Who can ever forget their very first time?  That moment something you’ve dreamed of for so long was finally happening – excitement, anticipation and anxiety melded together.  Fantasy was now a reality, and you were finally doing it.  And there was no true way to prepare for it, who can when you’re entering the unknown. It consumed you to the point where it was all you thought of 24/7, what would my first time be like? For me it was Berlin, Germany.

Boarding the Lufthansa A340 is as vivid today as the night in May of 2000. In all my years of flying the longest was the less than three hours and I’d reach my destination on the same day. Tonight that would change, nine hours to Berlin!!! Dinner and breakfast on the same flight. As we took off Boston faded into the darkness I was on my way to Europe at last.

Frankfurt was our stop over and this would be the first time I’d be in country where English was not the spoken language

Over the last seventeen years I have had fifty-four ‘first times’ in thirty countries on four continents some were just as amazing as Berlin (a city everyone should visit) and others were even more fascinating, while others were a complete and total let down but I will never forget my first – who can?