When you live overseas, nothing makes you happier than seeing a familiar face. It brings a comfort of home, rejuvenating you to delay home sickness. My dad's cousin and his wife, Jim and Fran Poe, were attending a work conference in Italy and decided to come to Landstuhl, Germany. The main military hospital of Germany is located in Landstuhl- where Jim was born in 1954 and our son/daughter will be born in a few weeks. Though I can recall only meeting Jim and his family once, it was nice to meet up with them and feel the presence of family in Germany.
After meeting up at Landstuhl area, we spent the day with them at Stuttgart Oktoberfest, the 2nd largest annual fest in Germany. It was a great trial run to prepare for planning our '13 Munich Oktoberfest adventure. Thanks Jim and Fran for taking care of us!
Took us 9 years, but we finally returned to Maastricht, Netherlands. Maastricht is a city that had great impact on our lives. At 21, we truly became "adults" there- we learned what it was like to live in a foreign country, made many traveling mistakes touring around Europe, learned to survive without our immediate family/friends, and got engaged. Maastricht is a big part of the reason Paula joined the military, enabling us the opportunity to get back to Europe once again.
2 dogs, 1 kid, and 1 kid on the way- Needless to say, our time visiting Maastricht this past month was much different than years before. Despite the rain, it was awesome to see all our "hot spots" and travel back in time of our college years.
Maastricht is 3 hours from our home in Germany. We decided to drive home at night and unfortunately got rear ended. 9 o'clock at night we're trying to figure out (1) how to call the police internationally? (2), how to communicate with the other driver who doesn't speak English and is convinced I was was "backing up" at a stoplight (3), how do we notify our insurance. Luckily, a Dutch lady stopped and helped us tremendously regarding our communication barriers and how to fill out the appropriate international forms. Though there was damage to the rear, we could still drive home. En route, we found out that our gas card does not work outside of Germany and it is common for gas stations to close at 10:00pm. It's midnight and we're driving around these small German towns looking for a drop of gas. We learned alot that night--especially how frustrating it can be living overseas and the need to always be prepared!! Regardless, everyone's ok and glad to have made it back home.
