Our Bessie

Sometimes things in life change, for example they type of car you drive! 

In New Zealand Allan was always changing our car or knew exactly what he wanted, what features were important and not to mention how clean our car always was.

We constantly laugh at the car we own now, but she is certainly becoming part of the family.  Not long after we brought her for $2500 the kids named her Bessie, which has stuck.  She is a little thirsty on petrol, has a crack in the dash board and the passenger window can only be operated by the driver, but other than this she is pretty straight and incredibly reliable!

We can’t believe that we have managed another full on holiday with absolutely no problems.  Our $2500 car has driven to Spain, Hungry, France, the entire French Riviera, French Alps the Netherlands, Poland, Italy (up Mt Vesuvius) around Scandinavia and across Germany more times than we can count.

Bessie is constantly full of crumbs, toys and sand.  This summer the kids drew hearts, kisses and cuddles all over her were the dirt had mounted up.  We are very thankful that she has never broken down and paid for herself over and over again.  She is looking forward to a good vacuum and clean this week. 

A basic outline of our trip this summer. 

        

Home Exchange: Berlin

Our final home exchange for the holidays was in central Berlin; we were only 3kms from the main city.  The apartment was located on the 5^th floor without an elevator; so we all took turns carrying the shopping and Leo, it made us all feel very unfit!

This time our home exchange family was a little bit alternative.  There was loads of wooden homemade furniture and most of the kid’s toys were made from wood.  The dolls and teddy bears were handmade with a variety of materials or knitted.  Leo and Corban loved playing with everything; they had four children so there was plenty to do.

At this home exchange we celebrated our second anniversary of moving to Prague.   Allan found a Kiwi Pie shop so we brought pies for dinner; we were actually served by another New Zealander.  It sounds like a silly thing, but you can’t buy pies in the Czech Republic … along with a whole lot of other food, so it was a fun thing to get. 

Looking back it has been a full year.  It began in the French Alps and from here we've been to Freiburg, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, London (Sarah), Warsaw, Milan, Rome via a flying trip to Pisa & Florence, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, St Petersburg, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania & finally our last stop Berlin before heading back to Prague to start our third year! Allan went back to NZ for his mum and dads 50th wedding anniversary, Taylor turned 16, Leo started school and Corban danced her heart out to street buskers wherever she could find them. We miss our family and friends but will begin our third year with a visit from Nana and Granddad Stock followed by the Cheer family at Christmas.  Can’t wait for the next 12 months!

Biking In Berlin

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Ending our summer holiday has been an adventure.  Leo had a number of hospital visits, 3 different countries in total for his foot!  Even with the language barrier we were very grateful for the treatment he had.    

We were thankful that our trip to Berlin was actually our second visit; we loved it so much the first time that we always planned to come back.  Our home exchange had bikes for everyone so we spent time riding around the different landmarks and enjoying the city. 

Taylor was really pleased to get her passport stamped at Check Point Charlie and could relate so much of her school History lessons to different places that we visited.

On the last day of our visit in Berlin we were all ready to come home.  Leo has been asking to play with his fire engine that he got just before we left, Taylor is desperate to see her friends, and Corban wants to start her new school.      

Beach, Sun And Fun In Palanga

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It was awesome staying in Palanga for 5 days.  We spent each day going to the beach and playing in the sand and surf, plus biking and walking around the cute little holiday town.

This was also the part of the holiday that Leo injured his foot, we did have to make several trips to the hospital to change his dressings and bandage.  He did really well not being able to do everything.  We did set him up on a picnic rug so he could play in the sand, he wasn’t keen to go far his foot was pretty sore. 

Home Exchange: Palanga, Lithuania

This Home Exchange was the relaxing beach part of our holiday.  We had exchanged with a pilot who owns a holiday beach villa on the Lithuanian coastline. 

It was surprising how much the beach was like Mt Maunganui, every time we turned our heads to the left we expected to see the mount!  The only difference was that the water was pretty cold, the Baltic Sea is frozen for up to ½ the year.

We had a scare on our second to last day.  Allan noticed that the T.V. was missing from the bedroom.  While we were out it had been picked up for maintenance but we were not told.  We e-mailed our home exchange person straight away, but it took several hours to learn that it hadn’t been stolen, thank goodness!