It just so happens that on the day of September, 11th 2001, I was in Germany for a family reunion. As we were driving down the autobahn (basically Germany's equivalent of a highway) listening to cassette tapes of children's music in our rental car headed to some stores to go shopping. At that point, we were driving along the autobahn when a large caravan of military vehicles passed us; also, my mom was becoming annoyed with children's and German music, so she decided to flip through the radio stations to find something in English (we had already been in Germany about 2 weeks). At that point, she flipped to the BBC on which it had just been announced that the Twin Towers had been hit by planes hijacked by terrorists. Immediately, we turned around and headed back to where we were staying. We were freaking out.
About a week later, we attended a memorial service in a nearby church where we lit candles and placed them around an American flag. We were the only Americans in the whole town.
Meanwhile, we were scheduled to head back to the US around September 13th. As you can guess, that didn't happen. Instead, we had to leave about 2 weeks later. I am proud to say that I was on the very first plane back into America from anywhere in the world after the 9/11 attacks. In order to board that plane, we had to endure over 6 hours of security in about 12 stages. When we landed back in America, I faintly remember the pilot saying something to the affect of "Welcome back to the United States of America, the greatest country in the world." Upon exit of the airplane terminal, we were welcomed back by everyone in the airport cheering as we walked out of the terminal.
