hello everyone! it has been a long time since i have written, i know. as i suspected, our fast paced travelling left me with no time to write. add an illness or two into the mix and you find me even more behind...

well, now we are in bonn, again. since i last wrote from slovenia in may we have been to the dalmatian coast, sarajevo, inland croatia, back to budapest, into moravia (part of czech republic), the green lungs of poland, lithuania, latvia, southern finland and lapland, stockholm and its islands, oslo, bergen, northern denmark, and back to germany. we were excited about travelling but sad and exhausted from moving so quickly. the dalmatian coast was beautiful and hot. sarajevo was really intense, unlike anything we have ever experienced. as a result everywhere else was kind of a letdown. luckily we had people to visit in almost every place afterwards so that made it easy to keep going, as well as more enticing. unfortunately one of the places we didn't have a friend to visit was where i got a strep infection, but the post-soviet doctor's clinic in riga was full of really nice people who were genuinely concerned. i then had a quick recovery. we loved scandanavia and the weather was cool and rainy. we had a fantastic time!

we started trying to schedule our plane ticket home before we left bonn in may, we had many problems and lots of stress and always no seats available until just last week. after "yelling" at the travel agent who sold us the tickets, via email, we finally came up with an agreement. so even though our year-long open-ended tickets expire next week, we will be flying home in mid september (on the 14th.) the catch is that we fly from london instead of frankfurt. this is no problem for us since a friend has generously invited us to stay in a room in his flat until then. so now we have our final arrangements here and we start to say good-bye to our friends and bonn.

we look forward to being the london for a time before returning home so we can collect our thoughts. i think being in an english speaking place will also help mitigate the culture shock we will inevitably experience upon our arrival in seattle. in any case, we know the experience of being in london for a month before returning home will be well worth the debt it will create!

so though we look forward to being home and seeing our friends, we will have to wait another month. but we will see you then!

© Copyright Cheryln Crowl 2000