Europe, take 2

Let me start this post by restating: we knew it was rather ambitious for us to remodel our house, move out all of our belongings, find renters, and head to Europe for a year. Turns out, a little overly ambitious.

Because we were only about two weeks into our journey before we realized that—sigh—we needed to go back. Amy had clients and hearings that beckoned her home to Santa Barbara. All the projects I had left unfinished were (surprise) not finishing themselves, and our house still wasn’t rentable. My mom had done a heroic job cleaning up after us, and a carpenter acquaintance had invested a ton of time trying to finish my kitchen cabinets, but it just…wasn’t…enough. We had to tie up all these loose ends ourselves. So we reluctantly made plans to abbreviate our Portugal itinerary and fly home from Lisbon, less than a month into our trip. So much for making this a low-carbon-impact trip!

We gave ourselves ten days to wrap everything up, and what a strange ten days it was. We were suddenly back in our house, but this time living out of suitcases, as most of our stuff was already in storage. We had sold our cars, so had to share a rental car for our many errands. Even our fridge was empty. Thank goodness the espresso machine was still there!

We put Griffin back in kindergarten, on the down-low because nobody wanted to figure out the paperwork to make it official. He was nervous and confused about going back after already being gone so long. (A month is a long time for a 6 year-old!) But my heart melted when we showed up at the gate and his classmates erupted in a chorus of “Griffin’s back!” and one of the girls (much larger than him!) swallowed him up in a hug. He showed off his collection of Euros while his kindergarten teacher scrolled through our photostream for the class. Was he able to narrate what we’d seen and done already? Probably not. I can only imagine what unique stories he did tell, the things that actually stuck out for him as worth sharing with other kindergarteners! (I’m guessing that all those pastries made the cut.)

We didn’t tell many friends or colleagues that we were coming back, partially because we were ashamed, and partially because we simply didn’t have time to see most of them. We knew this was going to be a hyper-caffeinated, stay-up-all-night, cram-for-finals sort of stay. And so it was. I finally did finish our kitchen the day before we departed, about the same time we met the tenants we’d lined up for a nine-month lease. And we didn’t finish cleaning the house up for them until an hour or two before we left to catch our return flights to Europe. Always cutting things close!

But at least we could now rest assured now that everything was finally done, and there was so much less to worry about than the first time we had tried leaving. As we sat in the terminal at LAX waiting for our flight, we felt a mix of exhaustion and relief. Plus, this time, we were able to pack all the stuff we had forgotten the first time around. Do-over! 😉

On the first leg of our journey through Spain, Amy’s mom had joined us. This time, my mom was tagging along as we headed to Vienna, Austria. And that was a second benefit to our crazy return: she could now fly with us instead of winging it solo to meet us. It was nice to have her along as we made the tiring 24-hour journey, which included a delayed red-eye flight out of LA, a missed connection, and a nearly 5 hour layover in Madrid. We didn’t arrive at our AirBnB in Vienna until midnight, and we were all wide awake even though I hadn’t slept a wink on the red-eye. Griffin was the last to finally go to bed, after I woke up to find him playing on the tablet at 2am!

But from that first blissful morning in Vienna, which turned out to be Mother’s Day (we’d all forgotten!), we already knew we were going to love this beautiful city. That is, until disaster struck.

Amy was the first. She said she felt a cold coming on Saturday night when we arrived. She didn’t think much of it until Monday morning, when it really seemed to hit her with full force. It was my idea to give her a rapid antigen test—we had almost a dozen of them with us—and we were both shocked when the bright pink line appeared that indicated she was positive for COVID. I had just started to feel a bit under the weather myself that morning, so I took one too. Also positive. Griffin, who never seems to get sick, was negative, though we wondered whether his sniffle the week prior was a mostly asymptomatic case—and the source of our infection. (Schools had just dropped their mask mandates shortly before Griffin had returned to kindergarten.) My mom seemed fine. Luckily, she had just gotten a fourth shot right before we left the country, to comply with Austrian requirements that you be vaccinated within the past 9 months. Boy, was she suddenly glad for that!

So Amy and I would be quarantining in Vienna for a few days. There are worse things! The city has been in the grip of some splendid spring weather, and our AirBnB is a spacious three-bedroom affair with large rooms, high ceilings, unusually large beds and, crucially, a big yellow bathtub. So Amy and I hunkered down for a few days, threw open the windows, enjoyed the sunshine, light breeze, and the sounds of birdsong and church bells that filtered in, took lots of baths, napped, watched movies (including Before Sunrise), and spent more time alone together than we had in who-knows-how-long. Meanwhile, Griffin and my mom went out for walks around the nearby park, hit up Vienna’s famous giant wheel, and bought way too many pastries. Thank goodness we had her along to keep him entertained!

It’s day three now, and we both feel mostly recovered, except that I’ve got this weird, rare, somewhat annoying side effect that is making my torso very sensitive to touch (apparently called cutaneous hyperesthesia) such that it’s almost it’s almost painful to wear a shirt! Wow, COVID and its novel, ever-evolving symptoms. I can only imagine how much worse this all might have been if Amy and I weren’t triple vaxxed. Of course, we still need to quarantine for a couple more days, so we canceled the next leg of our journey to Bratislava, Slovakia, and arranged to stay a few more days in Vienna, where we hope to finally get out and see the town this weekend.

The moral of the story? If you don’t slow down, eventually nature will force you to! This whole trip was meant to be a big pause for both of us, but so far, it hasn’t worked out that way as we rushed through Spain & Portugal all while struggling to wrap up everything at home. Here’s hoping the new months will see us enjoying a much more relaxed pace. Stay tuned for our next set of adventures in Austria, Slovenia and Italy…as soon as we’re well!