Closing Out Our European Adventure, Summer 2019...

• 30 Days
• 6 Countries
• 8 Airports
• 5 Planes
• 23 Cities/Towns
• 9 Places of Accommodations
• 27 Train Stations
• 26 Train Rides
• 13 Trams
• 10 Taxis
• 7 Cars
• 7 Buses
• 6 Shuttle Buses
• 6 Subways
• 6 Highway Tolls
• 4 Gondolas (Cable Cars)
• 2 Boat Rides

• 7 Castles
• 7 Palaces
• 12 Churches/Cathedrals
• 16 Museums 

• 41 Souvenir Magnets - we bought magnets everywhere we visited. 
• 2500+ Photos Taken! YES - 2500+ !

• Seeing 3 families of wonderful friends - 2 in England and 1 in Germany: THANK YOU Meachams, Wests, and Reads so very much for your hospitality, fun, care, and love!! It was fabulous. Your turn to visit us, now!!

• We took a boat ride on the Thames, dipped our feet in the English Channel, played in the North Sea in Scotland, enjoyed the incredible beach of the Mediterranean Sea at Cassis in the South of France, toured Geneva via boat on Lake Geneva, and swam in the Danube River in Vienna.

• Our thanks go to many, many people for helping to make this trip possible. With your generosity and support, we were able to have an adventure that has changed our lives. Seeing the incredible wonder of our world is priceless and a real treasure for us all! Thank you to DD and PopPop (my parents), Don Bradway (traveler extraordinaire - who shared his expertise for planning this trip with me), Deb Meacham (who helped me in buying tickets for flights, trains, etc!), Hilton Presbyterian Church - whose generosity absolutely astounded us and made so much possible!, Sara and David Coxe - who kept our car, picked us up, and let us stay when we returned, and all those cheering us on and supporting us throughout the planning and actual adventure!

Berlin—artistic, eclectic, historic, and modern

Our last stop brought us to Berlin. A city of art, history, memorials, modernity and building like crazy...it was great to experience! And the best of all, to connect with Clark’s college roommate, Mike, 30 years later and meet his wonderful family. We started in England with my childhood friend and ended here with Clark’s college pal—pretty cool!!

We loved how the city is big and open, sprawling really, and while lots of people, the roads are wide with room for all the bicyclists (unlike London and Paris). Clark drove in the city center and managed fine.

We found the Memorial to the murdered Jews stunning. The Brandenburg Gate impressive, especially learning its history and that of the country’s desire for independence from royal governance. The German History Museum is unbelievable—its scope goes on and on. Josiah especially was enthralled! I loved the Reformation stuff and Luther documents. We went on to Museum Island and went to the Pergamum, where the Gate to Babylon installation stands. OMDL! So incredible! We even indulged the kids and hit Legoland, where the city of Berlin in Legos is nothing short of amazing, too. Our last day, we went with Mike and the girls to the German spy museum, which had some of the coolest exhibits ever...so much “cloak-and-dagger” stuff, 007 stuff, interesting Cold War history, spy swap details, gadgets, etc. Really fascinating and Berlin very much at the heart of it all!

You’d think that was all enough, but upon arrival, we got to enjoy Mike’s delicious cooking, too—yummy vegetarian lasagna with zucchini that we all devoured, and they made me a birthday cake to celebrate. So thoughtful and kind!! It was terrific! And another night we had burgers and traditional German brats—so good—and fantastic potato salad. For our last night, we went out to this fabulous Thai place; we decided we will have to do Thai back home more regularly 😀. It was a superb last stop, and we are so grateful for having chosen it to end our adventure!

Pictures on FB to go with post...and I’ll do one last post as a conclusion soon!!

A Solemn Stop ...

On our way to Berlin Sunday —a long driving day (longest of the trip)—we stopped. At Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. It seemed like the right thing to go there, and it was really something. Moving and serious, but also a place for reflection and provoking thoughtful conversation. We walked through the site, struck by the gateway (replica now of original), and how awful Hitler’s “plans” truly were. The place has created clear and explicit exhibits of what he intended, what occurred there, and what happened with those who resisted. Dachau was a prison labor camp, not extermination site, but many still died there. And it was open a dozen years—the first place he opened, until Allied forces liberated it. To illustrate the scale of how awful—it was meant for 6000 “workers” (prisoners made slaves!!) and when liberated, there were 32,000 there.
Going there was hard but important and significant—we cannot forget what genocide and racism and prejudice and xenophobia breed. We cannot. And having this site as a place to remember and learn and reflect helps the world not to forget and to work to ensure that the respect and dignity of all human beings happens across the globe. We are all responsible for that! May we work on it together.