My Struggle is real: 10 days in Germany with roundtrip Lufthansa First Class

So, I had all kinds of glorious plans of doing a double round the world trip in opposite directions. Then, nonrev life happened and the A350 flights to Seoul filled up, which made the whole thing go a bit tits up. I debated still risking it, but the chance of possibly getting stuck in Korea, needing to buy a ticket home, combined with the roundtrip Finnair ticket I planned to buy made it a bit risky.

At the same time, things at work got a bit complicated, putting any personal travel and leave in February in doubt. I decided rather than take the risk I would do the simple thing, and use up some tickets I have sitting around and actually take a vacation for once. Yes, more than a full week in one country! I’d been wanting to do a train trip through Germany, and I love winter in Europe so this seemed like the perfect time.

I want to take a second to thank the readers who’ve sent me comments over the last month asking if I was ok. Yes, I was just really taking a vacation for the first time in a long time and not bothering with blogging. I had a great trip, and used the little down time I had to stay on top of work so I didn’t come back to a big steaming mess instead of writing blog entries. Sorry for the delay, but lots to come soon!

On top of this, it would finally give me a chance to see some cities in the east of Germany that I hadn’t visited before, along with getting in a couple of long 4+ hour train trips on the ICE. Win win! In the end, the trip ended up looking like this:

If you’re more interested in my route around Germany for over a week:

Now, of course, like most of my trips what I had planned isn’t exactly what happened. Fortunately, the changes were relatively minor this time, and the drama was all recovered from with minimum inconvenience. However, there was just enough drama that I need to get back to Germany soon, as one sidetrip I was looking really forward to ended up happening. I think I’ll split the report into these parts:

1. DC to Frankfurt with United and Lufthansa First
2. Frankfurt to Cairo with Lufthansa and overnight in Cairo
3. Cairo to Frankfurt with EgyptAir and Lufthansa, overnight in Frankfurt
4. Frankfurt to Dresden by train, overnight Dresden
5. Dresden to Leipzig by train, overnight Leipzig
6. Leipzig to Berlin by train, first night in Berlin
7. Full day in Berlin
8. Berlin to Hamburg by train, overnight in Hamburg
9. Unexpected bonus night in Hamburg
10. Hamburg to Frankfurt by train, overnight in Frankfurt
11. Frankfurt to Boston with Lufthansa first
12. Boston to DC with United…and a pleasant unpleasant welcome home

Sit back, grab some champagne and caviar, I’m going to try and knock this one out in short order since my next trip is less than a week away!