After a two hour flight from Berlin we landed at the ultra-modern airport located near Oslo. We were greeted there by Hege who was the third foreign exchange student that we hosted. She lived with us during the 1994–95 school year.

Hege, all 6’1” of her, remains as a bubbly and full of life today as she did 25 years ago. We will be guests of her family for the next four nights. This is Christine standing next to Hege and Jan’s 15 year old son!

She, her husband Jan, and their three children plan on visiting us in Missouri later this Summer. Every member of the family speaks fluent English, however the children seem to make fun of their father’s English which they consider to be less than perfect. We disagree!

Hege and Jan are both teachers in a nearby elementary school. They both have a pleasant lighthearted demeanor that must endure them to their students. Hege has explained that she is assigned a class in the first grade and then follows that class as their teacher for the next seven years. She becomes very close to the class members as if a member of their own families. I asked Hege if she ever had students that she found “challenging“. “Of course,” she replied, “it just means that I have to try harder.” I have no doubt that she does, and successfully.

Norway has approximately the same population but twice the land area (5.2 million and 149,000 sq miles) as the state of Missouri (6 million and 69,700 sq miles).

Norwegians enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world, ranked sixth worldwide in per capita gross domestic product (USA is 11th), and 1st in the International Human Development Index (USA 10th) which seeks to quantify factors such as the delivery of healthcare, education, infrastructure, housing, nutrition, life expectancy, and personal freedoms. Our 30 minute drive from the airport to Hege’s home community visually confirmed these statistics.

We are approximately 400 miles from the Arctic Circle, the farthest north thus far on this journey. We are also nearing the summer solstice. Therefore, it was still “daylight” at 11 pm and it never did get totally dark. At 2 am the brightening skies forced me to get up and pull down the blinds.

Today is a “chill out“ day so we are doing laundry, catching up on a little reading, and I’m trying to figure out how to make my iPad “cooperate“ again. I am currently typing this on the annoyingly small screen of my iPhone. No pictures today, but I hope to remedy that tomorrow when we travel into Oslo to tour the sights that might include the Viking Museum and the Kon-Tiki Museum, dedicated to Thor Heyerdahl’s epic 1947 voyage from Peru to Polynesia on a pre-Columbian raft.

We have 10 nights to go before we are home in our own bed.

Peace Everyone! Pete

This was our last full day in Berlin. I am writing these “Thoughts” in the early morning hours of June 11th. There are 11 nights of this journey yet before us, 4 in Oslo Norway, and 7 in Iceland. Yesterday afternoon at a local cafe we met our friend from the recent Portuguese Camino, Stanislaw Mowinski, together with members of his family.

It was a wonderful reunion that integrated our recent friendship with “Stanley” and our decades long friendship with André.

Before that meeting we toured the Berlin Neues Museum. Built between 1843 and 1855, it is located on Berlin’s “Museum Island”. It was heavily damaged during World War 2. It’s restoration was finally completed in 2008. The museum houses a remarkable collection of prehistoric, early history, and ancient Egyptian artifacts. The iconic 3,350 year old bust of Nefertiti is the most treasured object on display.

Although photography was allowed throughout most of the museum, it was forbidden in the chambers that housed the bust and very ancient documents. Those documents included early Christian writings, 5,000 year old Egyptian papyri, and even a tablet from the 4,000 year old “Epic of Gilgamesh”, believed to be the world’s oldest surviving work of literature.

I was allowed to photograph the working models that were excavated from the workshop of the artist that sculpted Nefertiti. They appear incredibly modern in their form and detail, in spite of being over 3,500 years old!

The following image of the bust of Nefertiti is an internet image.

I was captivated by the extent and quality of the collection. Among the statues were 4,000 year old poses that conveyed the most natural of modern relationships.

Our tour ended and we adjourned to a nearby cafe and then on to André’s home where we rejoined his wife Asuka and daughter Helena. We enjoyed dinner with the family and then said our goodbyes.

A series of seemingly insignificant events brought André into our family. We all agree that those events altered the course of our lives, and continue to do so today.

As a gentleman said to us at the start of this journey, “In Life there are no coincidences.”

Peace Everyone. Pete

PS. My iPad has essentially shot craps. I have posted this note using my iPhone. Writing narrative, downloading pictures, transferring and then organizing the pictures on the website is very difficult with the small device. If I cannot get my iPad to behave then it is quite possible that this will be the last posting before we arrive home.

This was our last full day in Berlin. I am writing these “Thoughts” in the early morning hours of June 11th. There are 11 nights of this journey yet before us, 4 in Oslo Norway, and 7 in Iceland. Yesterday afternoon at a local cafe we met our friend from the recent Portuguese Camino, Stanislaw Moritz, together with members of his family.

