I’ve been having a hard time putting our trip to Austria into words. It happened two years ago and I’m still struggling over it. The trip was long anticipated, delightful, and fulfilling. When we first got home, I thought, like everyone these days, “I should post pictures of our trip!” But, though I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Those pictures weren’t enough. There were stories and feelings and backstories and sweet family memories that should be shared too. But, I didn’t really want to share. I wanted to keep them all to myself.
Here’s why: Bobby and I spent two amazing years in Austria working with refugees. It was a defining point of our lives. We would forever be the couple who had been missionaries, however briefly. Those years weren’t perfect, but to our friends and family in Alabama, they sounded big and exotic. I liked that.
So, for 25 years, literally, we had been wanting to return to Austria - to a place we loved, a place that took a lot out of us, a place that molded us into the couple we became. And, we had wanted to share all of that with our kids. But, the time was never quite right. Either we had time but no money, or we had money but no time. Or, maybe our kids didn’t have time. But, the summer of 2023 was it. Allen graduated from the University of Nebraska Omaha three days before we hopped a plane and flew to Vienna. Davis would graduate from the University of North Alabama two months after we returned. It was the perfect time.
One of the highlights for me was visiting the ministry center, The Oasis, where we used to work and seeing my kids play chess and sort clothes there, activities we used to do weekly. Our first night at the coffee bar on this trip, I played UNO with two young men from Syria. I doubt either of them was 20 years old. My mom instincts started kicking in and I found myself wanting to help and protect them, telling them to make sure to come back to the clothing room, asking if they wanted extra cookies, extra anything I could give them. But, before the night was over they left and I had to let go. It was so unsettling watching them, younger than my own boys, walking alone into the night, so far from home. Where were their moms, their families? Were they worrying at that very moment how their sons were?
I loved sitting in the courtyard at our old home, bathed in bright sunshine, Albrechtgasse 27, with our former landlady, her daughter, and our dear friend, Miriam, who lives there now. Frau Schurz kept looking at my grown up boys, smiling and saying, “die schoene grosse Buben” which means, basically, the big, beautiful boys. She was so thrilled to finally meet them after watching them grow up in our Christmas cards. Frau Schurz told us that she had been at her doctor’s office that morning and as she left she excitedly told the receptionist she was in a hurry, she was meeting her American friends. The young receptionist asked who these American friends were. Frau Schurz said it was Amy and Bobby who used to live in her backyard. The young lady said, “I know Amy and Bobby!” She had been a young Bosnian refugee at one of our kids clubs. What a very small world.
We also had Sunday lunch in the cozy apartment of another friend, Carol, catching up and helping make the most delicious frosting of sour cream and melted chocolate chips for the cake she baked for dessert. After lunch we took a walk through the nearby vineyards.
The whole trip was surreal and sublime. The boys loved walking to the train station and being able to get anywhere they wanted without a car. We loved showing them the town we used to live in and watching them figure out how to communicate without knowing much German. It was wonderful.
When we got back to Alabama, and I was trying to figure out how to put all this into words, I had a time of sorrow and frustration. “We didn’t DO anything while we were there. Why didn’t we plan more stuff and DO more?” We had planned the trip to be low-key and calm. We wanted uninterrupted time to rest and wander and visit. But, upon reflection I got scared that the trip hadn’t had the sweet, unhurried feel I had dreamed of. But, instead it was too boring and too slow for 24 year old boys.
Weeks later when I re-read the journal I kept in my Bella Grace magazine (because I forgot to pack my actual journal) I realized that we did an awful lot and covered an amazing amount of ground. We spent two days in Vienna where we rode the huge Wiener Riesenrad or Vienna Ferris Wheel (you can see it in the movie “The Third Man”) while a polka band played below, music wafting into the open window of our car. We also spent one day in Bratislava, Slovakia. We didn’t have to exchange money or present our passports at the border like in pre-EU days. It was convenient but oddly unsatisfying.
We toured churches and palaces. We helped our old team serve refugees. We visited with long-time, beloved friends. We drove through the countryside to a tiny hamlet with a children’s program for refugees and listened to a brook as it meandered over rocks and between overhanging trees.
We stayed in a small apartment like an Austrian would live in, eating pizza and Schnitzel and Doner kebabs bought just outside train stops. We soaked in the mystery and majesty of a place that was first mentioned in writing in AD 869, over a millenia ago. We bought chocolate and magnets and I bought an adorable purple purse the color of a Milka candy bar wrapper. People still ask me regularly where I got it.
But mostly I learned some stuff about my family. Davis doesn’t like to walk by places. He wants to go in and tour things and see stuff up close. You may think he’s not paying attention, but he’s probably looking up stories or facts about where you’re going on his phone and will soon tell you all about it.
Allen likes to push himself and he’s basically up for anything. He climbed by himself up to the ruins of a fort and brought back beautiful pictures. At one point we arrived home late after a tiring day, but Bobby and Allen wanted to find a place to have a beer. They wandered out into the night and eventually found Zum Reichsapfel. Bobby remembers going there back in 1997 with some of the other missionaries we worked with back then. Bobby and Allen came back an hour later very pleased with themselves for being adventurous.
Bobby is going to be tense on the way, he wants to find the best way to get to our destination. But once we get there he’s going to rally and be the pied piper we’re all going to follow.
Now, I feel like we didn’t just have a trip to Austria, we didn’t just visit friends there. We didn’t experience the laziness of a vacation. We LIVED in Baden for nine days. Oh, how I wish it could have been longer. Maybe next time.
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