I think everyone has at least one momentous occasion in their lives where they remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when an event of massive historical significance happened. My parents always talked about the day that JFK was shot. For me, I’ve had several events like that in my life: the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded on launch, the day the Berlin Wall came down, and the day that the United States declared war on Iraq to start operation Desert Storm.
But by far, the most significant of these times in my lifetime was September 11, 2001. Many of us remember that day but for me it was particularly challenging because I was working in Germany and had to watch everything happen from afar. And for several days (5, to be exact), I was unable to return home; I was locked out of my own country. And that, dear reader, is a very, very strange position to be in.
The Day The Earth Stood Still
My job at the time was working for Tivoli Systems (having already been purchased by IBM) as a Level 3 Support Engineer. This meant that I got sent to particularly high-value clients to solve problems with the software I was supporting in their production environments. In this particular case, IBM was (maybe still is?) a key partner in Volkswagen’s technical capabilities and they had deployed some Tivoli software that was monitoring their website’s quality of service. I had been there before to work on this software for them (they had a particularly challenging environment), and on this occasion I was being sent to work with and then relieve two of my teammates that had already been there for roughly a week.
My trip there had already been a nightmare as Lufthansa lost my luggage on the way over. I arrived on a Saturday, was met by a “local” sales engineer (from Italy) and we headed immediately to the job site in Wolfsburg. For the next 3 days, I wore the same clothes I had traveled over in because I didn’t plan ahead and pack professional clothes in my carry-on (I have since learned that lesson). I spent Monday dealing with the various airlines trying to locate my luggage in between my duties at the customer site and by Tuesday, with still no sign of my luggage, I had to go clothes shopping on my lunch break to get some professional-enough clothing (which is not made for people of my body size and height off the rack in Germany) and some toiletries and grooming supplies.
VW’s servers were air-gapped and in their own secure-access server room, so I couldn’t sit at my temporary desk and work on my laptop, nor could I take it into the server room and hook into their network; that was absolutely not allowed. So I would have to make fixes and changes, load it onto a USB drive or some other medium, and then take it into the server room and work on the computers directly in there. It was a little after 3pm on that Tuesday, and I and one of my teammates were making yet another trip from the isolated server room back to my temporary desk to do some coding and check in with the team back in the states, some of whom would just be coming online for the day.
I was met by our IBM-Germany liaison and contact, a fellow by the name of Wolfgang, and he came running up to us and very excitedly said, “has anyone told you what has happened? Do you know what’s going on? Your country is under attack!”
Um, what?
So of course we ran back to the office space and tried to find out what was happening. BBC hadn’t picked up the story yet, and we were trying to get the picture via CNN, but it was so busy that getting it to refresh was an exercise in frustration. When we finally did get it to load and found out that Tower 1 had been hit by a passenger jet, before we could finish reading it, the page updated to tell of the second plane hitting Tower 2. 30 minutes later, the towers collapsed and took down most of the international data and phone connections with them.
One plane I could believe was a horrible, horrible accident. But two planes? That’s an attack.
But we couldn’t get any more information because the internet, the phones, and it seemed like all communications were down coming into the US. Once BBC and other European news agencies started picking up the story, we could start to get more information and a clearer picture of what happened. It was later on that evening in my hotel that I heard about the attack on the Pentagon for the first time and also that there was at least one more plane out there that had gone missing.
In a moment of ponderous irony, I got back to the hotel to find my luggage waiting for me at the front desk.
In The Dark
I don’t speak German. And, of course, as you might imagine, all of the television shows at the hotel in Wolfsburg, Germany, were in German except for two channels: EuroSport and BBC World News. BBC World is very much like CNN Headline News where it just repeats nearly endlessly every 30 minutes or so with (obviously) Euro-centric news. And I’m not much of a sports guy anyway, but it just so happened that the World Curling Championships were going on that week, so EuroSport was pretty much running curling non-stop the entire time I was there. Yes, curling. A sport that’s even more boring to watch than golf or bowling.
