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!
