Saying Goodbye and Coming Home

It has taken me a few days to get this post written. It has been a busy few days of traveling, getting home, adjusting to our new time zone and dealing with jet lag, seeing friends and family, and trying to figure out what it means to settle back into life here in Oregon. And I have also been trying to figure out what I wanted to say and how to say it about leaving Germany.

Saying goodbye was hard, much harder than I thought it would be given how excited I was to go back home to friends and family. We made a few good friends during our time in Germany and it was hard to say goodbye, not really knowing if we would ever get to see them again. And I enjoyed how simple our life was there. It was peaceful in a way that I hadn't experienced in a long time. We will need to figure out how to live that way back home.

I got a hug from Judith, the lady who runs the little store in Embken and we exchanged email addresses so that we could stay in touch. She was so great with Mikayla and made our little trip to her store, which was nearly every day, something we looked forward to. She was also one of the few people that could speak English, at least a little, in the town we were in, and I appreciated the effort she made to talk to me and make me feel welcome.

Saying goodbye to Mary, our landlady, was hard. She was such a big part of our life in Germany and a big reason why I enjoyed it so much. She was wonderful with Mikayla and was sad to see her go. She gave Mikayla a cute little bracelet to have and also a teddy bear backpack to have to remind her of her time in Germany. I am not sure I can put into words just how much it meant to me to have someone to talk to, to have someone who enjoyed my child, and to have someone I could ask all those stupid little questions you have when you are in a culture your own. Goodbye, Mary. We hope that we can see you again soon.

Mary, Mikayla, and I

On Friday, September 25, we left what had been our home for nearly three months and drove away from Embken for the last time. It was a beautiful morning with a low, misty fog hovering over the fields and promise of the sun breaking through the clouds. Mary had gotten up to wave goodbye to us and give us a hug, and also help with some of the last minute details of getting out of the apartment. And then we drove to Cologne so that we could turn in the rental car and get on our 8:50 am train to Frankfurt. We got there in just enough time to locate the rental car lot, haul our stuff into the train station, turn in the rental car, wait in line at the Lufthansa ticket counter and find out that we didn't really have our tickets booked after all, get hurriedly issued tickets for at least the train portion of our journey with instructions that we would need to figure out what was going on with our plane tickets once we got to Frankfurt, run up to the train platform, find our car, and then pile us and all our stuff on with the help of a few kindly strangers. And we were barely an hour and a half into our day of travel.

When we booked our plane tickets, we had gone with Lufthansa since they were the only ones that offered a direct flight from Portland to Frankfurt and we thought that would be the easiest, though not the cheapest, way to go with a toddler. Then we found out that they canceled their direct flight service to Portland in the beginning of September and had re-rerouted us. That was where the confusion with the tickets came in. For some reason they knew about us and knew that we were scheduled to be re-routed, but we didn't have actual tickets. So, once we got to the airport, we had to wait in several different lines before we found the one that would issue us a ticket, then had to wait in another, and one we had been in previously, to get the actual boarding pass. In fact, we talked to the same lady both times. It was nice that we had a long time between when the train got in and when our plane took off because we would have been pretty stressed out with how long it took to straighten everything out. Mikayla did pretty good with all the lines, so that made it easier, too.

And then we were ready to get on the plane. We got through Customs, Security, to the gate, and then onto the plane. We settled Mikayla in her seat, turned on cartoons on her seatback tv, gave her some milk, and then she was out. I was thinking that we couldn't have timed it any better than that, then settled in to wait for everyone else to finish boarding the plane. Once everyone was boarded and had been for awhile, the captain came online and said that they had found a dent in the cargo hold door, that although they had been flying with it that way for six months the deadline for fixing it was yesterday, and as a result the plane was not cleared to fly. So, about an hour after boarding, we found ourselves having to get back off the plane and on to buses that took us to a holding area to wait for another plane to come in and take us to Denver. And our perfect timing was out the window.

We did get on another plane, which took off about three hours after we were originally supposed to leave. The flight itself was okay, until Mikayla had a hard time falling asleep again and fell apart. It was hard to blame her with how long her day had been, and she didn't fall apart until after we should have been off the plane in Denver. She managed to fall asleep for a bit, but we were all exhausted by the time the plane landed.

