Gifts

It is nice to be planning a big trip to be taken sometime after  Christmas.  That way things needed for the trip become the perfect gift.  All five children were gifted these while David and I got these.

That is the only luggage we plan to take.  Yes, you read that right.  Each of us is only taking a carry-on for our three week trip.  We don't want to be bogged down with luggage, so we'll pack light and do laundry while there.  There is much freedom in that decision!

We also gave the children some euros for spending money and a notebook they will be required to write in each day we're gone.  Hannah and I also got camera bags.  All these things are making us even more excited for May to arrive!

It is Official

We bought the plane tickets.

It is hardly fathomable to me that our dream will come true next May.

We are all getting very excited!

Knowing Where We Will Rest Our Heads

We found places to sleep in Wittenberg and in Rothenburg, and we added a city to our overnight stay, Leipzig.

We were having trouble finding a place in our budget in Wittenberg.  When I emailed a few different places, giving them the three nights we would like to stay, most said they were full.  Wittenberg was one of our favorite cities when David and I visited Germany in 2007 and we wanted to spend more time there and show the children.  But with constant "we're full" replies to our inquiries, we were beginning to wonder if we could stay there at all.

However, one of the places gave me the impression that if we could change dates, they might have some rooms available.  So I quickly emailed and asked about reserving only the last two of our original three night request.  The hostel emailed and said, yes that they have and reserved them for us.  We won't be staying three nights, but we will get to stay in Wittenberg at Jugendherberge Hostel which is right across the street from the Castle Church.

That first night we had wanted to stay in Wittenberg, but weren't able, we will now spend at the A& O Hostel in Leipzig.  We had thought we would simply stop in Leipzig to see St. Thomas church where Bach was organist on our way to Wittenberg.  But now, we will stay and find other treasures in that city.  That is exciting.

We won't be able to stay in the walled city of Rothenburg like we had hoped.  But we are content to find a place not far from the city which will allow us to explore Rothenburg and go on a night watchmen tour.  The Gasthof Schwarzes Lamm looks like a neat place to stay.

We also made a decision on where to stay in Rome.  We went with this apartment from RetRome.  Although we thought we would stay in place rented by The Beehive, in the end, Piazza Dante won out for various reasons.

Knowing where we will rest our heads each night is a great thing, especially on a trip like this.

It's Time!

Time to make reservations.  This makes our trip which we have been dreaming about more and more real.  We are going, as a family, to Europe!

Thanks to Gemut, we have a 9 passenger van rented for two weeks, and it is way under what we budgeted.  I have confirmed reservations for places to stay in Reutte, Austria, Munich, Erfurt, and Berlin, Germany.  The place we thought we could stay in Rome is no longer available, but I have other leads thanks to the friendly owners of The Beehive.  I hope to soon have confirmed reservations there as well.

We also no longer have a place in Wittenberg or Rothenburg.  I'm searching for other leads as well as asking advice and help from Bob at Gemut.

Would you like to see where we have made reservations?  We are excited and hope they all turn out just as lovely as the pictures and descriptions purpose.

We plan on using the town of Reutte, Austria as our base for enjoying the Tirol and Bavaria regions, including Neuschwanstein and Hoheschwangau castles and, of course, the Alps.  In the Rick Steves' Guidebook, we found Gastehaus am Graben and have made reservations.

In order to find cheap places for a family of seven to stay, we have looked mainly into hostels.  A local friend has told us they are quite nice and very reasonable.  In Munich we will stay at a YMCA, and in Erfurt we will stay at the Opera Hostel.

In Berlin, we will stay at a gastehaus which is with St. Mariengemeinde.  We heard of this from Jonathan, my husband's cousin.  He and his wife have been living in Berlin the last couple of years as he finishes his doctoral thesis in theology, and St. Mariengemeinde has been where God has bestowed His good gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation upon them during there stay in Germany.  Unfortunately for us they will no longer be in Berlin when we arrive for our visit.  They will be moving to England where Jonathan has accepted a call to Cambridge.

The time has come for our dream trip to take on flesh and bones in the form of reservations.  We have a good start and are hopeful that it won't be long before we'll know where we'll be laying our sleepy heads in each of our stops along the way.

Hostels and Help

A friend recommended to me Gemut, a small company in Oregon that specializes in helping people travel to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.  What a great find!  We are going to make use of their knowledge to find the best plane tickets and for renting a vehicle.

They also offer help in finding places to stay.  We thought we might use that service as well.  However, yesterday, while sitting on our comfortable rockers on our porch, we found possibilities for all of the cities we plan on resting our weary heads.  David emailed the ones we had yet it inquire of, and now we await their replies.

The difficulty for our trip is that we are a family of seven and that requires more than one room.  To help make the housing a cheaper option we are looking mainly at staying in hostels.  The ones we are inquiring about look quite nice and we think will be quite adequate.  Besides the cost saved will allow that to be used for some other part of our trip.  When we finalize the places, I'll add links so you can see where we'll stay.

It is fun and exciting and each day our trip is becoming more and more a reality!

A Frustration

The hardest part about this trip is that we need to plan well in advance in order to make sure we have a fairly accurate idea how much the trip will cost.  That sounds easy enough, except that one of the most expensive items on the trip, plane tickets, aren't available until six months prior to departure.  So we're taking a leap of faith, figuring an approximate cost, and planning from there.

