{"id":15363,"date":"2017-01-25T22:39:30","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T22:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesojournseries.com\/bavaria\/?p=15363"},"modified":"2017-01-25T22:43:49","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T22:43:49","slug":"leaving-home-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thesojournseries.com\/bavaria\/leaving-home-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Home (Again!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Yes, I am still alive… \u00a0 If you need me, you\u00a0can probably find me\u00a0underneath the biggest pile of unpacking detritus and\u00a0a mountain of stuff that we have somehow\u00a0accumulated and squirreled away\u00a0in our temporary\u00a0homes\u00a0over the years (and appeared to have completely forgotten about until now…)!<\/p>\n

It’s been a funny old few weeks.\u00a0\u00a0 I had meant to\u00a0get back online and posting well before now, but relocating and settling the\u00a0family in to what is effectively a new country for a few\u00a0of us (as they were so tiny when we lived here (and\u00a0of course one of them wasn’t actually around at all!) last time around), takes time.\u00a0 Not to mention that I have been pretty much without a computer,\u00a0as my old trusty old lap top lost a few screws in the move (literally, they all fell out the bottom!) and gave up the ghost for good…<\/p>\n

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Those last\u00a0days in any temporary homeland always seem slightly surreal. \u00a0 \u00a0When the call finally comes that you are indeed leaving – a call that admittedly you would have given your right arm for on the bad days\u00a0– suddenly only the good days start to play in the kopfkino in your head (German for head\u00a0cinema.\u00a0 I love that expression!) and you find yourself desperately not wanting\u00a0to leave anywhere.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Five years\u00a0is a long time in a place that you\u00a0often fought to call home.\u00a0\u00a0 You invest a lot of blood sweat and tears into\u00a0an unfamiliar\u00a0life wherever it might be, so ripping up those roots to start all over\u00a0again (especially when thanks to work demands, you don’t get a say where your next home is!)\u00a0is often bittersweet.\u00a0 Then\u00a0comes the\u00a0reluctance to start packing up and\u00a0letting the moving process begin,\u00a0as having done it all before, you are well aware of all the exhaustion and upheaval (and all the mountains of stuff!) that lies ahead…<\/p>\n

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As happened when we left Copenhagen<\/a>, I went through a funny kind of mourning process\u00a0shortly before we left.\u00a0\u00a0 It felt completely\u00a0necessary to not only say goodbye to the people who\u00a0had become\u00a0our Munich “not family<\/a>” and community over the years, but\u00a0I also found myself having to\u00a0say goodbye\u00a0to places as well.\u00a0\u00a0Many of which were the places we first\u00a0visited as a family.\u00a0\u00a0 The locations we spent the most time in, that had become\u00a0favourites with us all.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of course Bavaria\u00a0is quite a big place, so that meant a lot of traipsing about saying goodbye, but secretly I was hugely\u00a0grateful for the distraction, as underneath it all it I felt slightly heart-broken about leaving it all behind…<\/p>\n

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No matter how much\u00a0life abroad has driven me absolutely insane at times, what with various bureaucracy and language frustrations, the baby hat police<\/a>, and various\u00a0other situations (that I won’t delve into\u00a0now) that make you think “why the bloody hell are we doing this”?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On the flip side of course,\u00a0there are plenty of wonderful moments when you think\u00a0“THIS.\u00a0 This,\u00a0is exactly why we are doing this”.\u00a0 After all, this was where our older babies had a fabulous few years of global education in the most beautiful school. \u00a0Where they learned to converse pretty well in another language (they don’t take after me with language ability!), and where they learnt to make the most of the\u00a0stunning countryside (and often other countries)\u00a0on their doorstep.\u00a0 We all learned to enjoy hiking for hours in some of Mother Nature’s\u00a0finest works of art (alright perhaps not the Eagle’s nest hike<\/a>!), and some of us learnt to perfect the art of chucking\u00a0ourselves down<\/a> the same scenery\u00a0in the winter months.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This was where\u00a0the Small People\u00a0had the absolute freedom to be children, and where they learned to be true global citizens in an international community.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is\u00a0where we spent five (seven if we include Denmark) valuable life changing years of being a family abroad, and of course\u00a0where we became a family of five.<\/p>\n

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And now, as we embark on what\u00a0is likely to\u00a0be a relatively short chapter at home in England (before that phone rings again!), I\u00a0am going to endeavour to make the most of our time at home.\u00a0 You have no idea how much I will miss “being foreign” though, and all that (and those) we have left behind in Bavaria…<\/p>\n

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Back in a couple of days (promise!) with a tour of our temporary new little city…<\/p>\n

Ps.\u00a0\u00a0 The photos obviously don’t go with the post, but in the kopfkino in my head, it’s this kind of amazing scenery (taken in Austria in December!) I am going to miss the most. x<\/em><\/p>\n

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