Looking Back 10 Years

Ten years ago this month, I traveled to Germany to visit my youngest son who was studying for a year at Hohenheim University in Stuttgart.

I was still working, so I went during my spring March break.

The weather in Europe was unseasonably warm that spring.

But I encountered a few mishaps en route.

My plane arrived in Frankfurt too late for me to catch my connecting flight to Stuttgart...

It was then that I realized that I had no phone number to reach my son at.

(It was the pre-cell-phone era, and he didn't even have a land line in his residence room.)

The only way I could contact him was via email.

I ended up taking a train from Frankfurt airport to Stuttgart, rather than wait for the next plane, as I was told it would get me there sooner.

I emailed this information to my son, hoping he would get my message in time.

He checked his email after I didn't arrive on the planned flight.

The only problem was that I hadn't mentioned which train station I was arriving at!!

(How was I to know that there were two?!)

But fortunately, he was able to check the train timetable and match my arrival time with the right train!

(All the way there, I wondered what I would do if I arrived with my luggage and there would be no one to meet me!)

Foolishly, I had no address for him either!

Would I end up taking a taxi to the university, then sit on the curb near the residences waiting for him to see me?!!

Thoughts like that filled my mind!

But he was there! I was never happier to see anyone in my life!

He took me, by city bus, to his university campus where I stayed in residence with him.

I asked him to find me a bed and breakfast place nearby, but he insisted I sleep on his bed, while he slept on the floor.

It was strange to live in a university residence again, with shared bathrooms down the hall! (I lived in residence for one year at UBC in Vancouver!)

That whole week, we went sight-seeing, first in Stuttgart, then in Heidelberg, and finally in Frankfurt, where I visited with three of my mother's cousins, siblings whom I had met in my younger years. It was good to see them again.

That may be the last time I see them, unfortunately. They are all of my mother's generation. Two are suffering from ill health and one now has dementia. But I was privileged to get to know them in their younger years, to meet their mother and one of her brothers - siblings of my mother's father, who had died when she was only two years old.,

(Here is a more recent photo that one of their nephews in Germany sent us.)

From Frankfurt, I headed back to Canada by plane - and my son headed back to his studies in Stuttgart, where he remained until the end of August. It had been a busy, eventful, fun week!