My journey

Well, I guess it is time to start with my first post!!!    My trip is going to last eight weeks and cover several countries (or rather, parts of several countries).   It all starts on Sunday 29th July when I fly via Bangkok to Frankfurt in Germany, there to be collected by two most obliging cousins from my late husband's family.   I'm looking forward to meeting them again as they spent some time with us probably about ten years ago, here in Victoria.   Visits to other cousins out in the Bavarian countryside, plus some planned meetings with old friends not seen for many years will no doubt fill the week so it will speed past too quickly.

I will then travel by train to another part of Germany, just on the Swiss border, where I will stay with yet another cousin.    I am quite apprehensive about my German, as to say it is rusty is a gross under-statement.   But I guess I will stumble along somehow.   Having made many hilarious gaffes in the past with my spoken or written German, I know only too well how easy it is to say the wrong thing!!!

After Germany comes a visit to my oldest friend, who lives in Kent - we have been friends since we were about 4 years old and have met as adults a number of times on my previous trips to the UK.   She lives in a beautiful area in the Kentish countryside and my visits to her family are always a highlight.

The next stop will be the island of Limnos in the far north Aegian Sea - hmmm!   What effect will the present troubles in Greece have on inexperienced tourists??   My son's partner is Greek and I will be joining the two of them for a few days staying with her father before we fly to Scotland.   Tony has never visited my home town on the east coast so it will be good for him to see a part of his heritage.

Two weeks in the UK visiting relations and going back to favourite haunts "up the Glens" (Angus is one of the beautiful counties in Scotland - but I am not prejudiced!!) and then I am off to a small village about an hour south of Toronto in Canada to visit very good old friends.   Will the Fall colours be out by early September?   I would like to think so, but somehow I doubt it.   I remember on our honeymoon we travelled by train (the California Zephyr!) from San Francisco to New York, and the colours in Colorado were stunning.

A quick visit to Wisconsin to renew a friendship which has lasted, in spite of not having seen each other since 1967 (will we still recognize each other at the airport??) and then I am off on the final leg, which is to travel from Winnipeg to Vancouver by train, before starting the long flight home over the Pacific, arriving back in Melbourne on 1st October.   An epic journey but one I am looking forward to immensely.