It's you... Not Me

Just an update: Last night I returned to Hamburg from Prague (and a ridiculously awesome visit to Lukas, Ulrika and their hilarious son, Melvin) and just started working through the hundreds of pictures I've taken since arriving in Germany last week. So many things, so much to write about. Between politics and business talk, I'm really enjoying being here. The weather in Prague was better than here in Kaltenkirchen, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless.
There is one big commentary I have to make, though. Considering Prague is in a completely different country and how quickly I was able to enter and leave the airport in Praha and Hamburg collectively, the Europeans simply know how to do transportation. While I was early both for my departure to Prague and my return to Hamburg, I still spent less than 15 minutes being checked in and go through security (and security is tight here, too) - and mind you, this was also with passport controls for non EU members. It was more convenient flying to another country than it is from Milwaukee to Detroit. It is simply a sad state of affairs that our air transportation system is suffering under. I don't know where most of the blame lies (I could start with airport design/layout, but that would be understating how inadequate our check-in people apparently are), but we have lots to learn from transportation in [northern] Europe.