As we told you, BallinEurope has split up, going separate ways to both have a look at the NBA finals and to cover the Reebok Eurocamp in Treviso, Italy. Normally, it’s not that interesting to tell you about the trip to these places: You want to know what’s actually going on there, but this time I think I want to let you know about the trip.
US Airways is this year’s chosen carrier to bring me from Munich, Germany to Philadelphia, USA. I think I have done this flight over 20 times now, so I know how it feels to sit in coach/economy seats as a 1.96 meter (6”4′) guy for nine hours – not so much fun. I decided to go envoy/first class this time to be relaxed and rested for the next flight on Tuesday to Los Angeles for the NBA finals. Let me tell you, if you ever go to Europe and you care about being relaxed, do the same thing – the nine hours of flight felt like a 45-minute joyride!
As you can imagine, it would have been way too nice if everything had gone that smoothly. What could still happen? The plane was almost on time – OK, I waited about 30 minutes for my bags, but wait, I just entered the United States as somebody from this “country,” Germany.
I promise I did not look like your logo – I was shaved and dressed normal, and explained to the nice officer why I was coming and what I was doing here. He did not ask any further or more detailed questions as they normally do, so I was surprised and waited to get my passport back. This never happened.
“Sir, please come with me for further verification!”
I won’t go into details, but after one hour of waiting and three minutes of talking to another officer, I finally got my passport.
Well, I’m here in Philadelphia now, watched the first half of game two of the NBA finals, where Boston took a 2-0 lead now and will fly to Los Angeles tomorrow morning.
Here I am, America!
