Travels

I’m back in Lichterfelde (our neighborhood) after a week in the Stuttgart area, once again setting up shop at a little café to share a little about what has been going on in Germany.

Heather, kids, and I set out about 11:00 last Thursday morning to make the six hour drive to some friends of theirs just outside of Stuttgart. Stopping at handy McDonalds (“Mommy, when will we be at Mickel Donalds?” asks Lilah from the backseat) and Esso stations (where we can get cheaper gas) to fuel up along the way, we reached our friendly hosts about 7 in the evening. Tracy fed us dinner, and the kids joined Betsy and Austin in running off some excess energy, then we tucked them into bed for a needed night of rest!

The next day we headed to the nearby Freibad (swimming pool) to enjoy the warm, sunny day. The kids splashed in the shallow pool and then all wanted to take turns going down the swirly slide in the bigger pool; I went down once with Lilah and then Cole and I camped out on a towel on a grassy hillside while the others continued with their wild waterplay.

That evening we helped Holzgerlingen (the small village where our hosts live) celebrate 1001 years by eating ice cream, splashing in a fountain, examining the flea market wares, and eating bratwurst and donor kebabs.

Saturday, Brent was off work and we decided to go on a daytrip to Mainau, a small island in the Bodensee close to where I went to Bible school (Melanie and I visited there on one of my trips to see her). We had a full day of enjoying the island’s lovely gardens, with lots of fun activities for the kids along the way: picnic lunch, butterfly house, jumping in and out of strollers (we had two double strollers and a single, so all the kids had a seat and we made quite a caravan), feeding goats, pony rides, expansive playground, and, just before it started raining and we made a dash for our car, ice cream. It was a beautiful day and a fun outing for everyone.

After church on Sunday, we had lunch and naps at home, and then Heather drove me about 50 minutes south to Balingen so I could spend a few days with Melanie, Bernhard, and Joshua. It was amazing and grand to be back in their home so soon after my April visit. They were just returning from a trip, and Bernhard is still off work (he gets some time off because of Joshua’s birth and is taking a month now and a month this fall), so we had a relaxed time together. Melanie and I went grocery shopping, cooked, sewed, did laundry, and of course talked a lot.

I loved seeing how service is an integral part of their lives. It starts with service to each other (and to privileged house guests!): I can carry that for you. I’ll do the dishes. Lunch is ready! One morning the phone rang, and a few minutes later, a young man buzzed at the door. He is studying for his final exams this week and wondered if Bernhard could help him study. They spent several hours together in the living room. He comes to the biweekly small group that meets at the Hausser’s home. That evening, three neighbors came for dinner – a single lady the Haussers are acquainted with and a couple that none of them really know who they wanted to reach out to. One afternoon we walked into Balingen to get ice cream and ran into a man whose wife attends church with the Haussers. He joined us at our table in the town square and had an intense talk with Bernhard cataloguing all the trials in his life right now and admitting he is looking for the meaning of life. Melanie talked about her friend Claudia whose daughter isn’t sleeping well at all, and tried to call her to find out if she had a good appointment with a family counseling place on Tuesday. Later I got a text from Melanie asking me to pray for Claudia; they had talked, and Claudia is not only frazzled from Ellen’s sketchy sleep patterns but her marriage is not doing well, either. Today I got an e-mail from Melanie saying she had done some research on German classes for me. I had mentioned to her that I was a little overwhelmed with all the options, and she made some phone calls and found the perfect thing. What dear, Christ-like people are these friends!

Wednesday morning Melanie and I set out for downtown Balingen to share breakfast in the sunshine and then to take the train together to Stuttgart. From there, she met with a friend from Bodenseehof and I took another train to Holzgerlingen where I met back up with Heather and the kids. We headed towards Berlin about 2:15 and got in around 9:15. I'm not sure if I'm going to like going back to the land of speed limits on freeways. 

And, after being away, it’s nice to be home. It feels like home, too, with the cars bumbling along the cobblestones outside the window, and the light, high ceilings giving us a sense of space.