May 26 - Home

Breakfast that morning was a beautiful buffet at the hotel. We were tired from not sleeping well-- much too hot in the room, without the air-conditioning, but the breakfast was lovely. The shuttle came to the hotel right on time and we had a stress-free ride to the airport knowing that we didn't have to worry about turning in the rental car. We wondered if Greta would miss us.

While we waited at the gate for our flight, I looked through my stack of postcards, nearly eight inches thick. We saw so many beautiful castles and palaces, churches and cathedrals. And the villages and the towns... all those white homes and red-tiled roofs, the mountains, the vineyards, the museums, the quaint villages. Church bells ringing in the morning, fresh eggs from the chickens in the yards of the guesthouses, women washing their steps with wet brooms. All those fields of tiny yellow butterblooms dancing in the breeze. Greta telling us "You have arrived!"

My husband put weeks and weeks of research into this trip, planning out every day, every city and town, every place we visited. During that process, I thought he was going over-the-top, above and beyond in his researcher mode. It didn't take long for me to realize that had he not done that, we would have missed so many beautiful places along the way. With the itinerary my husband planned out, we saw as much as we could in the days that we had, and we rarely back-tracked as we drove with Greta telling us where to go. A hundred times, we blessed that GPS in the rental car.

Our trip to Germany was like a dream. Wherever we looked, there was beauty and history. Even in the larger cities that were too busy for us, we were still surrounded by interesting architecture that made us look up.

Before we went to Germany, we had decided not to visit the concentration camps. While we were there, as I looked at the beauty surrounding us, it was so hard to fathom how such horrible, atrocious acts could have been committed not far from where we were. I have read many books on the Holocaust over the years, all of which broke my heart and numbed my spirit. We chose not to see those places.

We didn't spend all of our Euros, and I don't want to bring them to the bank to cash them back into dollars. I told my husband that we'll just keep them here, tucked away, and when he's ready to do more research again for another trip over the Atlantic, then the Euros will be waiting for us.

When we got home, Gracie jumped all over my husband for about twenty minutes, then she gave me two minutes of her happiness. ShadowBaby followed me all over the house for days and days, and Mickey Kitty slept on my pillow at night. And AngelBoy... he gave me his little blue-eyed kitty look which seemed to say "What on earth could you have seen over there more beautiful than me?"