My apologies for the seriously pitiful lack of updates. It’s been super busy ’round these parts the past couple months–my brother Sam and his fiancée Libby, my mother, and Dan’s sister Kara have all been here for visits; Dan went to Finland; and we’ve been to Germany, the Netherlands, France and to 8 states and 3 graduations in the U.S.–and it was all so hectic that I aged an entire year.
We had an awesome time with our visitors; we love showing off our city–dog crap and all–and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. While Dan went to Finland and added another winter sport to his repertoire (sadly, not Northern Lights Luge), I went to Germany with my mom, Sam and Libby. We went back to Altweid, the town where my grandpa grew up, and had a lovely time. We were able to go in the house where he lived, which had been added on to but still retained many of the same features that existed when he lived there, and it was wonderful thinking of him living there before the war, with his parents, (hopefully) contentedly.
After Sam, Libby and mom left, Kara came for her inaugural European vacation. We explored and ate and shopped and Kara got to practice her excellent german in Cologne. We also went to the Royal Botanical Gardens at the summer palace in Belgium–for 2 weeks in April the palace greenhouses are open to the public and it is beautiful, possibly worth the price of an overseas flight if you are of the green-thumbed persuasion.
At the end of April we went to Paris to ring in my 31st birthday. What a way to celebrate! It probably won’t surprise you to hear that instead of planning out all the museums or historical places I wanted to go to in Paris, I instead researched all the places I wanted to eat. We had the best baguette, best crêpes, best falafel, best hot chocolate and best macarons–and that was just in one weekend. We can’t wait to go back (and maybe we’ll actually go up the Tour d’Eiffel this time).
In May we embarked on our 2-week U.S. tour with limited engagements in Kansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine. We stuffed ourselves silly with the best barbeque in the country and saw the Kansas City Royals continue on their quest to become a Triple-A ballclub. We met our new niece, 8-month old Cady and got to spend a lot of time playing with her and her very proud big brother David. We cheered for Dan’s brother Tim as he graduated with honors from the College of Wooster, for Dan’s sister Dr. Kara as she graduated from medical school at Penn State and Dan participated in his graduation (even though he finished last year) and was officially hooded for completing his PhD in Physics from the University of New Hampshire. Whew! We are a little matriculated-out.
Now, we are back in Brussels and actually looking forward to the fact that we have no major plans for the summer. Sure, we hope to do a little camping and hiking and hopefully see some bike racing (a little thing you may have heard of–the Tour de France), but basically we are going to stay put, spend time with new and old friends, and pretend we don’t speak english when American tourists ask us where they can find a Cheesecake Factory in Brussels.
Happy summer, y’all!
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