A long day

We left Zama lodging at about 11:00 on the morning of the 5th, and took the MWR shuttle bus to Haneda airport. It was a lot busier than the last time I was there -- November 2020 . That was to be expected, and I was grateful for it -- another sign that the COVID pandemic is winding down. We had had three options for our flight:

1. A non-stop, 15.5-hour flight over Russia. This would have taken us north along the eastern end of North Korea, up near the Arctic Circle, then down along the border with Finland, and over the Baltic Sea. The total cost of the four tickets would have been about $18000. If I were active-duty, this might not have been too bad, but as a GS civilian, the tickets are a taxable benefit, and I would have been on the hook for about $6000. No thank you.
   
   
2. A layover in Istanbul. This would have been a 13-hour flight, followed by a two-hour flight. The cost would have been ~$8000 (a more reasonable $2400 tax payment), but the flight path worried me. Toward the end, it would have gone over Donbas province, all of Russian-occupied Ukraine, and the Black Sea between Crimea and Snake Island. Also a no thank you.
   
   
3. Head east. We chose this one. First, an 11.5-hour flight to Chicago, then an 8.5-hour flight to Frankfurt. It meant a veeeery long day, but the tickets were about the name price as Istanbul, and there were no conflict zones to fly over.

After a few hours to waste at the airport, we took the 17:45 redeye flight to Chicago’s O-Hare airport, landing (after some delays and the time zone difference) at about 15:00 (Chicago time).
O’Hare was crazy. It’s a big city airport -- as opposed to an international terminal -- so we Had to go through customs and immigration even though we weren’t staying in the U.S. We would have missed our connection, except that our connecting flight was delayed too, so I guess the two problems cancelled each other out.
Once we got on the plane, our departure was further delayed by weather, but by that point I really didn't care about anything. I just wanted to sleep. So for the second time in a 24-hour period, we took a red-eye flight.
We arrived in Frankfurt at about noon on the 6th, met up with our sponsor, got a ride to the Holiday Inn Express (the one just outside the Hainerberg Housing Area) and prompty crashed.