This one is longer, but there's good meaning to it. Pictures are at the bottom.
Sometimes your plans don't work out. You may plan too late, some one may bail out on you, or something beyond your control can prevent you from doing what you want to do. Sometimes things work out even better than you could plan them. You start planning an event and instead of having to fit around obstacles, it feels instead like everything was set up for you and you are merely letting people know what you're going to do. Over the last two months, I experienced both of these extremes never realizing that the sacrifice of one plan that started 6 months ago would crumble to pieces but leave behind a silver lining.
While I was deployed in September 2009, Mark and I hatched a plan. I wanted to visit him in Saudi Arabia. Mark never got visitors there, so he happily supported it. We aimed for his spring break in March 2010 which gave me plenty of time to fill out the mountain of paperwork that would be required to get authorization to travel to the Saudi land. To spare you the boring details, the paperwork could give you vertigo. I was asked several times by many people "Are you sure it's worth all this trouble?" and I reminded them "Yes. I'm doing this to see my brother." In the end, my request would go up to extremely high levels of Army command and be rejected twice. If you're in the military, don't plan on visiting Saudi unless you have a "hardship or urgent need". That plan was history.
Forced to flush the plan for me to visit Mark in Saudi, we came up with an alternate solution. Mark would come see us in Germany. He would arrive on March 25 and stay until March 31. And here's where the tide began to turn.
When we came to Germany 2 years ago, I knew that we had distant relatives in the Czech Republic that Grandma & Grandpa T and Uncle Mark had visited almost 20 years ago. I wanted to find their contact information so that we could visit them, too. However, the contact info was lost somewhere. That was 2 years ago. Now that Mark was coming to Germany in two weeks and he wanted to do something cool, I asked Grandma T & Uncle Mark again if anyone had the contact info for Marie Muckova in the Czech Republic. Grandma T emailed me an email address. Success! We emailed Marie...and she replied! Success again! In the span of 1 week, we emailed back and forth, skyped, and made plans to visit them in the Czech Republic during the time that Mark would be here. This was one week before Mark came and he had no idea. It was kind of a surprise for him since his birthday was on March 21 and because I knew he'd like to visit our Czech relatives.
Mark came in on Thursday, March 25. I picked Mark up from the Frankfurt Flughafen and we drove home to Schweinfurt where Angie and Noah were waiting for us. We wasted no time packing the car and heading east that same day. We stopped to stay in a hotel outside of Prague that Angie the Awesome had booked ahead of time. The next morning, we drove the rest of the way to the far eastern end of the Czech Republic where there's a little village called Sedliste. The town was a little confusing for us, so we asked for directions and found our way to the house that Lubosh and his father built.
Marie and Lubosh have 4 boys: Jonash (18), Jachim (14), Damian (10), and Adrian (4). They were great hosts. They had happily made room for the four of us and always made sure that we felt like honored guests. Everyone in the family is skilled in some way. Lubosh is a skilled craftman. He knows carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work. Marie knows how to can preserves. Jonash speaks Czech, German, and English. He was key in helping everyone communicate. Jachim is an excellent cook and builds model airplanes that fly by remote control. Damian is a figure skater. Adrian knows how to play with marbles.
I'll let the pictures and captions tell the rest, but not before I conclude by stating that had the trip to Saudi Arabia gone according to plan we would not have met Lubosh, Marie, and their boys. At least not on that weekend. And that, my friends, is the silver lining.
Our quaint hotel outside Prague that Angie the Awesome booked.
Marie in the kitchen making kolaches (below). I was always amazed at the great work that Lubosh and his father did when they built this house.
This is a kolache. Unlike the ones I'd had in Texas, this one is the size of a pizza and you eat it in slices. The smaller ones that I was used to are traditionally eaten at weddings.
Mark mid-fall after trying to spin and balance on a little wooden block (hidden by Mark's foot) that sits on the larger wooden plank that you can see. The wooden block has a curved surface on the bottom that makes it difficult to balance. Damian uses it to practice spinning for his figure skating routines. Right after Mark finished trying, Damian made it look easy.
This is the house in Velke Karlovice where Marie's grandmother was born and raised. The year "1842" is neatly chiseled into the front door lintel, which is the year that it was built. It has since been bought by people who are not related to us, but is well kept by the owners.
Inside the house at Velke Karlovice. Electricity has since been added but the hand-hewn beams, doors, and much of the furniture is still original. From left to right: Josef, Marie, Jachim.
Angie and Noah standing next to the original wood burning stove, which still gets used regularly.
This is a video of the inside of the house. It moves around quite a bit, but you can hear the names of everyone as it goes around the house and you can hear Josef talking in the background.
Noah plays in the outdoor b'day.
Left to right: Noah, Angie, Jonathan, Lubosh, Adrian, Damian, Jonash, Mark, Jachim, Marie.
Damian and I throw grapes to each other and try to catch them in our mouths. Unfortunately, our successes were not caught on film.
Damian plays piano, Jonash accompanies on guitar, and Adrian leads the vocals to a Czech song.
This was taken on Sunday morning right before we left. Everyone is arranged by family and age except for Mark and Adrian.
Thank you to Lubosh, Marie, and all the boys for making us at home while we visited!