She fell apart again in the line to get through Customs, but this time it ended up being a good thing, although it didn't feel like it at the time. While we were struggling to hold her while she was crying and keep moving with the line with all of our stuff, a Customs official came and got us and moved us to the front of the line. I think we skipped over at least a half hour wait in line. It ended up being a really good thing we did that, too, since we were the last ones on our flight to Portland as it was. If she hadn't fell apart in the line I think we would have missed that flight, too, and had to wait for a later one.

All we had was a little over two more hours on a plane, and then we were home. Luckily, we all were able to sleep for most of the flight. And then we were finally home. Darren's dad was there waiting for us, which was wonderful. When we finally got to our house, we figured that we had been traveling for 26 hours since we left our apartment in Embken that morning. It was good to be home, though we will always remember our time in Germany.

10 Years

The day before we were set to leave Germany, the German portion of the company that Darren works for (Climax Portable Machine Tools) celebrated its 10-year anniversary. They had a big party, opening its doors to customers, vendors, board members and employee families and invited them to come celebrate in an open house with live music, dancing, a golf simulator, free food, and lots of free beverages of all sorts. They did a great job in setting up for the event and completely transformed the warehouse portion of the business into a nice place for a party.

The night before, Mikayla and I joined Darren, people from the German portion of the company, people from the USA portion of the company that had flown in, and some of the board members for dinner at a nice steak house in Düren. It was wonderful food and fun to meet some more of the people that Darren works with.

On Thursday, the day of the open house, I spent the morning trying to clean up the apartment some, do a little packing, and get things ready to leave the next day. We needed to be in Düren, though, at a little after noon so that we could join some of the board members for a tour of Düren. The tour lasted for a few hours and included a meeting with the deputy mayor (the mayor was in Berlin that day), a tour through some of the important buildings of the city by one of the directors of the city, a tour through a paper museum (that is one of the major industries of the city), and a tour through a moated castle near the city (I hadn't known it was there). It was nice to learn a bit more about the city we had been living by and working in, even though a lot of the information came on the last day we were there. I spent much of the tour walking around with Mikayla since she wasn't really up for sitting through meetings, but I still learned a lot.

The party

Part of the photoboard display that was set up. This picture shows the people who work in the German portion of the company, and Darren's coworkers for the time he was here.

Yes, it is an engineering company

Mikayla as she wandered around City Hall while the meeting with the deputy mayor was taking place. She had fun peering over the railing to the floor below.

It was a little hard to say goodbye at the end of the day, even though we knew that we needed to head back to Embken and finish packing and getting the apartment ready to leave. Darren really enjoyed working with all the people here and we appreciated how much they reached out to us and made us feel welcome in a foreign land. We hope that we can see them again in the future.

Flies, Flies, and more Flies

I believe that I have mentioned that we have lots of flies that were in and around our apartment. Since we live so near to farms and farm animals, they are everywhere. We bought one fly swatter soon after getting into the apartment, and then not too long after that we bought another one. It was a good investment because we have used those fly swatters quite a bit. I hadn't realized, though, just how much a part of our life it was until Mikayla started wanting to "get the fly" with us. She would take a fly swatter (or both of them), hit the ground with it, and say, "I got it!" Pretty funny stuff.

One Last Trip to Aachen

On Tuesday, the day before my mom and Doreen's flight was scheduled to leave from Frankfurt, we decided to go on one last little day trip. There were so many fun places to choose from that I wanted to show them, but we didn't have time to go see them all. We decided to go see Aachen since it was a pretty easy trip and different from anything we had seen on their trip so far.

We had a really great day. It was a beautiful, sunny day and didn't even threaten to rain like it had the other times I had been to the city. We had lunch in the square near the cathedral in the center of the city. We sat outside drinking yummy coffee and sampling different kinds of sandwiches, people watching, and listening to the live music that was playing nearby.

Mikayla really liked to stand there and listen to the music, but was a little shy about putting the money into the guitar case for them.

After lunch we toured through the cathedral, which I have mentioned before is really beautiful. It was nice because last time my pictures came out all blurry since it was so dark inside, but this time it was all lit up for some filming crews. Here is one more picture of the inside of the cathedral to add to the ones on earlier posts.

