurbishing.
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[18]

NOTE to Diane: (whom I love because you noticed I'd lost weight) There is a short rant in this entry, so close your office door before you begin to read.

They’re not having this much fun on the group-bus, I can assure you.

The Weekend in Luebeck

Wooden tongs from the gate in the ceiling.
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We’ve come to this small city in northern Germany for a quiet weekend. So far, so good.

We had plenty of time; trains to Luebeck leave from Hamburg every hour. Our cab driver from the hotel cussed and jerked the cab through the street traffic, then pulled over when we heard an approaching siren coming up behind us. Great! Our driver jumped in behind the police car and we zoomed along leaving Hamburg traffic standing still. No need to visit amusement parks, just hail a cab.

Then, while we were in the Hamburg train station waiting for our 57 minute ride to Luebeck, we were suddenly approached by a German policeman who we finally understood to be telling us to move back along the platform because they’d discovered some unattended luggage. More police arrived and we were moved farther off the platform, railway security arrived and we were moved completely off the platform. REB and I decided to have lunch so we went to the "food court" and ate heartily. By the time we got back, the bags were gone, the police were gone and it was business as usual. We caught the next train to Luebeck.

Samovar in the window.
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We need the quiet because of our recent and constant hassle with UPS over the new oxygen concentrator. This story is too ridiculous to believe, but here goes. We noticed that the amber warning light was lit all the time and called the company. Even though they believed it might be all right, they didn’t want to take any chances and shipped a new one out to us immediately. This was a couple of weeks ago (the first time we went through Hamburg). We were staying at the Ibis-St Pauli hotel and gave that as a shipping address, thinking we’d pick it up after visiting Denmark. (How cosmopolitan!) At this point everything was jake. The hotel agreed to hold the package if it came in before we returned, Christina of the Inogen One company was in constant contact and gave us the UPS tracking number so we could follow the progress of the item. We took off for the land of Vikings and smorgasbord. (Did you know that smorgasbord is simply an open-faced sandwich?)

Wares from the puppet museum and store.
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Back to our story: We check the UPS tracking number daily. It left Des Moines August 17, arrived and departed Louisville the 18^th. It arrived in Cologne (Koeln) Germany August 19^th. Then the fun began. At first it needed a Power of Attorney to be released then it had an Import Gateway Hold. Between August 19^th and the 23^rd the OC was given six different Import Scans

In the meantime, we’d returned to Hamburg but were unable to book into the same hotel so we went to the Ibis-Altona, one subway-stop away from the St Pauli location. When we finally reached an English-speaking employee somewhere in Germany via telephone, we were told that an international tax document needed to be filled out before the item could be released. He gave us the FAX number of the Cologne UPS so we could FAX them our FAX number to FAX us the document so we could fill it out and FAX it back. They never FAXed. This was beginning to feel like we were chasing the Maltese Falcon.

The Theaterfiguren Museum (puppet museum)
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We called Christina again and she called Cologne again. The online tracking site was now telling us that the dingus would be delivered "on-time" to Hamburg on August 24th. REB and I went to the Ibis hotel in the morning, made a cursory friendship with Hassan on the desk and asked him to be on the look out for our package. He was reluctant at first but when he saw a copy of the official UPS website with the delivery date, he was more than happy to help. It’s official, right? We figured it would take six to seven hours for the truck to arrive from Cologne so we went away and came back that afternoon for a stake out. We set ourselves up at the café next to the hotel and had a long lunch of omelets, beer and wine. Then more beer and wine. Finally, the truck pulled up but without our package - "tomorrow," the driver said. That night we passed the German-only touch-tone message board when REB pressed every button on the phone. Finally, an English-speaking person who told us that the package would not be delivered, it hadn’t cleared customs, it’s going back to Louisville. "Nothing there is you can do," Ms Bauermeester told us. Another phone call to Christina confirmed that she’d reached a stone wall, too. We decided to call it quits with UPS and resend the package to Ralph & Ria’s in Belgium through another carrier. As of now, we’re waiting to get that tracking number. Amazing, huh? And I’m leaving out the part where Christina called us at our hotel - twice - to be told we weren’t there. It’s a craziness that has consumed us for two weeks. As we sit here in Luebeck (watching it rain today) we wonder if we should leave tomorrow for Mechelen (seven hour trip), leave tomorrow for Frankfurt or somewhere between here and Mechelen, stay here tomorrow and get our laundry done then leave the next day. They’re not having this much fun on the group-bus, I can assure you.

A boy playing chess with a row of locals. Saturday in Luebeck.
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