And so we continue...

Transitioning from a year of travel to life in the U.S. has not been nearly as difficult as Trisha and I anticipated it would be. This was surprising as conversations in the final month of our journey often included the fears we had in ending our travel lives. Would we fall into post-travel depressions? Would U.S. culture shock be too much? Would we be able to assimilate with family and friends the way we had before? From our marathon day of travel from Germany to Los Angeles, to our past weeks living at home, all has been an illuminating experience which we are happy to reflect upon in this blog. Let’s begin.

The initial transition process, which was incredibly surreal, began on our final day in Munich, Germany. We concluded this final day with a visit to a beer garden (picture posted on blog) and then headed back to our rented apartment for dinner, last-minute bag packing, and some room tidying. This was all in preparation for our 12:40 a.m. train to the Frankfurt Airport (weeks prior to this evening we decided to take the night-train, as the early morning train had sold out of discount seat). The post-dinner waiting around was the most surreal, as our normal bedtime was around 11:30 or 12:00, and here we were walking to the train station at 12:15 to catch our train.

All went smoothly with the train, though we were not able to sleep at all during the night. We pulled into the Frankfurt airport around 5:00 a.m. and then killed five hours before our 10:55 flight. Our time spent in the airport isn’t really noteworthy except that we found showers, which we excitedly paid for, and were stopped by German customs officials. They gave us a difficult time because we were 10 days over our European Union tourist visa. We explained that since our plans to Switzerland (non-EU) had changed, we had no alternative but to stay longer. They claimed we could be arrested, but ultimately said since Germany and the U.S. have a good relationship, that we could proceed. Trisha claims I was nervous during this encounter, but is was obvious they weren’t going to detain us. (It is interesting to note that we met more than a few Americans and Canadians who were way over their allotted 3-month visa times. One guy in Spain has 7 years over his visa! What is he going to do when he passes through customs?)

The flight from Frankfurt to Dallas felt like an eternity, made worse I think because of our five-hour train ride. Again, neither of us was able to get any sleep on the plane, so we arrived in Dallas somewhat tired. This was our first taste of American life since our brief airport stop in March, so our lack of sleep and time away made it feel a little otherworldly. Fortunately Trisha and I became big fans of Texas this year. Each time we were there (three times total) we were pleasantly surprised how warm the people we encountered were, and this three-hour layover was no exception.

By the time our delayed flight to Los Angeles took off on Monday we had been up for about 38 hours -we first woke up in Munich on Sunday morning at 8:00, which would have been Saturday night at home. On this flight we actually did succumb to sleep and were happy the three-hour flight felt like only a few minutes.

And then we were back. In the midst of our tiredness, walking through customs and the terminal, we got a second-wind thinking about how we had been in the same spot almost a year ago. We had been privileged to see and do so much in that period of time outside of our normal lives, that being back in the familiar gave us a confused feeling. I think we were just too tired to feel anything, but it is difficult to explain how unusual it is to come home to a place you’ve know your whole life while being away for a year. It wasn’t joy, nor was it sadness. It was just kind of weird.

I’ll conclude for now that we were warmly greeted at the airport by Trisha’s mom, who whisked us away to a beach house in Newport, where we joined a family vacation already in progress. Although we will reflect and share more observations about this process in future blogs, lets just say that spending a week at the beach to begin reentry into life in the U.S. isn’t so bad.