Who knew five years could fly by so fast? It feels like just yesterday that Shanna told me she was offered a job in Germany. We'd been married for three months at that point. We talked about it, and decided that we were still young and didn't have kids yet, so if we were going to do this, now was the time. In April 2010, we packed everything up and flew 9 hours to our new life in Europe. During the past five years our life has changed dramatically. We visited 28 different countries spanning Europe and Northern Africa. We had one child, Benjamin, and now have another on the way in August. We made some great friends, and had experiences we'll remember for the rest of our lives. I never imagined myself sipping a beer on Red Square in Moscow, or walking next to the Great Pyramids in Cairo. Now that we're back in the US, it's hard not to think that the biggest adventure of our life is over, and now there is just "everything else". But I know that's not true, this is just the start of our next adventure as we raise Ben and his younger sibling. There will also be other opportunities to live overseas again, but that's not anything we're thinking about for a few years to come.
Like everything else over the past five years, the trip home was an adventure in and of itself. Because we were flying with the dogs, we couldn't fly out of Stuttgart. The EU has a rule that you can only fly with animals out of airports that have on site Veterinarians. Stuttgart did five years ago, but did not anymore. That meant renting a car for a one way trip to Frankfurt. The day of the flight home, we loaded up the SUV with four fullsize suite cases, one carry on suitcase, several carry on bags, a stroller, a car seat, two dogs, us, Ben and the dog kennels. It took some creative packing, but we got everything in there. The initial trip was smooth. At 5am, the Autobahn was empty, so we flew up there. We dropped the car off, and then the fun started. We had to figure out how to take all of the previously mentioned things from the rental parking lot to the check out counter. We managed, but it involved Shanna pushing the stroller and one suitcase cart, while I pushed two suitcase carts and held the leashes of Murphy and Milo.
It was difficult, but we managed to make it to the check out counter for animals. First thing was to choose our seats. Because we had dogs with us, we were not allowed to pick our seats before hand. It was kind of a joke, when we first booked the flights, we were told that the low Government fare meant seat picking was not available to us until we checked in, but we could check in 24 hours early and pick our seats then. At the 24 hour mark, I logged in, and was told I couldn't pick our seats because doing so required checking in, which we couldn't do online because we had dogs. Thankfully when we got to check in, there were 3 seats next to each other still available.
After assembling the dog crates, we were just about done with check in when the police came running through. Apparently some moron had left a bag unattended, so they closed the entire section we were in. After 30-45 minutes of watching them carefully x-ray the bag, open it, inspect it, and finally declare it safe, we were allowed back to the counter. At this point we were cutting it close for getting to our plane. Thankfully the agent called the gate to let them know what was going on. But we still had to hustle all the way there. We had planned on changing and feeding Ben before boarding so he'd be calm, but that was now out of the question. We were the last ones at the gate, and barely made it on the plane. Next up was a 10 hour flight to Atlanta. This was the part I was nervous about, because I had no idea how Ben would do for 10 hours. Thankfully he did pretty well. He slept a large portion of it, played for other parts, and only really got fussy within the last hour. But he was basically just voicing how we all felt.
We finally touched down in Atlanta 10 hours later. Once Ben was out of the plane in his stroller, he was an angel. He waved and smiled at people, and just looked around the whole time. We waited in the passport control line for about 45 minutes, but Ben would smile and wave to people in line. It was hot, and people were frustrated, but they immediately relaxed and smiled when Ben would wave to them.
After passport control, we flew through baggage pickup thanks to an airport employee who helped us every step of the way, including getting the dogs. He dropped us off at the shuttle we needed to take, and we were incredibly thankful for him. You'd think the adventure would be over, but you'd be wrong.
When we got to the hotel, we were in the middle of check in when the fire alarm went off. We had to evacuate the building and wait for the all clear. Thankfully it was a false alarm. I was worried how Ben would do trying to sleep that night with the 6 hour time zone difference, but amazingly, he did great. The next morning we should have been able to hit the road early, but of course, we hit another snag. We had left one of the attachments for Ben's stroller at the airport. We flew Lufthansa here, and it was now locked up in their office. Since Lufthansa only flies from Atlanta to Europe, and those flights are only in the late afternoon, we had to wait until 12 for them to come in to get it.
We finally did, and the rest of the 3 hour drive to Huntsville was uneventful.
We've been back in the US for three weeks now. It wasn't as hard to get adjusted as I thought it would be, but that's probably because we haven't stopped moving since we landed. We've purchased a new car (we only shipped one back), started new jobs, celebrated Ben's first birthday, and have looked at more houses than I can count. We think we've found the one, and will be putting an offer in this week on it. I started at NASA this past week, and I think I'm really going to enjoy it. A surreal moment came half way through the week when I logged in to do some work on a router at the NASA AMES Research Center at Moffett Field, in California. We lived on that base 20 years ago, and 30 years ago.
Once we have a house purchased, and baby #2 arrives, we'll start the next big adventure in our life. This blog started off as a way for friends and family to keep track of how we were doing in Germany, and slowly evolved into a travel blog. While our travels are not over, the five year adventure in Germany is, so this will be the last post of this blog. If we start doing a lot of US travel, I might start another blog.
That said, it's been a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you all have enjoyed reading it.
Tschüss!
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