We left Lincoln on July 4 shortly after 1 pm, on a Delta flight to Minneapolis, and boarded our international flight around 5 pm. Wearing masks for the entirety of the flight (8.5 hours) was a new experience, but not too bad–and offset by a very relaxed and not at all crowded flight (about 100 seats were not taken). I even managed to sleep for a while, which never happens on transatlantic flights–and only watched one movie (“Nomadland”) while Mark found none at all that he liked. We had a very smooth landing in Amsterdam around 8 am, got through customs and immigration rather quickly, and were on a train to Osnabrück before 10 am. The ride (also with masks, of course) was about 4 hours (with a long layover in Hengelo, Holland, where we had simple sandwiches and a Dutch almond cookie), and also hitchless. The last leg was a 10 minute bus ride from the train station to my mom’s house. We were tired, but not too tired to be extremely happy to see Imke and then to enjoy a lovely snack of cheesecake with coffee and tea. We spent the remainder of the day figuring out the usual computer and data logistics by going to the nearby Aldi and buying their super cheap data packages for the phones and the ipad. Mark spent a lot of time sorting all that out, while my mom and I chatted; I unpacked and we had a wonderful German-style dinner (“Abendbrot”) with bread, rolls, cold cuts, cheese, and a salad. We didn’t manage to stay up very late but it was past 9 pm when we finally just CRASHED and slept off (most) of our jet lag.