Arrival in Germany

Hello Everyone,

We arrived in Germany and I was very happy to be there! Mari and Paul picked us up at the train station and we went straight to the ice cream parlor for some yummy Italian ice cream... but let me start at the beginning:

We flew out of Charlotte, my dad Christoph, my sister Phyllis, my bro Oliver and myself. My mom stayed home because of work and came later. We left Charlotte at 4:30pm and arrived in Frankfurt at 7am. That's 14 1/2 hours, but the flight only took 8 1/2 hours, how do you think that is possible? That is because there is a 6 hour time change from North Carolina to Germany. For example, when it's time to go to bed in Germany, it's only afternoon here.

My dad looked up that it is 4,387 miles to fly from CLT to FRA, these are the airport codes for Charlotte and Frankfurt. That means we traveled around 500 miles per hour, or calculated as 4,387 miles divided by 8.5 hours equals 516.117 mph. During the flight the display showed how fast we were going against ground. For a long time it showed a ground speed of 568 mph. The average speed is lower, because the plane is slower at takeoff and landing. By the way, the picture shows the flightpath, with the plane in reverse.

In Europe they use Kilometers instead of Miles to measure long distances. If you were going 100 mph that would be 160 km/h, so there is 1.6 Kilometer in each Mile. That means our 4,387 miles traveled are equal to 7,019.2 km. If there were a bridge to Europe where we could travel at a speed of 100 km/h, it would take about 70 hours to get there, much too long for me!!

After we landed, we met up with Nadine, one of our old au-pairs, and then took the train to Stuttgart and then to Lorch to my grandparents Mari and Paul. Then it was finally time for ice cream!!