Our European Vacation
Looking back, I can’t forget the sense of sadness I felt when I thought I wouldn’t make it over to Europe to meet Ryan. It was a crazy day as the biggest blizzard in 20 years had hit Europe and all the airports had closed days prior. But MY flight looked good— a couple quick layovers and I’d be in Prague in no time. Well, US Airways had other plans. A piece of equipment broke on the plane I was supposed to take from Philly to Frankfurt and the rest is history. Ryan skyped from Europe and tried frantically to find another way. US Airways said the soonest I could get there was on Christmas…(it was the 21st) and Ryan would already be on our booked train to Vienna.
After a ton of drama, stress, sweating and not eating, running through airports to catch new flights, stopping in so many different airports along the way… I got there. And only a few hours later than expected.
Ryan and I have never traveled anywhere COLD together. Or let’s say we’ve never chosen to (going home to visit family doesn’t count, because well they’re family and we’re there to see them not the city). We always pick tropical locations where we can lay on the beach, be bookworms, and get margs at lunch…which will for sure be our next planned vacation. This one was different because we had a lot to plan, to do, to organize, to find, to explore. And explore we did. It was fun to see him with a map in hand planning the best route for our day that would get us to all the spots we wanted to see and restaurants we wanted to eat at. And I know he liked watching me try to speak Czech or German and communicate with people without many words (something I’m really not used to). We didn’t complain about being cold or tired, and we went to museums and fortresses and town squares and Christmas markets.
We overate, overdrank, and had such a wonderful time together. Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich all had such different characteristics and qualities, but they were all old. There’s something to be said about age. With age comes a certain gracefulness and magnitude. An appreciate for what they were, but an acceptance of what they are. It speaks to us as a country and to the more collective us as people and how age and years of knowledge and of life affect us.
