Long Way Home

We’ve made it safely back and are slowly settling and adjusting to life back in Minnesota.

Our last week in Germany was quite stressful, as one can imagine. We moved into a Ferienwohnung (vacation apartment) in order to get the apartment emptied and clean. We were incredibly blessed that the new tenant was will to take all our furniture, appliances, and a lot of our kitchen equipment. Herbert continued to attend Kita up until the day before we left Eberswalde. Both he and William received some wonderful going away gifts on their last days and were assured that they would be missed.

On July 31, we packed everything up and headed into Berlin. We received our COVID tests before settling in at the airport. We had packed everything we needed for that night in one place, which made repacking the next day much easier. And August 1 we headed out to the new Berlin-Brandenburg Airport.

First a flight to Lisbon, Portugal, then a flight to Washington, D.C. The flight into Lisbon was late and the layover was really short, so that was a bit stressful, but they made sure we made it on the plane. Then came the eternally long transatlantic flight. We arrived in Washington, D.C. at about 8:15pm, which is 2:15am in Germany. Herbert was such a trooper. Despite only sleeping 2 hours on the plane, he walked the whole time through passport control and getting our bags.

Well, not getting our bags. Turns out that they didn’t get transferred during the short layover in Lisbon. So they were going to ship the bags to us free of change. This turned out to be the best possible scenario. Herbert and I already had a change of clothes in one of our carry-ons and William was planning to get some things at a thrift shop anyone. We were able to choose to have just one of our bags shipped to where we were staying in DC, and the two 50 pound bags were shipped straight to my mom’s in Minnesota.

We spent 4 days with some of William’s family in DC, seeing some sights and recovering from jet lag before getting on an Amtrak train to Chicago, then Saint Paul. What a fun experience for Herbert! If you have the time, the train is definitely the way to travel. (And flying to DC then taking the train, with a sleeper room from DC to Chicago, was actually the cheapest way for us to get to Minnesota)

It’s been 3 weeks since we finally arrived here. But man, the preparations and actual travel of the move took a lot out of me. I’d say this week was the first week that I’ve been mentally recovered enough to properly get things done. William started work last week. Even Herbert needed a day or two to reset his system. But he is very excited to start his last year of preschool in September.

And that’s all about our German adventures for now! I’ll be back with posts about how we are working to maintain Herbert’s German and become a bilingual family. And I know that some day, there will be more blog posts about further adventures in Germany.