Trip highlights, and home-coming preparations

Our experience of five months living abroad has come down to a final weekend of packing up.  We've just returned from two weeks of traveling - to Paris for Christmas, Amsterdam, Berlin for New Year's, and then Vienna for two days.  We've been in trains, planes, and buses, hotels, hostels, and friends' apartments.  We've seen amazing places and met wonderful people.  A few highlights include a warm-ish Christmas in Paris, where we celebrated Christmas Eve at Notre Dame Cathedral, Christmas Day with a long walk down the length of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, and a trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Museum; a wonderful visit with former Calvin student Hester van Woudenberg and her family in Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House, Van Gogh, and Rijksmuseum there also; a wild New Year's Eve in Berlin with a great city tour from Calvin colleague and friend, Mary Buteyn, an 11pm organ worship service, followed by an explosive display of fireworks in every direction all over Berlin; and then finally a two-day visit with the Schras in Vienna, a sort of sister city to Budapest with some interesting shared history and lots of beautiful places to see - some highlights included the Cafe Hawelka, the Hundertwasserhaus, and the Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt at the Vienna Secessionist Gallery. 

A few photo highlights below:

Home of the van Woudenbergs, Baambrugge, Netherlands

Berlin NY Eve fireworks - look out!

Berlin Christmas Market with Abigail Kromminga

The Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna

With the Schra family in front of the Rathaus (City Hall) in Vienna

 

 

 Now our focus has turned to packing up, and cleaning up, and seeing things around Budapest one last time.  It is nice to have one Calvin student, Ainsley Rynders, living with us for these last few days, as she continues to stay in touch with her service-learning placement and works on some other activities around the city. 

A few things I am looking forward to at home include:

- family and friends, students and colleagues we have missed seeing
- our Neland church community 
- friends for our kids readily available
- bottomless cups of coffee in restaurants (and free water and ice)
- understanding both spoken and written language
- the unique and wonderful city of Grand Rapids
- Van's Pastry shop, Wolfgang's, Brandywine, Real Food, Pietro's and other favorite eating establishments
- Lake Michigan
- my own bed
- our dog Sasha
- re-unification of the toilet and the bathroom
- knowing people and being known
- the ability to greet people I don't know and ask them questions
- the ability to read newspapers and magazines that come to my mailbox
- a restful sabbatical semester
- a productive sabbatical semester (in that order)
- our neighborhood community

For those of you who've read with us since August, thanks. Writing a family blog has been an interesting exercise in reporting to an invisible audience those things you would like to share with an amorphous set of friends and family and other lurking interested parties.  We have especially enjoyed hearing from those of you who have made comments or enjoyed particular postings.  We look forward to re-joining those of you back in Grand Rapids, and for those of you in Budapest, or other parts far away from us, we look forward to the next time our paths cross.

Soon it will be time again to re-plant the garden, and to wait for the sunflowers and tomatoes to grow.  We return to Grand Rapids with the anticipation of watching the seeds from this experience grow, in each of our lives, and in community.  Gratefully.