Author: magrilless

We can hardly believe our almost year in Würzburg is over. It seemed like such am impressively long span of time when we first began looking for an apartment. Preparing our documents for residency application. Registering Maggie for third grade and searching for a kindergarten for Tessa. Unpacking our few cardboard boxes and finding the perfect uses for everything we had decided (months before) would be useful.

And we did all those things. Plus making daily routines and memorizing neighborhood routes and forming friendships (at least the kiddos). We accustomed our ears to not understanding everything. We formed preferences for certain shops and bakeries.

Never did we lock ourselves out of the apartment. Only once were we ever asked for our bus tickets. One appointment with the dentist for what turned out to be a loosening tooth and one doctor’s visit for antibiotics for strep throat.

We all acquired favorite pastry types: nußschnecke, quarktasche, Kissinger mit marmelade, butter croissant, mandel bretzel, bretzel bretzel, butter streusel, apfeltasche. (We were pastry rich. Now we will take a break and that’s ok.)

We will miss the bells ringing and glockenspiel playing. The weekends walking along the river to find an open ping pong table. The sight of the old castle perched on the hill and the glorious palace standing firm amongst modernity.

(We will not miss the teeny tiny kitchen or receiving official mail we don’t understand. Neither will we be nostalgic for homework or seemingly pointless school rules or random shop closures. And it will be nice to be able to communicate with strangers again: “Your backpack is open,” “That woman is trying to get your attention,” “Your kid fell off the top of the slide.”)

Living in such an historically rich, well-connected, safe, and beautiful little city was an overwhelmingly positive experience for all of us, individually and as a unit.

Thank you, Würzburg, for teaching us, testing us, enriching us, treating us, and sustaining us. Until we can visit you again: auf wiedersehen!

… in Playmobil Land! We’ve been promising since September. And today was the day. Kicking off our summer travels right!

Last day of school — so proud of these girls!

Unbelievably, we have reached our final week in Würzburg. We have spent 9 months walking, learning, exploring, eating, playing, working, studying, sleeping, hiking, gazing, and in all other ways living here in this beautiful city.

Sometimes we felt at home and at ease. Sometimes we felt confused and like outsiders. Sometimes it rained for a month and we were homesick. Sometimes we walked amongst centuries-old cobbles and couldn’t believe our amazing luck.

Our last days here, we are revisiting some favorites, but we are also making sure to head to some places we just hadn’t gotten to yet. For a moment, I lamented everything we will run out of time to experience. But even a lifetime somewhere isn’t long enough to do it all. So instead we’re being grateful for the crazy amount of memories Würzburg has given us.

Leaving a home-base is never easy, especially when you don’t know when or if you’ll ever return. Emotions may be running a bit high. But sure we are excited for our next adventures!

Now if you’ll excuse us, there’s still a bakery whose pastries we haven’t tried yet…

“Girls, what is something you want to do while we’re in Europe?” we asked last summer.

“Night train!” answered our wistful children with a dreamy sparkle in their eyes.

And, yes, full disclosure, it is an awfully romantic idea to me as well. I have visions of gentle creaks and clacks rocking me lazily to slumber while whispers of the train’s whistle enter my cozy dreams before the steward knocks unobtrusively on my cabin door with steaming mugs of coffee and the new day’s sun streams refreshingly over the fields, reaching its fingers through my compartment window.

And also, yes, I’m not so naive that I actually expected this to be the reality of night train travel. But it could happen. You never know until you try.

So we’ve been trying to fulfill this fantasy for almost a year. And we ran into some problems right away. First off, being in the middle of the continent means that we are in the middle of the train routes. So either we hop on the train in the middle of the night, or conversely hop off at a similarly indecent hour. But let’s say we decide to go crazy, stay up late, and then make it up by sleeping late on the train. No, because the routes aren’t that long; we get on at midnight, we’re at our destination by 6.

So, it was obvious we were going to have to make some compromises, adjust the fantasy a little. Enter: Croatia.

It was actually pretty ideal timing-wise. The train left Croatia two hours after bedtime (walk 30 minutes to a bowling alley for a few games and sloppy burgers, dip our feet and throw rocks in the Adriatic one more time, fuel ourselves for the walk back with double ice cream scoops). And arrived in Salzburg an hour later than we normally rise (Starbucks for non-European-sized coffees opens 30 minutes after that).

The compromise we knew we were making was sleeping arrangements. There are no sleeper cars that travel that route during this time of year; only train cars with seats. I did reserve us a private compartment, though, so at least we wouldn’t be sleeping with strangers.

Bill and his dad tried their darndest to get those seats to pull out flat (as was possible in our previous Slovenian train compartment), but to no avail. Good thing the girls are still small (ish)! Tessa laid down on her seat with her legs on my lap, and Maggie stretched across 2 seats and Bill on the other side. Us grownups kind of mushed down and across the remaining space wherever we could find a crack.

Once we pulled out of the station, the gentle rocking (and Bill’s soothing Harry Potter recital) put the girls right to sleep. It was super cozy with lights of villages twinkling in the distance, deep breaths and occasional snorts of snoozing children mingling with the train’s clickety-clacks, all of our arms and legs and jackets overlapping to form one big snoozy pile.

The girls slept pretty well (although don’t ask Maggie — she’ll tell you she was up all night). And the grownups dozed here and there.

Although, it was tough to get in much of a long stretch because of, well, for multiple reasons. But mostly because officials kept coming to our compartment at frequent internals. First was the (expected) ticket check. Then we crossed the border out of Croatia (which is still in the EU, but not part of the Schengen area), so Croatian police came to look our passports over. Then we crossed into Slovenia (which is part of the Schengen), so Slovenian police came on board to stamp our passports. Next was another ticket check (new conductors on the train at some station), followed by turning on all the lights for some reason for a few hours, and then turning the lights back off, and finally a last ticket check (maybe when we crossed into Austria). And all the while, there are people getting on and off the train as if it were a normal commuter route, chatting in the halls, playing music, and generally wandering (there was at least one dog too). And we stood at stations for verrrrry long stops (I guess that’s one way to make a normally 6 hour trip into 10 hours), coupling and uncoupling cars and engines, and then leaving the station the same way we came in (change of train direction is apparently a little disorienting when you’re so sleepy).

Final assessment of our night train experience (yes, it was technically a train traveling through the night so it counts): We may not have had cozy beds or a steward bringing us hot coffee (or any water on board, actually) or a restful night. But we sure had a super-memorable experience. Together. Happily adventuring through parts unknown.

That is always what we want.