Europe: The Early Years

Miriam was born in spring of 2005, while we were living in England.  We made it to Stonehenge and the Cornwall coast yet that spring, followed by a trip to the US in June, Iceland in August, the Czech Republic (well, just Prague) in September, Croatia in October, and Hungary (Budapest) in November.  Babies are so nicely portable -- no school vacation schedules to worry about, food supply right there in mommy, they fly free, and their tiny little clothes take up no room at all in the backpack.  And diapers can be purchased pretty much anywhere.  So taking advantage of the really cheap airfares, we travelled as often as we could.  Jake came for the first few of those trips, but after that, it was just Miriam and me (someone has to work, after all).  A baby is totally the best prop for not looking like a tourist -- everyone assumes that a mom out alone with a small child is a local.  Walking around the parks, shopping, stopping at coffee shops and ice cream parlors...we fit right in!  I also mastered the art of packing light.  Over the years I've watched new mothers bring a bigger diaper bag into a restaurant than Miriam and I took as our only luggage for a long weekend.

 

 In 2006 we moved to Germany, but we took a detour across the United States first, and enjoyed the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas on our way.  Once we arrived on the Continent, there were more countries to pick up over the next couple years:  France, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Slovakia, as well as Spain (the island of Mallorca), and Malta.  Hans was born during the winter of 2007, and then we had to hustle to get him a few countries, too, before our looming move back to the United States.

 

We have some great stories from those years.  In Croatia, I stopped at a market and got a vendor to give me an empty banana box, which became Miriam's crib for the week.  The first meat she ate was in Budapest, some wild boar.  Her favorite food was (and remained, until she became a vegetarian last year) escargots.  As a two-year-old, she could throw tantrums in both English and German.  The memories...