Oost West, Thuis Best

No brown stains! Sorry, but I had to blurt that out. Frequent readers will know what I’m talking about.

We’re home, after a few diversions to escape some fairly horrendous traffic along the A1 near Hamburg. Once we’d worked our way around that, it was pretty much plain sailing all the way home, where we arrived at about 16:20.

My first errand after returning was opening the mountain of post behind the front door. We even entered via the back door, for fear the front door wouldn’t open and we wouldn’t be able to turn off the alarm promptly enough.

Next up was the grocery shopping at the Albert Heijn. Sunday afternoon and it was positively frenzied in there. My pace of life has wound down considerably over the last few weeks and I’m now used to supermarkets ten times the size with only a tenth of the customers in them. This country is seriously overloaded with human-beings.

What a trip: 4805 km over 5 countries (including getting to the port in Germany and back, which, alone, accounted for about 1100 km of the total) in 42 days. Add an extra 33 km for the bike ride we did from Nida to Juodkrantė on the Curonian Spit, the same again for the bus ride back, 150 km to Helsinki and back by ferry, plus the many kilometres racked up on the ferry from Kiel to Klaipėda and back. Alll in all, we covered a lot of ground and water and used a good mix of road and waterway.

A hugely satisfying trip, all in all, with great food (and a little bad), fascinating sights (and a few dull), beautiful nature (and a few mosquitoes). Everyone in the family had a fantastic time, but each of us in his or her own way is also happy to be back home, I think.

Tonight we sleep in our own bed and tomorrow, the old routine begins anew.

And, on Wednesday, Eloïse starts at primary school!