On a side note, I did watch an episode of The Simpsons on that Sunday night, where I learned that German voice actors are just as famous as the actual actors for whom they do the voices, so I now know how the Germans hear Homer, Marge, and the whole gang. That was kind of an interesting side benefit. I would love to be around the first time they hear the original voice actors and would probably be all like, “THAT’S what Homer is supposed to sound like? Pfffft, naaaahhhh… He sounds like an IDIOT!”
Anyway, by the time I got back to the hotel, BBC World was pretty much talking about nothing but the 9/11 attacks and trying to pass on as much information as they could get out of the US as to what the hell had happened. So I pretty much watched nothing but that just hoping to hear any new information about what was happening or why.
It was hard to work at the customer site with all that going on. My compatriots were scheduled to fly back to the US on that Wednesday, so our travel coordinator told them to proceed as if everything was normal since they already had tickets. They left Wolfsburg at lunch that day to head to Hanover for their flight out, and they were back by 4pm after being told that any flights with a final destination in the US were being grounded - even the connecting flights - so that the airports in between wouldn’t be overwhelmed. And no, they didn’t have any idea when flights would resume. So we were stuck. We couldn’t get home even though we desperately wanted to do so.
Secretly, I was kind of glad that they were forced to come back so that I had some of my American friends with me to share in the situation so that I didn’t have to deal with it alone. I didn’t want to go over there to Germany at that time in the first place, so knowing that they would be around for a little bit longer was a relief. But Ron was a Canadian citizen, and Britney was a Vietnamese citizen, so if worse came to worst they could go to Canada and then attempt to drive back to home in the US. Since I had no other citizenship, I was stuck. Americans weren’t being allowed in to other countries either because everybody knew that they were ultimately trying to get to a place that was still in lockdown and didn’t want to overburden their own local infrastructure. There wasn’t anywhere for me to go. That was a very weird feeling, not being able to go home and, in effect, being locked out of your own country.
Ron and Britney tried to fly out again on Thursday, and finally got on a flight that Friday that went to Canada. They ended up arriving back home around the same time I did that next Sunday.
Why Not Stay In Germany?
As the 3 of us Americans were trying to navigate the shock of what was happening and process what we had seen and what we knew, getting home was at the forefront of all of our minds. And several of our German colleagues asked us why we didn’t want to stay there in Germany where it was safe until all of this blew over? Why would we want to risk flying back on planes that were clearly being used as missiles by these terrorists? Surely it made no sense to risk our lives to get home right in the middle of these attacks when nobody knew if they were done yet or if this was just the beginning.
This is one of the things I do love about the German people, to be honest. Sometimes logical and efficient to a fault with all the many, MANY rules and regulations, but they really do care about their friends and coworkers. They couldn’t understand why we wanted to be in a country in that much chaos right then.
And to this day, I don’t think I can really explain why I was feeling that way, to be honest. It wasn’t rational and it wasn’t safe (as far as I knew at the time). The best explanation that I can come up with is just needing a sense of solidarity in a time of shock and crisis. Being safe but not being surrounded by my friends and family and being able to process it together was intensely isolating. All of the people there in Germany were friendly, compassionate, and concerned people but they weren’t my friends and Germany was not my home. They couldn’t share in my shock, grief, anger, and bewilderment in the same way that my American friends could, just like I wouldn’t be able to understand and experience the full measure of something like that happening in Germany while I was there.
I can only imagine that this is in some way how people felt on December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. For the average US citizen, 9/11 was a seemingly unprovoked and clearly open attack for which we did not understand a reason. My home was 2,000 miles away from where those attacks occurred, and I didn’t personally know anyone that I even suspected would be in those locations. And yet, the fact that I couldn’t get through to anyone for several days and could only get information at best second-hand on what was happening was deeply unsettling on some visceral level.
In some way, the desire to be together with my countrymen to work through this experience overrode all desires for personal safety. I was driven to seek more attachment and connection than detachment. I don’t know why.
Finally Able To Fly Home
I had a ticket for Saturday, which was the first full day that flights terminating in the US were allowed to go through so I was advised to head to the airport and just try to get on my scheduled flights.