We have ideas for places to stay in most of the cities we need to sleep.  We were thinking we would wait till after plane tickets to line them up, but now we will do the opposite so we can stay where we would like.

We also haven't told many family members yet.  We wanted to wait till it was for sure, like plane tickets in the hand.  But since we can't get them for a few more months, we're just going to go ahead and let family know of our big trip.

Maybe It Won't Be Only To Germany

We watched a Rick Steve's show on the Alps of  Austria and Italy.  (Here is the show on Hulu).

Wow.  It was beautiful.  And now we want to spend time there.  Riding to the peak of the Zugspitze.  Traveling over the Europabrucke and the Brenner Pass.  Riding a luge.

We also saw the episode on Caesar's Rome by Rick Steve's (Here is the show on Hulu).  That plus the movie When in Rome, made us wonder if visiting Rome is a possibility on this trip.  If so, that would make our oldest daughter absolutely thrilled.  Rome is the top city she wants to visit.

So we've been thinking, and planning, and reworking a schedule, and have just about talked ourselves into flying into Rome, spending three days and then taking an overnight train to Innsbruck.  We would then continue to work our way north through Germany before flying home from Berlin.

We even priced plane tickets.  It is tempting.  It would be so neat to see the ruins of Ancient Rome, the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, and others.  We'll have to see how things progress as we dig deeper into where to stay, how to get around, and the cost involved.

Did I mention that it was tempting?  Stay tuned, this just might end up being "To Rome and Germany and Back Again."

Good Help

David's cousin and his wife have been living in Germany for the past few years while he studies for his doctorate in theology.  We sent them an email telling them of our plans for a family trip to Germany next spring, included our tentative itinerary, and asked them for advice.

We got great advice and help!  They suggested that taking the trains would not be the best use of our time and instead to rent a car, but for only two weeks, and to return it back to Berlin where we would rent it.  They also suggested other places to stay and to do more day trips from a central location.  It was wonderful to hear their suggestions.

We are now going through all of them, adding notes, ideas, and questions in order to one day soon talk with them via Skype.  That will be fun and I am quite glad they are willing to help us figure out our trip.

What to See and What to Skip

In planning a big family trip to a foreign country it is easy to get caught thinking that every city and sight can be included, especially if the trip lasts three weeks.  But when the dreams start to become decisions about what is realistic, the question of what to see and what to skip are quite important.

Having been to Germany on a tour in the fall of 2007, David and I know what it is like to go, go, go, and see, see, see.  And although our trip was wonderful and we absolutely loved our time and all that we did, we don't want that same pace for our family trip.  For one thing, three weeks of fast pace would not be fun, and for another we don't want to do it. But, when we sit down to make a list of the places we would like to see, it grows and grows and grows.

The other side of not going, going, going is the thought that this is the one time we'll get there as a family, and we want to experience as much as we can, to give our children as many sights to see and memories to have as possible.  The fear of missing something is a big motivating factor.

It does come down to what sort of experience do we want for our family?  Do we want a whirlwind European tour where we see London, Rome, Paris, and parts of Germany?  Although that would be fantastic and we would all love to see London or Rome, and yes even Paris, we've decided that for our family, this isn't the trip we would like to take.  But narrowing it down to visiting only Germany doesn't make the list of what not to see any easier.

There are the Luther sites, the Bach sites, the WWII sites, the family heritage sites, the tourist sites, and on and on.  We know we can't see it all, but it is hard not to think that is possible when making the list.  What to leave out is not easy, remember the fear of missing something is a strong motivating factor.

But we can't live in fear, so we made a calendar and have begun putting on it where we would be on each day.  I got out our map of Germany that we picked up at a hotel on our trip in 2007, spread it open on the floor while David sat on the couch with the MacBook open to Pages and Mapquest.  How far it was between cities, where to fly in and out of Germany were the first questions.  Those quickly led to more. How many days in each place?  Is it realistic to see Wittenberg in two days?  Do we want more time at Salzburg?  Do we want to take a Rhine River cruise or see some of the castles another way?  Which museums in Berlin do we want to tour? Do we want to walk around Oberammergau?  Should we see a concentration camp or only the Holocaust museum?  Where do we want to be on a Sunday in order to worship in a SELK church?  These plus many other questions aided us as we filled in the calendar.

This has been the best thing for making it realistic that we can't do everything.  As we learn about flights, how to travel, and where to stay, it will change.  But it is a fantastic starting point for what to do.  Now we feel like we have a good beginning, a very good place to start.

Where to Sleep?

One of the big challenges is trying to find places where a family of seven can stay in various German cities. We don't want to stay in American style hotels, we'd rather stay in a place that give us a flavor for living in the country.

Here are some of our ideas:

1. The Lutheran Church in Berlin has a retreat center which we hope to use.
2. The Colleg Wittenberg would be ideal since it is located in the middle of the old city of Wittenberg.
3. Renting an apartment or house through a place like Vacation Rentals By Owner in Munich.

But we aren't sure what to do about the other cities, like Eisenach or Erfurt or Leipzig.  We know that if it was only the two of us, we could easily go and find a place from one of the "bed and breakfasts" that are prevalent.  But we are going with our children, all five of them, and are concerned with going and not having reservations.  We plan to use our Rick Steve's Germany guidebook and the help of a friend who is an immigrant from Germany to find more leads on resting our weary bodies while on our dream family trip.

We'll keep you updated as we figure out what works and what doesn't.