We walked around a bit more after we were through looking at the cathedral and saw some of the other fun sites of the city. And then we went to the cute little toy store that I had found in earlier trips. This time we found that in addition to the train set that kids could play with inside the store, they also had a little mechanical bear outside the store that would blow bubbles. Mikayla was very excited about the bubbles. I think that we spent a good half hour or so just watching the bubbles. It was pretty cute so see how excited she got, though.

Bubble watching

More bubble watching

We had a wonderful time in the city, but it was time to go back. We had to swing through Düren to pick up Darren from work, drive to Embken to drop Darren and Mikayla off and pick up luggage, and then it was off to Frankfurt. Mom and Doreen had an early flight the next morning, so they had booked a hotel near the airport to make the morning easier. It was hard to say goodbye, but it made it easier that we were heading home in just a couple of days. I had a wonderful time showing them around a little bit of Germany and I am glad that they were able to make the trip.

Darren's Commute to Work

Here is a video I made of my commute to work. Don't worry, we really are not going that fast!

Dachau

After Mom, Doreen, Mikayla, and I left Oberammergau and the beautiful Alps behind, we headed towards Munich to pick up Darren from the airport. The drive was fine and smooth sailing until we got into Munich, and then it completely bogged down. We sat in traffic for a long time and were about an hour late picking up Darren from the airport. We did finally break free of the traffic jam, though, picked him up, and then headed towards the town of Dachau and the more sobering part of our trip.

Dachau was the site of the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, and was used as a model for the rest of the concentration camps they set up throughout the territory they conquered. It was a little surreal to go from beautiful mountain scenery and fun castle site-seeing to such a grim reminder of what people are capable of doing to each other. It had been on my list of places I wanted to see, though, since I think it is important to go see places like this so that it is not forgotten. My mom, Doreen, and I took an audio tour through the memorial site while Darren entertained Mikayla.

Part of the Memorial inside the old camp

The gates to the concentration camp, which reads "Work will make you free." It was both a way to mock the prisoners as they entered the camp and a way to promote the propaganda to the outside world that it was a "work rehabilitation camp" and not a death camp.

Sculpture that is part of the memorial

Wall behind the maintenance building that served as the location for execution by firing squad

A replica of one of the barracks that housed the prisoners

View out the window of the replica barrack, looking at the foundations that mark where the original barracks were located.

One of the church memorials located on site.

Bavaria

Wednesday morning, after Darren headed off to work, Mom, Doreen, Mikayla, and I piled into the car with all our luggage and drove off in a different direction. We were going to the Bavaria region of Germany and were pretty excited to go. Darren had to work, so it was just us girls for a couple of days before he flew to Munich to join us for the weekend.

When I first was planning the trip, I thought we would stay in Munich itself and just do a day trip to see the castles around there, but when I started looking into hotels in Munich I found that they were really expensive because Oktoberfest was just starting up the weekend we were there. So, instead, through a tip from a friend, I found a cute little hotel in the town of Oberammergau, which is near both of the castles we were interested in seeing. And the town itself is really cute and known for both its Passion Play (put on once every decade and all the town gets involved in putting it on) and its wonderful houses which have frescoes of traditional fairy tales painted on the exterior. The town is nestled in the Alps and just the location is worth the travel.

Mikayla, Mom, and I getting ready to check in to the hotel

The view from the deck of my hotel room the first morning I woke up

Nana C and Mikayla

Our breakfast table at the hotel. We had a fun waitress named Sabine who made the dining experience a lot of fun.

Mr. Schmidt, the owner of the hotel

Fresco house

Fresco house

After talking to the owner of our hotel, we found out that in addition to the two castles that we had planned on seeing there were also two wonderful little churches in the area that were pretty famous as well. He gave us a little map and outlined the route we should take. After seeing the churches that he pointed us to, we were glad that we took his advice.

Mom and Doreen in front of one of the little churches we visited. It rained most of the day that we were touring there, so they bought a couple of cute umbrellas to try to stay dry.

Mikayla and I in front of the church

There were a couple of horses in a field right next to the path leading to the church. They were pretty friendly horses and one of them decided to check if Mikayla had any food in her pockets.

The rococo style of one of the church's interior. It was amazing. The other one was amazing as well, although a bit different style than this one, but our pictures didn't turn out quite as well.

