Note: This is a travel journal of reflections on my first European trip and as a pregnant woman at that. It's not a traditional travel journal. It will be published in many parts .
I'm sitting on a DB train from Nuremberg headed back to Regensburg. We have at least an hour until we arrive back at the train station, and another 20-30 minutes of slow-paced walking back across the bridge to Cliff and Sarah's apartment where we are staying. The first day, with no bearings or sense of direction, the walk felt very long. Each day the trip across the bridge seems much shorter. Conversation makes it go faster as well.
This trip has revealed to me where I am at on the spectrum of creatures I call "travelers". I am not filled with an insatiable wanderlust, and more and more I see the assertion I heard as a child from my parents, "You're such a homebody!" ringing true. I have legs and can walk, occasionally prompted by a desire to see something new or expand my horizons, but home is where my heart is.
Indeed, my husband has a true bite of the travel bug, tempered only by time and money. I would assume by the amount of travel they do that our friends Cliff and Sarah are host to that bug as well. Admitting you are out-numbered is hard when you want to fit in with the roamers. Hectic airport transfers and language barriers don't get my blood pumping as much as discovering a new nook in our town. A peaceful flight over the Atlantic doesn't serve to relax me as much as our beige chair in our upstairs bungalow. That corner, with sunlight streaming in and our cat lazing on the futon, is my happy place. But I'll be the first to admit that's the "safe" way to think about it.
This is not to say that our trip hasn't been an eventful blessing, one with dozens of enjoyable experiences. It has. I can rest assured that the best time for us to travel is now, before baby comes and we are firmly anchored to the homestead. Indeed it revealed some pre-baby refinements I'd like to make that I haven't previously identified.
Seeing brightly colored homes, most built somewhere between 1500 and 1850, line the stone-cobbled streets and reading unfamiliar traffic signs is a refreshing change from awakening to six expectant, fuzzy eyes awaiting their morning food dish. In the back rooms of Cliff and Sarah's Regensburg apartment, even a rainy morning evokes a little mystery and romance, with happiness at the thought of a morning filled with good conversation, warm tea and fresh pastries. Literally and figuratively, I eat it up and take it into me, hoping to hold onto that feeling for years to come.
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