One Giant Step…Is All It Takes

Our plan has us leaving Germany toward the end of September and entering into Turkey, staying until the end of October – should be almost 6 weeks.

One of our goals is to not be in any one place during the ‘busy’ season, and I think Turkey in October meets that goal (hee hee…’Turkey in October’ makes me giggle as we obviously will not be having turkey that October!). We will be there just at the end of Ramadan, so we will have to read up on the customs and meanings around that, and learn how to be a gracious guest of the country during such a religious time. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, we finalized a deal on our home on Thursday and agreed to some crazy short timelines on the closing. 

21 days…that’s how long we have to find a place to live, pack up all our stuff, and move. Yep, that’s right, we don’t have a place to move to yet. 

Luckily, J and I don’t need much to be happy. Before we moved into our current home we lived in a teeny tiny basement suite referred to, by some, as the 3/4 house due to it’s low ceiling height. Before that I lived in an even tinier bachelor suite while I went to school. I have always found that if you make a place your own you can be happy no matter how big it is (or isn’t). I think this will hold true as we travel too – we’ll bring a little bit of comfort along in our packs, we’ll have each other and we’ll make each place our own, just a little bit.

I have read of travelers heading out without insurance. They say that medical care is cheap in foreign lands. They say that should anything happen to them they would get themselves back home and rely on the requirement of their local hospitals to help them. I say they are being naive, short-sighted, and irresponsible.

Are they naive enough to think that they won’t get sick, or perhaps trip or, heaven-forbid, get in an accident during their yearlong jaunt around the world? Are they short-sighted enough to not think about how they might get back to Canada (or the States) should something happen? Are they irresponsible enough to rely on friends and family to nurse them back to health or take care of them in whatever state they find themselves? Read the rest of this entry »

With only 3 weeks to spend in Germany, we will have to be selective in what we see in order to travel at a relaxed pace, see some urban and country sights, and to include some family visiting in too.

Although we haven’t firmed up plans with family connections yet our hope is that our, and their, travel plans will sync up and we’ll be able to visit with them. We are also still hopeful that J’s parents will be able to join us as they are experienced in traveling here. Barring that though, we will still plan on visiting the same areas as there is much to see and do.

Our focus will be twofold. In the central region where J’s mom’s cousin Frank and his wife Hieke enjoy the Harz mountains from their home in Seesen and in the southeast near Munich where J’s mom’s other cousin Hanno lives in Friedberg. Read the rest of this entry »

5 months!!  Did you hear me?  I said 5, count them…five months until we take our first Giant Step! One, two, three, four, five…does that sound like very many to you? It doesn’t to me!

Of course, we’ve been counting down since we first made this decision in April 2008, and you’ve been counting down with us since August when we tipped our hand, but now it’s so tangible, so close, so…real!! It seems like we have a thousand things to do, that time will just fly by, that June will be here before we know it.

To mark the 5 month mark, I’ve come up with five lists of 5… Read the rest of this entry »