Candles in the church

After touring through both churches and stopping to snap a couple of pictures of a wonderful old concrete bridge in the pouring rain, we were finally on the way to see one of my favorite castles. Neuschwanstein. It was built by King Ludwig II, although never finished since the king died during its construction and all work was halted upon his death. Only about a third of the rooms were finished, but the ones that were finished and the exterior of the castle are wonderful. It is the reportedly the castle that Disney modeled his Disneyland castle after, and you can see why since much of it seems like it is part of a fairy tale.

We hiked up to the castle after buying tickets for the tour. The walk took about 40 minutes and was a good hike up a fairly steep hill. We timed it just right for this part of the trip since it didn't rain the entire time we were walking, and started to pour again just as we were getting back in our car at the end of our time here. I would love to include pictures of the inside of the castle here, but they don't let you take pictures inside. After that and after walking up and down the steps inside the castle during the tour, we decided that we didn't need to walk down the mountain back to our car, so we paid for a ride in a horse-drawn carriage to take us down.

The Alps near Füssen, the town nearest the castle of Neuschwanstein

Our first view of Neuschwanstein

Another view of Neuschwanstein from our hike up the mountain

The main part of the castle from the courtyard gates

Mom and Doreen and Neuschwanstein

Mom, Mikayla, and I on the hike up to see the castle

The ride back down the mountain. Mikayla was mesmerized by the horses and loved the entire ride.

And now there was only one thing left on our itinerary for the day, which was a smaller one of King Ludwig's castles (he had several besides Neuschwanstein) called Linderhof. I have heard it referred to as his "hunting lodge." It is a small but beautiful castle, located just across the border in Austria. We had a beautiful drive through small windy roads in the Alps to get there. Too bad it was raining. The views were impressive despite the mist and grey skies, so we could hardly imagine how beautiful it would be on a clear, sunny day. We got to Linderhof too late to take a tour of the inside of the castle, but we were able to look through the gardens and some of the grounds. Mom and Doreen took a tour through the Grotto near the castle while I stayed in the car with a napping Mikayla.

The fountain in front of Linderhof

Swans at a lake on the grounds of Linderhof

It was a long, but very good day. We enjoyed seeing each of the places we stopped at. We made it back to Oberammergau in time to have a late dinner at a little Italian restaurant. It was yummy and the owners were nice. They even had toys for Mikayla to play with while we waited for our food. It was here that we had our first apple streudel (no, that is not Italian... but we didn't ask questions since it was so tasty). And then it was off to bed. We woke up the next morning, checked out of the hotel, spent some time in the main part of Oberammergau doing a little shopping, and then headed to Munich to get Darren from the airport.

Mikayla, completely soaked, as she plays in a fountain in Oberammergau

Mikayla trying out hair curlers and other beauty products in the hotel room

Day Trip with Mom and Doreen

On Tuesday, after our couple of days in Embken relaxing and exploring, Mom, Doreen, Mikayla, and I decided to go see the town of Bad Münstereifel while Darren had to go in to work. I had just been there when Brenda and Tony were here, but it was nice to be able to show this cute little walled town to my Mom and Doreen, too. It threatened to rain, like both the other times that I have been to the town, but it held off and we had a nice day there.

Doreen and Mom in Bad Münstereifel

Mikayla in her stroller, "talking" on the phone while we waited for Nana C and Doreen to explore one of the churches in town

Doreen, Mom, and Mikayla with their beverages at a cute little restaurant that we found in Bad Münstereifel. The waitress didn't speak any English, but we managed to order some milk for Mikayla, some Oktoberfest beer to try out, and some yummy shnitzels.

The roses on the table at the restaurant

Doreen and I at our table at the little restaurant

Mikayla, Mom, and Doreen in front of the little restaurant where we ate. Mikayla and Nana C spent quite a bit of time out in front of the restaurant while we were eating since Mikayla didn't want to sit still long enough to eat. She and Nana C "fed" the ceramic ducks that she is sitting next to in the picture. When Doreen and I came out after the meal we saw little bits of leaves on the duck's bills.

It was a fun day. We explored some of the little shops in town, ate a yummy lunch, and walked around some before we had to leave so that we could go pick up Darren from work.