We were blessed to make some new friends who had a vacant efficiency apartment available on the day we arrived, so everyone crammed in and crashed in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Can you find everyone?
It’s been a week since we’ve posted, and life has been very busy here in Kandern. There are so many new tasks to be accomplished in order to be able to settle (both figuratively and legally) into our new lives, and we’ve been systematically taking care of each of those over the last week (and there’s much more to come).
We want to share many of these events with you (well, as many as we believe might be of interest to you) as we go on. But we also want to share with you about everything that happened leading up to our departure. Some of those events were very special to us, and we’d like to share them with you so you can enjoy them, too.
As such, we’re going to try a bit of an experiment in the next weeks: we will continue to post regularly, but we will alternate posts between what’s happening right now, and events that happened in the last month or so before we left. We’ll title the catch-up posts clearly and consistently, so that you know what’s going on, but that’s the plan.
Today, we’re sharing about our journey over from Houston to Kandern. For those of you interested in the details, we departed our home in Cypress around 5 pm on Sunday, June 21. We flew Turkish Airlines from Houston to Istanbul (approximately 12 hours), had a 4-hour layover in Istanbul, and then flew from there to Zurich, Switzerland (about 3 hours).
Zurich is located a bit more than an hour from Kandern by car, so we rented two vehicles in Zurich–one for the luggage, and one for the people.
This was a Seat Alhambra, commonly referred to as a 5+2 seater–not really designed for 7 people all the time, and with limited cargo space if you use the last two seats in the back. We did. And we fit, but barely.
We packed them completely full, and then journeyed over to Kandern, after a brief remedial driving session in the rental car parking garage (more on that one in another post).
These photos are from the day after we arrived, when we were unloading the checked luggage from the van. Dale packed the luggage van “Peacock-full” and we were able to fit everything we checked into the van–barely. We’re glad we didn’t try to check any more bags, as they wouldn’t have been able to fit.
We rolled into Kandern around 2:30 am, but the temporary house we arranged to rent for a few days (until our permanent housing was ready for us) was not available until later in the afternoon. At the last minute before we left, a new friend from Kandern offered us the currently-vacant efficiency apartment below her house, so we piled in there around 2:30 or 3 am, and slept off the last 27 hours of transit (see the photo above). Everyone slept until noon, and it was good.
Here are some photos of the trip, mostly in chronological order. (If you click on them, you’ll see the larger versions.)
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- The kids were really excited to finally take flight for the first in their memory (except Phoenix). Miranda, Beast, and Cyclops posed at the beginning of the 12-hour flight to Istanbul.
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- We didn’t know when the meal service was to start, so we got some pizza before we left, and fed the kids before we took off. Almost everyone loved it.
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- For the long flight, everyone had their own video monitor, which required some tutoring to learn how to use. Miranda demonstrates the wonders of the video screens to her wards.
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- Before we took off from Houston, the cabin lights were set to disco, where they alternated colors like a color wheel. Wolverine liked this feature a lot, and wanted me to make a few photos of him.
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- What would a flight on Turkish Airlines be without Turkish Delight? They offered little pieces of it to everyone on the plane on both flights. The kids gave theirs to Dale–and he was happy.
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- Turkish was really good about serving real food that was fairly tasty, and we even had menus with choices (basically, the meat, the fish, or the veg option). But we were also able to pre-order kids meals for our younger passengers, so they had something that was tuned to their palates (although when they came around offering salmon to the adults, Cyclops passed on the kids’ meal and went for the filet!).
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- We strategically had two sets of three seats on the outside of the plane, near the windows, and one set of two seats in the middle. Each of the kids got a chance to spend time with Dale in the middle row, but Wolverine spent the lion’s share of the time with him on the long flight. We took lots of selfies during the flight.
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- Everyone slept during the flight to Istanbul, for some length of time (although Phoenix spent a great deal of time trying to look out the window when she should’ve been sleeping).
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- We made the best of the situation, allowing the kids to sprawl out however they needed to so that they could sleep. That often meant that Miranda and Karla ended up as extra seat-cushions for Beast and Nightcrawler.
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- Wolverine slept next to Dale, and he passed out with a vengeance, and slept for quite some time. There was a nice Indian auntie sitting next to us, and she even offered for him to lay out in her lap if he wanted–she was very sweet.
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- Dale made photos of each of the kids on the plane. This was Nightcrawler’s “I’m really enjoying this but I don’t want you to know” face.
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- Wolverine seemed to be totally in his element on the plane. He behaved quite well (we were dubious that this would be the case), and soaked it all in.
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- Beast was fairly quiet on the flight once we got settled, right up until the end. He liked the games on the video screens, as well as trips to the loo.
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- Cyclops loved almost everything about being on the flight–he especially enjoyed the in-flight meals and movies, as well as the kid-oriented goodie bags.
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- Phoenix owned this flight–she was the guidance counselor for all the others, what with her vast well of international flight experience before this trip.
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- When we landed in Istanbul, we de-boarded at the rear of the plane by stairs onto the tarmac, and were transported to the terminal by bus. It was a really big plane.
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- While on the bus back out to the flight to Zurich, someone gave our guys some balloons, which were quickly filled with air and batted around the crowded bus. But it was really fun!
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- In Zurich, we had to take an underground train from the terminal to the baggage claim area. All of the boys enjoyed watching the next car, and the tunnel whizzing by as we went. They also enjoyed the yodeling and cowbells on the intercom.
Thank you so much for keeping us in the loop.
It sounds like you planned your flight very well. I’m thankful the experience was a positive one. Praying you systematically get all the other details ironed out soon. Great blog! God is always good!
I had wondered how the flight would go for you all and now I know. The pictures and story line almost made me feel like I was on the plane with you. The good thing was, I felt great when we got there without the jet lag. Have you done this before? Keep up the blogs, I’m looking forward to them now.
Thanks for sharing. I love you and miss you.