Home Sweet Home

The trip home took 26 hours: we woke up at 5am in Vienna, had breakfast, and walked to the airport to finalize our check-in and (for the only time this trip) check luggage. The pragmatic woman at the British Airways counter tagged our bags with “short transfer” signs.

We officially exited the EU. Jeff took a picture of me under the “London Boarding” sign. As it turned out, that was the only “fun” we had with my last name – none of the customs, immigration, or airline employees we interacted with mentioned it….given previous experiences that was almost a surprise. We had good seating karma on our flight to London, we were in window seats in different rows, but neither of us had the middle seat occupied. 

In London we had some time to burn so ate an early lunch. Then we boarded the long flight to Chicago. The kind woman in the middle seat between us offered to switch places with either of us and, true to form, we declined. Other than being long, the flight was fine, though neither of us got any sleep. 

The flight landed a few minutes late, so we expected some challenge clearing customs and immigration, retrieving then rechecking our bags, changing terminals, and getting to our gate on time. Fortunately, Ohare has figured this out. On the jetway leaving our plane were “magic” orange envelopes for people with tight connections. We gratefully took the one labelled “Eaton/London” which included boarding passes to the final leg. We didn’t realize how “magic” the pass was – but we got to go to special lines everywhere and were doing so well on time I was able to grab a dinner for the plane and still arrive at the gate before our section boarded. I appreciated Jana texting me the halftime (and later the final score) of the Portland Thorns playoff game (4-1 so the Thorns play in next week’s final). 

The last flight was a bit bumpy, and we were exhausted. We finally landed, retrieved our luggage, and took MAX to the Sunset where our chauffeur (thanks, Jana!) met us to take us home….we arrived about 10pm (7am Saturday Vienna time).

Summary of what turned out to be a great trip:

• Spent time with European friends and made new friends from all over Europe! (truly  the highlight)
• 6 languages we don’t speak (Finnish, Polish, German, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian) though I did find myself saying, “Ich verstehe nur ein bission Deutsch“ more than once to explain that I only understand a little German, though that’s certainly an overestimate of my expertise, and Andreas suggested an easier way to say it which I've since forgotten)
• 4 currencies we don’t usually use (Polish zloty, Czech krona, Euro, Hungarian fornit….our only purchase at the London airport was made in dollars)
• 50 caches found in 5 countries (4 new ones) bringing our total up to 26 countries
• Planes, trains, boats, buses, a single taxi and lots of walking
• Great memories, fun pictures, and a few souvenirs.

And to answer the obvious question, no we don’t know when or where our next international trip will be.