Deutsch schuhe!

I once had a dog whose cool, bored exterior barely covered a frenzy of inner anxiety, resulting in incessant lick-lick-lick-lick-licking of furniture and body parts and in noisy doga (dog + yoga) Ujjayi breath. The vet always said this breathing was how she 'calmed herself'. I thought about this as I sat in front of my laptop, holding my cellphone, waiting for Lax to provide me with an Indian Reference so I could complete page 3 of this freakin' Visa application. I needed to do something to calm myself.

I decided to review our flights -- making sure my travel plans are analyzed, charted, printed, collated, stapled, and spindled is very comforting to me.

Interestingly, the routes are different going and coming, and we have relatively long layovers in Dubai and Munich -- two airports I've never been in.

OMG just typing "Dubai" gives me shivers of excitement. But Munich, oooooh, Munich… Or should I actually say, ooooooh Germany! Specifically, ooooooohh Deutsch schuhe!

I like to buy shoes when I travel. They're great souvenirs -- reminding me of my trips, and usually very different from anything I can find at home. It's highly unlikely I'll meet my unAmerican shoes in the aisles and conference rooms of my job -- which is only one of the great reasons for shoe shopping abroad. The best ever international shoe buying experience I've had to date was in Germany, where the salesman said that my (normally considered large) feet were smaller than the average German woman. Hooray! Additionally, the pretty ankle-strap heels I bought there were well-made, comfortable, stylish, excellent at camouflaging the faults of (normally considered large) feet. In a word Wonderful -- and totally unavailable on the entire shopping information superhighway.

I would be spending six hours in a German airport. Could there be fabulous German shoes nearby????

And so I was thusly calmed and eventually lulled to sleep by my fingers walking through reviews of the Munich Airport, searching for shoes nearby, and fretting that six hours layover was too short a time for a traveler making international connections to safely leave the airport.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…. Perhaps I can extend my stay in Munich……..