This summer, the IT Europe Conference was held in Stuttgart, Germany. We left a week early to visit friends in Germany.
First we stopped by to visit my neice in Landscheid Germany. Her husband serves on an American military base. We shopped in Trier for a sim card for Kenn's mobile phone and the next day fed the ducks in Bernkastel. I met my first hedgehog in their yard. We went a Bible study and a had a lovely German dinner at a placed called the "Hanger" with a group of military families.
Our next stop was to spend the day with our German friends, Alex and Debbie, who served with us in Athens for 6 months. They live in Duren. They fixed us a lovely German meal with spetzel! They we zipped around on the autobahn and wandered around the old city of Aachen.
From there we stopped at a refugee camp in Unna to see our Afghan friend, Zabih. He had only been there a short time after "walking" from Greece, so we took him shopping for clothes and to lunch at a local restaurant. The first restaurant we found was owned by Greeks living in Germany, so we ordered in Greek, ate Greek food and chatted with the owners in Greek. Nearly 1000 refugees are staying in this camp until they are cleared medically and can be placed in a more permanent location.
We drove from there to Sehnde, a suburb of Hannover to have dinner with our friend Hakimeh. She and her family have been in Germany for 1 year, so their situation is much better than other refugees still in camps. They have the entire 2nd floor of this building. It was the week of the birthdays of 2 of her daughters. Zahra was 4 years old and Zeinab was 6 years old. We took them to the zoo in Hannover on Saturday. Then came back on Sunday to say good-bye. I thought it might be easier since they are in a good place, but when Javad asked if I was coming back for his birthday in October, it broke my heart.
Our next stop was at a different refugee camp in the mountains of Suhl to see our friend Asea and her 2 kids. It was a rainy, dreary day, but we had lunch together and walked a bit in the shopping mall to stay dry. It was so hard to say "good-bye" and leave her in that place. A few days later there was a big riot in her building where a man tried to flush the Quran down the toilet and the Muslims beat him until the police broke it up.
Finally, exhausted, we reached the conference in Stuttgart. It started on Monday night and finished on Saturday at breakfast. This building were we stayed and had the conference is also a retirement center. The food was plain and the rooms nothing to write home about, but it was a good conference, so fun to see friends from all over Europe and hear their stories.
On Tuesday, another German couple we know (Heidi and Wolfgang) joined us for lunch and brought money and medications to donate to Helping Hands.
On Thursday, we went to visit our German friend, Lisa (Zipper)'s family castle. We met her at her family home and went out to a German restaurant...more yummy spetzel and snitzel. Then we drove out to see the castle which is now a working Bed and Breakfast.
Back to our own, home sweet home! Really, who gets to do this kind of stuff? I would never have guessed 2 years ago when we were at the IT conference in Stuttgart that we would have so many new German friends to visit only 2 years later. There is nothing like having someone who lives there, introduce you to new foods and new places. We had a great time and have way more pictures than you might really want to see. So interesting, all the different houses people live in, even in the same country.
