And so it begins!

Welcome to our BLOG!!  This BLOG will document the Thomas Family’s European Adventure.  This first entry will get you caught up and covers the first week in Germany.  Later entries will keep you up to date…Enjoy.  And thanks for coming along with us!!

After spending the first part of the summer apart, Team Thomas (Dad Todd, Mom Karen, Bryce (age 10) and Emily (age 8 ) met up in Southfield MI on Saturday July 28^th.  We had 48 hours to prepare for our departure to Germany!!  We had a couple of days to do laundry, run errands, spend time with wonderful friends, and pack!!  It all happened and we were all gathered in our living room at 2:00pm on Monday July 21^st waiting for our ride to the airport.  It arrived but it was too small to hold our 7 bags to be checked, 5 carry-ons and 1 scooter (for Todd’s broken foot), so another one was hailed and we were off!

Todd, the seasoned traveler among us, was the only one to sleep on the 7 hour flight from Detroit to Amsterdam.  And even though Emily caught a few winks on the brief flight from Amsterdam to Berlin, Germany, we were all still pretty whipped upon arrival.  We gathered our bags, hailed a taxi that could hold all of us (and all of our luggage), and headed for our apartment in the city.

We managed to get all our belongings into our apartment (70 sqm or around 700 sqft) and have a look around before we crashed for a couple of hours.  Mom and Dad took the bedroom, Bryce took the couch, and we pushed two chairs together to make a little bed for Emily (their actual beds arrived later).  We let the kids sleep for a couple of hours and then roused them (which was no easy task, let us tell you!!) so we could start to adjust to German time.  We went into Potsdamer Platz and Karen and the kids hung out at the Arkaden (a huge mall) while Todd had a couple of meetings.  When Todd’s meetings were over we celebrated our arrival in Germany with some incredible ice cream!!  Ice cream works wonders when you are grumpy and tired!!  We all made it to bedtime on July 22^nd, a successful first day of our adventure.

July 23^rd was a slow day, one of adjustment and orienting ourselves to our new surroundings.  We visited a park in the area that has multiple playgrounds (one has two zip lines that Bryce and Emily thought was great!), went to the grocery store and Euro store across the street  and had dinner on one of the major streets in the City – Kurfurstendamm.  We sat outside amidst the hustle and bustle of a great city, amazed at what an opportunity we have been given.

On July 24^th we took a bus tour of Berlin to give the children an introduction to the sights, history, and culture.  It was a double-decker bus and we sat on top, which Bryce and Emily loved!  In the afternoon, we returned to the park.  Bryce and Karen played ping pong (all the playgrounds have permanent ping pong tables) and Emily headed for the zip line!  She had trouble at first negotiating her way into the line, but eventually met a friend (Julia) and they played the better part of an hour, though they had only a few words in common.  Emily tried her at hand at German, running to Mom for easy questions she could ask her new friend.

July 25^th and July 26^th were more of the same, in terms of hanging out, getting oriented, and learning a little more about our new surroundings.  We are still staying up pretty late and getting up late, but that is working for us at the moment.  In the afternoon of the 26^th we headed to the Pergamon Museum.  It was HOT! But the museum was great!  Besides the Pergamon Altar and Antiquities (Germans say they excavated it, Turkish say they ummmm TOOK it) which is the feature of the museum, there was a Babylon Exhibit. This was based on the history of Babylon, roughly near Baghdad, in both a concrete manner (ruins, findings, etc) and a biblical way (Artists renditions of the Tower of Babel over the centuries for example. In order to get out of the top floor, Bryce and Dad had to walk through a section of the Babylon exhibit representing current day decadence. Needless to say, Bryce was not impressed!

We arrived back to the apartment and Karen cooked dinner for the first time in the apartment.  Breakfasts and lunches are easy, but dinners seemed a bit more of a chore to take on until today.  The kitchen is small (cozy, actually) but opens to the dining area and living space, so seems bigger!  The children’s beds are also in the dining area so it is a busy place throughout the day!!  We ended the day with ice cream at the corner and a game at the dining room table!  Family time at its best!

On Sunday July 27^th we spent half of the day in Potsdam.  We had a bus tour of the city and then a walking tour of Sans Souci, the summer residence of King Frederick the Great.  The bus tour was a brilliant mixture of history and construction sites.  Centuries of stories, of character development and turmoil, and now a city looking to the future while refusing to forget its past.  Highlights of the bus tour included a stop at the Gleinecke Bridge, the middle of which was the border between West and East Germany before reunification.  Bryce and Emily stood straddling the line that would have put them in two countries at the same time not that long ago!  There was also a fascinating section of Potsdam that was known as the “KGB City.” When the Russians erected the wall, they took over a couple of square kilometers of Potsdam, informing residents they had 4 hours to leave their homes.  Then, after the cold war, the KGB abandoned the houses and they were inherited by the families of those who had them originally. Of course they were in great disrepair and many of the families could not afford the upkeep so they were sold again. Tragic but fascinating to see this kind of history exactly where it took place and still has consequences.

When the bus portion of the tour ended, we would have a chance to grab a snack before the Palace tour.  Emily was with Karen.  Todd behind them.  Where was Bryce?  As he was just about to get off the bus, the door closed and the bus moved a couple of feet.   Todd just about broke the bus door down with his cane (broken foot mending nicely, by the way).  The driver stopped, opened the door, and Bryce hopped off smiling.  It turned out that he was too short to be seen by the driver when he was on the last step before getting off.  Lesson learned: adults get off bus last!!

Sans Souci was great!  The ornamentation.  The opulence!  The children enjoyed seeing the green chair that the King himself died in!  And Bryce and Emily were amazed when they saw flooring that was as old as the United States!!  After the inside tour we descended the numerous steps and terraces to a beautiful fountain.  Todd wished there were fewer steps, Emily was disappointed when she couldn’t stick her hot feet into the fountain, and Bryce was eager to get to the food we had stored in the backpack that couldn’t be accessed inside the palace!

In the evening, Karen was ambitious!  The whole family converted 350 degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius and 1.255 kilograms to pounds so she could figure out how long to cook the fresh chicken she had gotten at the grocery store yesterday.  Math really does come in handy and dinner was wonderful (and cooked all the way through, Moms).  

Monday July 28^th was a slow easy day.  A trip in to sit on the giant teeter-totters at Potsdamer Platz, lunch at the mall, and a little shopping filled an afternoon. 

Tuesday July 29^th included a morning at the park and an afternoon at Jack’s Fun World.  We thought we were going to a water park.  Alas, language doesn’t always translate exactly and whereas a couple of the attractions featured water, it was not a water park.  Still, the children enjoyed bungee jumping, driving go cars, bumper boats (hence, the water) and miniature golf.  Karen really enjoyed the popcorn machine.  You put in a euro, put a paper bag under the hole, and push start.  There is a big air popper inside the machine that pops a bag full.  Add butter and salt to taste and there you have it!  She wants one of these for the house!!

So there you have it…our first week in Germany.  A testimony to God’s faithfulness, provision, and guidance.  We have been blessed with health, safety, and utter enjoyment of family and new experiences.

Tomorrow we leave for six days in Italy.  Come on back to the BLOG for updates and further stories of our adventures!  We will be adding some photos shortly, once we get a chance to poke through them. Please feel free to say high, leave comments, or post whatever you would like. We love you and miss you all!