In case you missed it: Part 1, Part2, Part 3

With pets and luggage back on board the feckless Rees train to Cordoba, we connected with Lufthansa customer service again and received confirmation of a $2,000 refund for the Business class seats that had never materialized. Then we went for a vehicle at the Sixt counter. Figuring we’d pay $150 a day for a van for 3 or 4 days, we were a bit confused with the quote of $3,000 to rent a van to Spain. If it’s not the airlines digging deep into your pocket, then surely the auto rental firms will succeed.

A rental inside Germany would have been at a decent price. But if you leave the country and won’t be returning said rental to Sixt in Germany, then you pay dearly to reimburse Sixt — or any other rental firm — for bringing the car back to Germany. At an exorbitant price.

By now we didn’t feel we had much choice. Book another flight and put the animals under another plane the next day? Another exercise in removing kilos and kilos of luggage from another airport, plus pets, only to return the next day to start all over? No, we’d just gotten $2,000 back, so we’d stomach the $1,000 difference to drive the hell out of Frankfurt.

But first we needed some luggage carts. We’d considered this moment before we left the U.S., but thought it would take place at our final stop in Madrid. We’d brought some lashing straps from home and proceeded to build two little luggage trains.

They manuevered pretty well, I must say, if not a bit relucant to slow down when at speed. And the little trains, predictably, attracted the notice and disapproval of several fellow travelers at the Frankfurt airport. A few could not resist tut-tutting to us in German and shaking their heads. But we weren’t hearing other opinons at this point, in any language. We had some way to go with our desparate gypsy caravan and its dancing animals.

Across the terminal, down an elevator, making a stop at the Sixt counter, then down a modest tiled ramp and into a long passageway to the garage. Through a door that had to be held open, over a curb, past a gate arm, then deeper into the garage to the van. The big ass van. The Ford Tourneo that appeared far too big to comfortably sojourn through a cramped European garage.

We somehow emerged intact from the garage and into the well-lit labyrinth of airport byways, realizing we had been in a Frankfurtian purgatory for four hours. And that it was now dark. After sunset. Within a brief artificial glow before motoring on to the streets of greater, darker Frankfurt. There is no less welcome mission in overseas travel than arriving in a foreign country and having then to navigate by rental vehicle by night.

Without GPS.

As I drove into Frankfurt, in no given direction, I asked Donna to fire up the Maps app. We wanted out of Frankfurt so we thought we’d head south for a bit, in the general direction of Spain. It was then, out from beneath the blanket of wifi at the airport, that we came to realize we had no cell service.

I had turned off my mobile service in New Mexico, keeping my 505 number but attaching it to the IP phone service, Google Voice. Which required… wifi. But wait, Donna still had Verizon service. She just had to turn on the Travel Pass to get full cell service for 24 hours. I’d driven on to some minor highway for a bit then exited and pulled into a gas station. Donna found that she had voice service and could text, but had no data.

So we called Verizon. And so began another pathetic riff within the larger trek home, like Odysseus, but in modern-day Germany and bereft of wireless.

Stay tuned for part 5… Stuck in Frankfurt