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08/15/2005: "Our holiday in a nutshell"

Just a quick message today to tell all of you that we have safely arrived in The Netherlands. After a 21 hour trip we drove into IJmuiden Sunday afternoon.

Later on I will give you an in-depth overview of our holiday, but suffice to say at the moment that it wasn't your average vacation.

A quick breakdown of what happened:

From Saturday on Sunday we drove to the Czech Republic.
Monday and Tuesday were spend there relaxing a bit, talking to our friends and, for Angela, installing the computer and the printer. We had taken these ourselves but there was still some work to be done.
Wednesday we started driving to Ukraine where we arrived Thursday at the beginning of the evening.
Friday and Saturday were party days! It was marvellous to experience a Ukrainian wedding up close; it's definitely completely different from the way we celebrate such an occasion here in Holland.
Sunday and Monday both I and Angela were sick. Probably a combination of too much alcohol, a mix of 3 different drinks and the eggs... 5 days later still everything Angela or I excruded smelled like egg and looked yellow!
Tuesday we, together with our friends (our Godchild didn't come with us) had a daytrip to the Carpathian Mountains: FANTASTIC! I absolutely LOVE mountains and it was extra good as the sun even showed itself.
Wednesday we kept it quiet, said goodbye to some people, packed most of our belongings and, here too, Angela was busy installing the last programmes on (now) grandma's computer. In the evening the bride and groom showed up to wish us well and together with them and the bride's parents we watched photo's and video's of the happy occasion.
Thursday we unfortunately already had to drive back to Czech Republic where we arrived Friday. Here we stayed for one night before driving back to Holland where, as you already know, we arrived Sunday.

It was great to see everyone again, especially our friends, grandma and our Godchild, she is so cute and adorable!
The wedding was unbelievably fascinating; I'll definitely tell you more about this later.

A shocking detail however: the priest who conducted the church service on the Saturday afternoon died in a car crash on the Monday evening. He tried to park his car in a tree and did not survive this. As you can imagine this makes it all even more surreal... just like it can't have happened. Watching the pictures and video's, listening the the sound recording I made of the service and knowing the dear man is not alive anymore. Three days after the event he didn't exist anymore...
It was quite a shock for the village too, especially after something as wonderful as a wedding. Now they immediately had to work hard for a funeral.
Most people who know us know who Ira is: the niece of our friends. She has been in Holland a couple of times. Her mum died last year, unexpectedly, after a heavy heart operation. Well, the priest was Ira's uncle; the brother in law of her dad. This made it even more poignant for the family. Especially because we also visited Anna's (Ira's mum's) grave on the Tuesday evening.

Not just happiness but also sadness and loss were some keywords of our holiday, and travel: a lot of it!

More later.