OK. So our luggage made it; it arrived this morning. It seems that over a dozen people had missing luggage on our flight from Amsterdam to São Paulo; between that, and standing in line for over an hour at immigration, we missed our connection. KLM put us up at the Mercure Hotel in Guarulhos, near the airport, paid for dinner and breakfast, and we took one of the mid-morning flights, arriving home at exactly noon.

(Side note#1: I’d actually thought of changing our reservations to stay overnight in São Paulo, in order to get more and earlier rest, so we didn’t really mind… and the hotel was great.)

(Side note#2: there were only 2 customs/immigration agents to process over 200 foreigners from our flight, and neither of them spoke any foreign language. It seems that they’re striking for better salaries, and their normal strike modus operandi is to either have as few people as possible actually working, and/or really work as they’re supposed to, but even more; search every piece of luggage with great care.)

Going back in time a few days, the family meeting was a huge success, and I’m going to be setting up a reserved forum for family members to post pictures and gossip, and to start thinking about the next meeting. So if you’re a Brockerhoff (or related to one), watch this space for the announcement in a few days.

Special thanks go to my cousin Ferdi and his wife Elisabeth, and their son Reiner Brockerhoff, for putting us up for a couple of days and for showing us Frankfurt, complete with the traditional Äbblewoi (Apple wine).

During the flight home I tried to take a photo out of the plane window and promptly bumped the camera lens, not really hard, against the window – I usually do that with my forehead, come to think of it. However, the camera took the opportunity to shut down completely. I managed to revive it at home by removing and recharging the battery, but after a few hours it went dead again. My hunch is that there’s a short somewhere, and as soon as I find the time I’ll take the covers off (which looks straightforward) and see if I find something obvious.

Nevertheless, the pictures weren’t affected, and as I write this I’m importing them into iPhoto. Apparently this will take about 45 minutes. In the evening I’ll try to do some sorting and correcting, and you can expect to see some selected pictures over the weekend.