Friday, January 30, 2009

Why this journey? Beginnings Part 1

For a number of years now Beth and I have dreamed of travelling to Europe. Beth has never been there, and I was there only once - on a choir tour back in 1980. All of our family roots are in Europe, Beth's family from Norway, Sweden and England - Dennis' family from Denmark and Norway. We often found ourselves longing to visit the land from whence our ancestors came. So many years ago we began to collect Air Miles specifically for this purpose, and then a few years ago we hit on the idea of making this trip in 2009 as a way to celebrate our 25th Wedding Anniversary. We've been talking about this trip for months now, asking questions like "Where should we visit?" "How long should the trip be?" and most importantly "Can we afford this?"

The questions began to be answered, and the dreaming began to solidify into reality when we got serious about planning. I started by giving plenty of advance notice regarding this intended 6 week vacation to both Christ Lutheran Church where I am a pastor, and Luther College where I teach a Christian Ethics class. We waited for the serious planning until after the Christmas season was over, but starting in January things began to happen quickly.

For me the reality of the trip took root when I was finally able to book some flights using our accumulated Air Miles. Silly me, I thought that 4 to 5 months in advance would be enough time to book flights with Air Miles. The first hour long phone call to Air Miles resulted in nothing but frustration - no flights were available at the times or to the places we were hoping for. We had been talking about starting our trip in the south (Italy) and ending in the north (Norway), figuring this itinerary would work best for many reasons. It took another hour long call to the Air Miles folks to finally figure out the problem was trying to fly out of a Scandinavian country on our way back - there were simply no seats available at this point. The problem was solved by moving our departure point to Frankfurt, Germany - then we were able to get a flight home.

So now we had a definite departure date and time, as well as a return date and time. The airline tickets were booked and we could begin to fill in the details of the time in between those dates. Suddenly this was really happening, and ever since both of us have been busy - intently reading travel books and brochures, searching the internet, listening to the advice of folks who have travelled in Europe, and having lots of discussions. With the booking of the flights our journey really has begun.

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