Security at the Frankfurt airport was insanely tight. Absolutely everything was being scrutinized. It wasn’t enough to just pull electronics out of your bag and have them x-rayed; you had to turn them on and get past the boot screen to prove that they actually were what they appeared to be. Nobody yet really knew how this had happened so everything was checked and verified. This was the first time that I have had soldiers with un-slung automatic weapons pointed in my general direction, with attack dogs right next to them. Germany was being damn sure that if there was going to be another attack, it absolutely was not going to come through their airports.
Once I finally got through all the security and was in the waiting area at the gate, I ended up talking to a young guy next to me that turned out to be a US Air Force airman that had been stuck in that airport for 5 days, essentially living there. He had been on his way home for his wedding and was out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean when the plane turned around and went back to Frankfurt (and of course wasn’t told why). Once they landed, he called Rammstein AFB to find out what happened and ask for someone to come pick him up and take him back to base. Before the car could leave the base (5 minutes after his call, according to him), all US military bases went on lockdown as it became apparent that these were attacks and nobody knew where the next one would happen.
This poor guy not only missed his wedding, but was then stuck at the airport and was running out of money. He was down to his last 5 Deutsche Marks (this was right at the transition time when Germany was moving to Euros, so both currencies were accepted) and said, “I’ve been on standby for 5 days just trying to get home and I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t get on this flight either.” So I gave him all the currency that I had in my wallet just in case, because that’s all I had to give him. I asked him what he was going to do about the wedding and he replied, “what can we do? The venue was booked 6 months ago and there’s no way that we’ll get in now, and I have to be back on base in a week. I guess we’ll just get married at the court house (‘we’ll have a JOP wedding’ is how he put it) and then we’ll just have to have a reception or something once I get back to the States again.” I felt so bad for him and for his wife-to-be, to have her dreams of her wedding day relegated to a court house wedding and a reception to follow “sometime”.
But, in a mildly happy note to conclude this part of the story with this unfortunate airman, he not only got onto that flight, but he also got bumped up to first class! Quality move, Lufthansa.
A bit of a digression...
One of the few bright spots in this trip that happened to me occurred at Heathrow airport. This was back in the heady days just before the first big dotcom bubble burst, and also since I had gotten sent on this business trip with 2 days notice, I was allowed to fly international business class which, in those days, gave automatic access to Admiral’s and President’s club lounges for layovers for the duration of the trip. It was a nice perk to ensure that we could “hit the ground running” whenever we had to upend our lives to go onsite with a customer.
When I got off the plane and onto the (surprisingly long and winding) jet bridge to head into the terminal, there was a man standing there at one of the junctions holding a placard with my name on it. He looked like a security guard. I told him who I was, and he ushered me out a side door and down some steps and directed me to get into a little sprinter van that was there waiting. I had no idea what was happening or where I was going, and was trying to think if I had done anything even remotely suspicious in these heightened times of security. But I could think of nothing.
There was another apron worker already in the van, so the “guard” sat up front and I sat in the back. I was driven through the interior of the airport - the “back way”, it would seem. I figured well, if I’m going to airport jail, at least I get a cool view of the inner workings of the airport on my way to the holding cell. We finally arrived at the destination and the man who looked like a security guard turned to me and said, “If you’ll go up those stairs just to the right there and go through the door at the top, that will take you right to the Admiral’s Club.” I was completely taken aback - you mean that this whole thing was basically a private escort to the Admiral’s Club? Was it because I was an American? Was it because I was an American business traveler? Or had Connie, our travel secretary, been working overtime to get us some special consideration as we were all trying to make our way back home? Nothing like that has ever happened to me before or since, not in any of the times I have traveled International business or even domestic first class.
I wasn’t going to airport jail. I was being escorted to the fancy lounge! I was special! And let me tell you in no uncertain terms, yes, I enjoyed the living hell out of that Admiral’s Club in the 4.5 hours I had to spend in London for my layover!
As you might imagine, the mood on the flight across the ocean was subdued. Initially, people were just trying to catch up with others who might have been elsewhere that might know some more information. But eventually the conversations died out and everyone was just sort of quiet. Quieter than usual. None of us really had any idea what we were coming back to. We were scheduled to fly into Washington’s Dulles International Airport, which would take us right past New York City.
