Douglas-fir Blog

Wow.

I could write pages and pages about the last little more than a week that has passed since Thursday, the 26th. I hardly know where to start. I could write so much about just that day. Suffice it to say that on that morning, after a punishing all-nighter preparing my room to move out of, I took the train to Frankfurt and met my family as they came out the door into the area of the airport where reunions wait to happen. It was a very special moment, and there were big hugs all around. We were all together again after a year apart.

Between that moment and the present one has been a European adventure as well as a family one: we’ve been around Germany, drove through eastern France, saw Luxembourg, and are now in Prague, in the Czech Republic. We’ve also experienced being a family together once again, and working through challenges including, but not limited to moving me out of my room, which was a major undertaking that I couldn’t have done before my deadline without my family’s help. We did it though, and after I passed the Hausmeister’s notoriously thorough inspection, I handed over my key, and was officially moved out. Even as we had fun together, I experienced a succession of difficult moments of realization: moving out of my room, finishing the last of the remaining formalities at the PH-Ludwigsburg, closing the last of my accounts in Germany, and finally, leaving Germany itself for the last time in this season of my life. These moments all pounded in the reality of my leaving my home of one year, one by one, harder and harder. I’m finding myself mourning somewhat, even as I enjoy traveling in Europe with my family. In Germany, I translated much of the time and was familiar with cultural, historical, and geographical aspects that made me the natural tour guide for the family. On the morning of the 3rd, we went to the Dortmund airport and got on an airplane bound for Prague, and at that moment, my German language immersion vanished, and I believe at that point more than any other, the finality of my tine in Germany hit me.

We are now in the beautiful city of Prague, where, unlike other places we have stayed up until this point, we have free wireless internet, which enables me to post this report. Despite having to dodge swarms of tourists, we are thoroughly enjoying ourselves here, following the steps of Mozart, taking in the picturesque architecture of the old city, and generally relaxing after all the moving about we’ve done. In spite of this, I’ve found myself feeling uncomfortable being in an environment where I don’t speak the local language at all; my sole knowledge of Czech comes from the short time I took some Russian, another Slavic language, at PSU. However, that doesn’t help much except for guessing some basic words. I prefer to have at least a rudimentary grasp on the local language before I visit a place, or else to have a local contact with whom I could start to learn it there. Even in French I could comfortably blunder my way along, and probably improve my skills on the way, but I dislike having to resort to English all the time. On the other hand, perhaps I’m feeling so strongly this way now because I’ve just left Germany. It’s hard to sort everything out at the moment.

Regardless of that, however, I’m having a wonderful adventure here with my family. Tomorrow, we fly to England, our last stop before returning to the States. More updates can be expected, although they might take a while, since internet access and time to write will most likely be scarce until I’m in Portland.