Deutschland
So we're back in Germany (more on why in a bit), so I wanted to do the promised post on what we came for - a work conference. Once every couple of years, we get together with all the other workers from around our area for a conference to see how everyone is doing, bounce ideas off one another, recharge a bit, and just generally improve our communication and effectiveness.
We were fortunate to have a great location for the conference; a local group rented it out to us and it was very nice. There were playgrounds for the kids, and activities and all sorts of stuff there for the adults as well.
There was also fantastic food, as there always is in Germany, so I took pictures of us eating it rather than pictures of us sitting in meetings, as I didn't figure that would interest any of you. Trust me, there were lots of meetings. I just didn't take any pictures of them.
Instead, we took pictures of the times we weren't in meetings. One of the afternoons we had a chance to get out of the meeting rooms and go on an excursion, so we went over to the "Open Air Museum," a place where they've built a little model of how Germany used to be throughout the centuries, as sort of a preserve of the old ways.
It's pretty big, so we got Matthew a wagon to ride in (and of course, in the spirit of everything old, it had to be wooden as well). Steven was asleep when we left, so he stayed at the center with friends and missed out.
Here's one of the German leaders pointing out the various towns and things to visit on the giant map. Everything was in German, so it was nice to have a translator!
The rest of the pictures are just from touring around the place; it was really, really beautiful and everything was historically accurate to some period in Germany history. Apparently they just went around finding historic barns and buildings and took them apart piece by piece to reassemble on the museum grounds.
Oh, and Bobbie wanted to try out the macro settings on our new camera, so there are several closeups of flowers as well.
So yes, it was very pretty. Then we came back and had more meetings, which, though very productive, didn't make for interesting pictures. So instead, here's Steven with one of the people who volunteered to come help out and feed us at the center.
And, just like that, after a week, it was all over and we were packing up to go. Here we are all sitting around waiting for our rides to the train station or airport.
Now, the more astute among you will have noticed that a week was over, like, a week ago. What have we been doing since then that causes us to still be in Germany?
Well, it's a long(ish) story. You see, next month is Bobbie's and my 10th anniversary. I was trying to figure out what we could do to celebrate such a milestone out where we live, and the options were pretty limited. We definitely can't afford to travel out of T-land again in a month, so there wasn't much of a choice.
"But," I thought, "if we celebrate a month early, we'll be in Germany, and from there we can go lots of places relatively inexpensively." Hmmm. Thus was born a plan.
So, back in April, when I bought tickets to and from our Germany conference, I padded our departure with a week after the conference so that we could go somewhere as a family to celebrate 10 years and also to have our first real family vacation (ever!). I don't know if you recall our Italian adventure when we were in school in England a few years ago (pre-kids), but we managed to arrange a week in Italy, including food, flights, and rooms for $250. Yes, we're cheapskates, and it involved setting up a tent at night, but it can be done.
I set out to find a similar option, considering flights to Spain, Croatia and Italy, finally settling on a flight that got us to Trieste, in the north of Italy, for $200 round trip. No, not per person, silly - you think we would spend that much to fly? That was for the whole family. Yes, it was on that horrible airline Ryanair, but it was cheap, and that was the main thing. Then I found a campsite where we could set up a tent for a week, and the plan was in motion.
The next thing on the agenda was to make it a surprise for Bobbie. This was actually more complicated; I could buy the tickets without her noticing, but if I wanted to bring our tent along to our Germany conference she was going to get suspicious.
Fortunately, she isn't the type to get involved in the details of our travel (that's usually my department) so she accepted that I had bought tickets without questioning when the exact dates were or anything like that. It required a lot of help from some of our friends in Germany (HUGE thanks, David and Christy!), but in the end we got it all set up.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I told Bobbie that we had a layover in Croatia on the way back to Moscow. She was nonplussed but ultimately unconcerned, but then I got out the camera at our "layover," to "take a picture commemorating a new country added to the list of where we've been." This is the result:
