Germans display their orderliness even in a labor strike. The pilots of Lufthansa joined their fellow workers by holding a two-day strike, April 13 and 14. Danke schön, I picture management negotiators saying, and promptly informing us by email that they will help us find alternative flights.

That was Saturday as we drove to Virginia. We had Lufthansa tickets from Dulles to Frankfurt, and then to Bologna, on exactly those two days.

Lufthansa did indeed find alternatives for us. First, a two-part flight to Frankfurt via London, then a two-part flight to Bologna via Vienna, thus a four-legged flight plan just to get to Bologna. (From there, we would take a bus and train to Lucca, to begin our Camino – our week-long hike to Siena under the Tuscan sun.)

In orderly German fashion, a Lufthansa agent at Dulles named Emed arranged a direct flight to Frankfurt on United, reducing our legs to three. Still, yesterday, Monday, we spent three hours there sitting next to a big-screen video of panda bears and soccer-game highlights, alternating in an endless loop. Then we had more than two hours in Vienna, sitting in a pristine airport coffeeshop next to a German couple talking business. Not like a couple, but more like friendly business partners, at ease in their cool contemporary German way.

When we finally boarded our last flight, on Air Dolomiti, I suddenly realized what we had been missing for past two days. Laughter. Sitting in the full plane of Italians – I had a feeling most of them were Italians – I heard a quick exchange between a woman passenger moving down the aisle to her seat and a man sitting a row in front of us. They spoke, and laughed. They were strangers, but I guess had met waiting at the gate. Their laughter contained all the funny irony we had not allowed ourselves to enjoy about this crazy trip.

I looked up the aisle. All in order, and fairly quiet. But there was just something – something – that told me this was a little strip of Italian culture inserted into our two days of German culture. I was happy with the contrast.