Oh The Places You’ll Go

Well hello again!

It feels like forever since I last posted…almost two months ago! It definitely wasn’t my intention to wait this long but I’ve been rather busy.

I spent the first week of September visiting my sister and her family in Rochester, New York. Then it was back to Ohio to get things moved out of my apartment and into a storage unit. Since I wasn’t going to be working in the area, it didn’t make sense to keep an apartment. When choosing the storage unit, I wanted one that was climate-controlled and big enough that I could set up my garment racks, dressers, and shelves in it. I didn’t want to have to look through boxes when I make pitstops in Ohio to exchange items between contracts.

Once the storage unit was found, I spent the next couple of weeks slowly moving things into it. At the same time, I was in the process of selling the car I had been using. I was also interviewing and working out details with the Au Pair agency. All of this didn’t leave much time to write.

Then, on October 7th, I flew back to Germany with my child and this time, Omi (my mother) came along!

Quarantine Baby

At the time of our arrival in Germany, children under the age of 12 had to go into quarantine for 5 days. This even applied to infants. Luckily my mother and I did not have to quarantine since we are both vaccinated. In order to make the most of the time either one of us could leave the apartment, I booked us an AirBnB right by Jungfernstieg in downtown Hamburg.

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I’ve visited downtown Hamburg many times but usually only for day trips or I’d be in the suburbs visiting family. It was nice to be able to leave the building and be in the middle of the action. I let my mom be out and about most of the time. I spent my time playing with my child or crocheting (I’m really into that at the moment).

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The Car Seat Saga

When I did leave the apartment during nap times, I spent most of the time looking for and buying cloth diapers. The car seat I had checked in at the Cleveland airport didn’t make it to Hamburg when we did. I had fastened the entire cloth diaper collection I had into the seat before checking it. I wasn’t about to buy disposable diapers. Luckily, I found some muslin cloth diapers and a new diaper cover I quite liked.

Three days later, I received the notification that they had found the car seat in Amsterdam and would be sending it to Hamburg the next evening. This would’ve given them a whole day to deliver it to the apartment (a 20 min trip from the airport) however, the night before our planned departure, it still hadn’t arrived. There wasn’t anyone I could call either, it was all done via email with the airline (not the baggage handlers).

I ultimately gave them the address of my uncle’s place and told them I’d have to rent/buy a car seat in the meantime since we had a long driving trip ahead of us. They said the car seat was already with the delivery service and that they would inform them of the new address. We took the train to go pick up my uncle’s car that was parked at my grandparent’s house. I went to a children’s store fully expecting to buy a new seat but the owner was so cool and offered to rent one to me instead.

Can a car seat earn airline miles?

Several days later, I received a call in the middle of the night (luckily unnoticed since I silence my phone at night) from Cleveland. The voicemail informed me that my car seat had made it back to Cleveland and they were wondering where they should send it. I called the baggage department back and actually got the same guy on the phone that left the message. We agreed that he would send the car seat back to Hamburg and that it would then stay there until I came back to drop off my mother for her return flight.

Luckily, this saga has a happy ending since I was able to retrieve the seat when I dropped off my mom.

The Germany Road Trip

The three of us covered quite a lot of road… about 2000 kilometers or about 1250 miles. The map below doesn’t include all the stops because Google Maps wouldn’t allow me to add more stops. You can get a pretty good idea of the distance we covered.

For my American friends, driving from Hamburg via Stuttgart to Munich is just a bit further than driving from Milwaukee, WI to Pittsburgh, PA. However, driving that distance in a European country means spanning various cultural differences in dialect, food, landscape, and traditions.

We had a fabulous time visiting family and friends along the way. Below are some pictures from our journey!

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The First Illness

During the second to last leg of our tour, we were in Göttingen, the town I went to medical school in. Amongst other activities, my child and I went to visit some of my college girlfriends who now both have daycare-aged kids. We had a great time visiting, catching up, and playing with the kids. The day after our visits, however, my baby started the morning off by vomiting up all the milk they had just consumed. They then continued to frequently vomit copious amounts over the next two days. All that counseling I had done with new parents during residency when they were dealing with their baby’s first illnesses was taken from theory into practice. At one point, I was feeding just drops of pumped breast milk at a time with a little dropper bottle in the hopes that my baby would keep it down.

Many more outfit changes and long snuggles ensued before my little one felt better. Luckily, we didn’t have any baby vomiting incidences the day we traveled back to Hamburg. Unfortunately, now I had become a bit nauseous and developed body aches. The driver seat heater in the car was much appreciated. Fortunately, I didn’t have to vomit. I can’t say the same for my poor mother. She was not feeling well at all the night before the flight and I was contemplating changing her flight.

Luckily, I had a small home pharmacy of Zofran, Protonix, and Ibuprofen with me that got us through it. I felt back to normal the next day and my mom managed her flight back home fairly decently as well.

I guess I’ll have to be a bit more specific when it comes to “sharing is caring” with my kid. Sharing your germs is not ideal.

So what’s next?

As of right now, I will be in Germany until the end of December. I have a few more people I want to visit. I’d also like to explore a bit more of my immediate surroundings. I haven’t often been a tourist in Germany since I spend so much time visiting family and friends. I’m hoping to see a few new places and revisit a few old ones. Pre-christmas season is one of my favorite times of the year. I wrote about it last year. You can read that post here. I’m so excited to be in Germany for it again this year. It’s been 6 years since I was last here to enjoy the Christmas markets. With the way Covid is currently looking, I should be able to enjoy some markets again this year.

I have a few ideas for things I’d like to write about. I’d also like to share more of Germany with you as I explore it. It definitely shouldn’t take another 2 months before my next post. But you never know what life throws at you.

Hope you are happy, healthy, and well!

mfg