Normally, when flying over NYC, the pilots will point out the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State building. But this time as we passed, the pilot just quietly said, “we’re now passing over New York CIty. If you look out the right side of the aircraft, you can see where the Twin Towers used to be.” And that was it. The plane went dead silent except for the sounds of the engines. I’ve never heard a plane be that quiet, ever before or since. I was on the right side of the plane and even 5 days later, the massive hole at Ground Zero was still smoking as if there were multiple buildings ablaze underneath it. The smoke stretched out for miles. My brain could not compute the images that my eyeballs were sending it. It was the most surreal thing I have ever seen. The sense of wrongness was overwhelming.
And then we landed into the chaos that was Dulles International Airport.
It took me 3 hours to go through customs, and the zipper had split on my suitcase (which I had borrowed from a friend), so now this Trip From Hell (TM) had cost me the additional price of new luggage to replace the damages. It took 2 hours to sweep and clean the plane on my flight to Chicago such that my plane left Dulles 15 minutes AFTER my connecting flight left Chicago to head to Dallas. I had to get a hotel room in Chicago and Connie, our team administrative assistant, booked me in a Holiday Inn, but I went to the wrong one (there are 4 of them within 2 miles of O’Hare) after waiting for an additional hour and a half for them to find my bag, which was lost - again. The Holiday Inn switched my reservation and I finally got settled in my hotel room around midnight with a seat on the red eye the next day at 6:23am to Dallas. I got roughly 3 hours of sleep before I had to get up and get to the airport by 4:30am on a Sunday, just to make sure that I could account for all the security and screening delays.
George W. Bush was President at the time, and his family home was in Crawford, TX, with Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin being the closest port of entry to that. As his daughters were attending college in Texas at that time, ABIA was closed for national security reasons, even 6 days later (it wouldn’t open again until the following week). Thus, I could only get as far as Dallas by airplane, so I had to rent a car and drive the final 3.5-hour leg of the trip back home.
A Shout-out to Connie
Even after all these years, Connie has my undying gratitude for how much overtime she put in that week to bring us all home safely. She handled all our travel arrangements so that we would have a single point of contact in those chaotic times. When my flight out of Dulles was delayed so long that I missed my connecting flight, she booked me a new flight and a hotel room in Chicago so that all of that was ready when I landed, and she booked me the rental car in Dallas so that I would be sure to have one. And she did the same for Ron, and Britney, and for all the others that were just trying to get home. She handled everything elegantly, was so nice and accommodating, and without her the World’s Worst Business Trip (TM) would have been so much more troublesome.
I don’t know if she’s ever even going to see this, but I just wanted to say a big “THANK YOU, CONNIE!” to let her know how much I still appreciate what she did for me to this day. She was (is?) one helluvan Adminstrative Assistant!
I arrived at my apartment to find that someone had backed into my car while I was gone, resulting in $1,300 worth of damage (and of course left no note or insurance information because, I mean, why would they?).
I called some friends to chase me back down to the airport so I could return my rental car to Hertz, which for some bizarre reason was still open even though the airport was closed. I was met on the way in by two very unhappy National Guardsmen, one of whom gave me the third degree on who I was and what I was doing there, while the other was pointing his AR-15 at my car (at least it wasn’t aimed directly at my face). My friends in the “chase car” were not allowed in and had to go to the lot outside the airport perimeter. Upon trying to return the car that I had rented just that very morning in Dallas, a perplexed Hertz counter employee didn’t know what to do because as far as they knew, that car was still sitting up at DFW. They had absolutely no record that I had the car except for the rental agreement and tags that I was given when I left. I could have had a free car to make up for the damage that happened to my car while I was on this completely cursed trip! Missed opportunity, that.
I hoofed it out to the external lot where my friends were waiting for me, about a half-mile walk and of course Hertz was not running any shuttle services because again, why would they? That wasn’t their lot, and they clearly couldn’t even keep track of where their cars were or who had them.
I finally got back home and crashed to start dealing with the jet lag. The insurance report on my car and my missing luggage was going to have to wait.
Coda
My luggage finally arrived the next day (Monday), after getting left on a loading dock in Chicago for a day and a half. That piece of God-forsaken luggage was cursed, and I’m kind of glad that it’s gone.
This was, by far, the worst trip from start to finish that I have ever taken.
