This is a panorama inside the greatest rest stop ever. It’s on an Austrian highway and it sold, among other things, fresh smoothies and freshly grilled pork chops. If you look closely, you can see W almost sleeping with his head down on a tray stack ….

We’ve been on the move over the last few days and we’re tired. Here are two of the more memorable quotes:

During one of two epic drives over the last two days, H shouted this as we entered Austria for the second time in 36 hours: “Weren’t we there yesterday?”

 

While J was pushing yet another point about THE TRIP and reflection and blah blah blah, W asked: “Why does it always have to be about the trip?”

W is right. It doesn’t always have to be about the trip — and we’ve had a fair amount of eye-rolling moments, including W, H, and E’s reaction to this next story. I still think it’s worth passing along:

We visited the Dachau Concentration Camp where many, many tens of thousands of Jews and political prisoners were held, overworked, and — quite often — killed at the hands of the Nazis.

This is a shot of ONE HALF of what remains of the bunk complex at Dachau. There were something like 32-thousand slaves imprisoned there when the Allies liberated it in 1945.

The museum wasn’t particularly memorable. It was raining. We had some challenging family dynamics at play. Dozens of tour guides blabbed their noisy way through the more reflective areas. It was not A MOMENTOUS moment of our lives. Still, as much of the complex remains untouched — the stink of death and pain remains.

As we left, the boys somehow started playing a game of guiding — one boy would close their eyes, another would lead them along the path back to the welcome center.

We discussed the game over lunch. I talked about how many people followed Hitler — blindly. And I explained how S and I are trying to lead the boys broadly in the opposite direction. (LOTS of eye rolling around the table.)

Then I pulled a leaf out of my jacket. It had fallen from a tree just just after I took the Dachau bunk complex panorama picture. And I shared with the family how that leaf helped me realize that LIFE and HOPE live on long after evil.

Not much reaction from the table. And we moved on.

Our family heritage lessons continued today with a stop in Heidelberg, Germany — once home to Gigi and Poppy, birthplace of Uncle Donald, and original location of the SuperBleiFrei dance by S and J seventeen years ago, recreated this afternoon. The dance moves will not be on the test.

Tomorrow in Nashville, Tennessee, the CREIGHTON family is gathering for a massive family reunion. My late maternal grandmother Mama Liz was a Creighton — she’s the baby girl in the tiny black and white photograph at the top of this post. Her name lives on in our family — Creighton is my youngest son’s middle name.

My late paternal grandmother Lois Wildman’s maiden name was KINDINGER. That family name dates back to 1549 in Kinding, Germany (a date, as my Dad emails, “about 50 years after Columbus discovered America.”)

We traveled to Kinding a few days ago. It’s a not a place most people see when they’re visiting Germany. But how many times in your life can you walk through a church built in 1354 … where your ancestors might have once knelt in worship?

One of our hosts here in Germany has been deployed to/in Afghanistan since last summer. We were surprised to see M in his living room over the weekend, wearing his favorite Sleepy Hollow Elementary t-shirt. He was home for less than 24 hours.

In small ways, we’ve seen what HOME means for families in the US military overseas: parents in fatigues dropping off children at soccer practice, “final sacrifice” announcements between TV shows, Army wives mowing their grass, and hamburger lunches at the bowling alley while Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” plays on the loudspeakers.

Happy birthday to strongman Davey Gaskins!!

We are staying in a US Army Base called a Garrison.  This is a picture of the people that live in this house.  They are older now.  There is a soccer field about         100 meters along the street.  There is lots of American food in the refrigerators, and English-speaking neighbors even though we are in Germany.