Flashback #1: Should Have Had a Back-Up Plan

So, after about twenty-two hours of traveling and thirty minutes of sleep (not counting that twenty-minute zoning-out nap-type thing in Heathrow which almost made me miss my connecting flight...brilliant), I arrived in Frankfurt to meet Julie. At least we had the foresight to arrange our rendezvous ahead of time; we devoted a whole thirty-second phone-meeting to it as Julie packed for her tour and we scanned the Frankfurt Airport online map for a meeting place, landing on the most recognizable symbol for native Northwesterners: Starbucks. (I'm almost ashamed to admit that. But it was sort of fun to throw casually into conversations: "No, sorry, I can't work that Friday. I'm meeting Julie at Starbucks...in Frankfurt." (Bwa ha ha ha.)).
Anyway, the Starbucks was conveniently located between the plane terminals (me) and the train platforms (Julie), so it seemed like a good choice. And we had a good four hours to kill before our overnight train to Prague, so we could do with some coffee anyway.
So I found it and sat down on my backpack and waited. And waited and waited and waited. I'm not generally one to worry, but as it approached an hour past our scheduled time, then passed the hour mark, I was admittedly concerned (the whole sleep-deprivation thing wasn't exactly helping with the nerves, either). Did she miss her train? Did she get on the wrong train? Did her train derail? Had she been kidnapped? Arrested? Blighted with some horrible disease? Was she--as is the risk of all people in our over-caffeinated world--waiting for me at a different Starbucks?
Here's where the back-up plan would have come in handy. Should I stay there? Should I wander around and look for her? Send airport security after her? Hug a tree?
I called my dad.
Okay, actually I did a loop of the whole area between the train platforms and the Starbucks, talked to the information-booth people about whether there were any other Starbucks in the airport (no), sat some more, asked them to page Julie (which they claimed to do, although I didn't hear it), paced a bit, and then called my dad.
Or tried to call him. I then experienced the humiliation of realizing that I was incapable (apparently) of figuring out German pay-phones. (Again, we'll blame it on the sleep-deprivation.) So I found an email kiosk, and tried to write a very fast (aka expensive) email on a German keyboard that would sufficiently convey my desire for help without causing my parents undue alarm. How they could help, I'm still not entirely sure. But it seemed like the thing to do at the time. Then I paced some more.
Finally I went over to the information-booth lady (in sight of the Starbucks), asked her to tell any distraught-looking American backpackers named Julie who enquired that I would be back soon, and headed back towards the trains one more time. I was on the hunt. On the hunt for an average-height blonde backpacker in an airport full of German travelers. Hm.
I was just despairing of the hunt when I happened to see a familiar-looking back-of-head standing at a pay-phone (dang, she was smart enough to use them). Eureka! Success! Julie! I thought she was going to faint with happiness when she saw me standing there. (I thought that I might faint, too, but that was more because of the lack of sleep, ravenous hunger, and limb-exhaustion from all that pacing and looping with my thirty-pound pack...)
Apparently some airport guy had misdirected her, so she ended up in a hallway that required a boarding pass for entry (which she didn't have, obviously). So she thought she was stuck at the trains. And didn't have a way to tell me. And no back-up plan. And thus spent a very similar two hours pacing and wondering if I was stranded, kidnapped, arrested, blighted, etc...
Seriously. It's all about the back-up plan.
But we found each other. And it was much more entertaining this way (even at the time, but particularly in hindsight).
Of course, even with more than an hour to spare after our reunion, we still managed to miss our train. But more on that later...