Just a short entry to say that we're all together under one roof, at last.
On Saturday, Claudia and her brother Michael left Germany in our 1990 Mitsubishi, with baby David in the back seat. They drove 500 miles/800 km to the outskirts of Vienna, where they stayed the night. (The hotel claimed to be full, but changed its mind when Claudia played The Baby Card.)
Sunday, Annamarie drove me and Alan to the airport. After a tearful goodbye (Alan loves his grandmother, and she him), we took Tarom (your Eastern European national airline of choice) to Bucharest. Alan made friends with the man in the seat ahead, the woman across the aisle, and the twelve year old boy next to us. Pretty normal flight, in other words. Meanwhile Claudia and Michael drove another 600 km, through Austria and Hungary and into Transylvania, where they stopped for the night in the small city of Deva. No vampires or haunted ruins, but an ex-communist hotel with a really creepy shower.
(Somewhere in Transylvania they outran the heat wave. Up to then it had been really unpleasant -- 35 to 37 degrees [mid 90s Fahrenheit]. The old Mitsubishi has no aircon, so they had to put damp cloths on the baby to keep him cool.)
Monday, the babysitter came at 8 am, I was off to work half an hour later, and Michael and Claudia made the last leg in just six hours or so. One traffic jam and a few terrifying near-misses with Romanian drivers later, they were pulling into our street.
Okay, maybe that wasn't so short. But anyhow, here we finally are.
Posted by douglas at August 20, 2003 05:57 PM