It was a wonderful reunion that integrated our recent friendship with “Stanley” and our decades long friendship with André.

Before that meeting we toured the Berlin Neues Museum. Built between 1843 and 1855, it is located on Berlin’s “Museum Island”. It was heavily damaged during World War 2. It’s restoration was finally completed in 2008. The museum houses a remarkable collection of prehistoric, early history, and ancient Egyptian artifacts. The iconic 3,350 year old bust of Nefertiti is the most treasured object on display.

Although photography was allowed throughout most of the museum, it was forbidden in the chambers that housed the bust and very ancient documents. Those documents included early Christian writings, 5,000 year old Egyptian papyri, and even a tablet from the 4,000 year old “Epic of Gilgamesh”, believed to be the world’s oldest surviving work of literature.

I was allowed to photograph the working models that were excavated from the workshop of the artist that sculpted Nefertiti. They appear incredibly modern in their form and detail, in spite of being over 3,500 years old!

The following image of the bust of Nefertiti is an internet image.

I was captivated by the extent and quality of the collection. Among the statues were 4,000 year old poses that conveyed the most natural of modern relationships.

Our tour ended and we adjourned to a nearby cafe and then on to André’s home where we rejoined his wife Asuka and daughter Helena. We enjoyed dinner with the family and then said our goodbyes.

A series of seemingly insignificant events brought André into our family. We all agree that those events altered the course of our lives, and continue to do so today.

As a gentleman said to us at the start of this journey, “In Life there are no coincidences.”

Peace Everyone. Pete

PS. My iPad has essentially shot craps. I have posted this note using my iPhone. Writing narrative, downloading pictures, transferring and then organizing the pictures on the website is very difficult with the small device. If I cannot get my iPad to behave then it is quite possible that this will be the last posting before we arrive home.

I am typing this in the early morning hours of June 8th. Before us are 13 more nights on the road and then home. In the meantime we continue to enjoy local cuisine, in this case real Vienna Schnitzel.

The June 7th night train from Vienna to Hannover with connection to Berlin did not depart until nearly 9 pm. We took that as an opportunity to spend the day wandering the cultural center of Vienna Austria, and what sights there were! Our 7 mile sojourn left us certain that we would return some day to see the treasures contained within the monumental structures that we passed. The 12th Century St. Stephen’s Cathedral was the only building that we entered, and there we ascended one of the towers for an overview of the central city an to see the “Plummerin” (bell) which weighs nearly 50,000 pounds and is the third largest swinging bell in Europe. I apologize for not including information about the buildings in the following pictures. We felt like ants wandering in a land of giants. Perhaps details will come with a future visit.

We were in Ireland when I made arrangements for the night trains. This was the one part of our journey that I wish I could have planned earlier. I secured the last available first class cabin for out inbound transit to Vienna but only a second class sleeper was available for the outbound. The difference is significant. Unlike the privacy and amenities we enjoyed in our 2 person first class cabin, the second class “couchette” is a cabin for 6 passengers with the beds arranged 3 high across from each other. I and one of the other passengers ascended to our top bunks by a narrow metal ladder and had to be careful not to sit up quickly lest we bang our heads on the ceiling. The cabin was warm but tolerable down below, however near the ceiling it was 10 degrees hotter. In deference to the privacy of the other 5 passengers I took only a few pictures looking out on the countryside from our carriage.

André Lieber was our first foreign exchange student. He was a part of our family for the 1992-93 school year. He still calls us Dad and Mom. André met his wife Asuka as students studying Chinese in Beijing 18 years ago. She was a Japanese national. Among the languages they spoke they held only English and Chinese in common. They have since also learned each other’s native tongues. They and their two darling children live in Berlin where André is employed by the Ministry of Finance and Asuka by a private corporation. The children are bilingual in German and Japanese, also now learning English. Theirs is truly a world family!

André met us at the train and we immediately began a tour of Berlin. He was able to arrange a rare private tour for us of the Reichstag, Germany’s center of government. The Bundestag was in session so our tour did not include the actual parliamentary chamber.

The Reichstag was severally damaged during World War 2. This rebuilt structure is ultramodern but retains much of its historical facade. Atop of the Reichstag is a huge glass dome containing double-helix ramp-ways to ascent and descend the top of the dome.

We saw much in our overview walking tour with André. I will end this note with our moving visit to the 2003 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It consists of a grid work of 2,711 slabs covering nearly 5 acres. Beneath the field of “stelae” is a museum that somberly details the stories of the 7 million victims of Nazi genocide between 1933 and 1945. In one room brief recorded biographies of the dead are read aloud in German and English 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These biographies are being compiled in Israel and it is estimated that the current collection will take over 7 years to read aloud.

Our day concluded with registration at our comfortable hotel, and a 2 minute walk to André and Asuka’s apartment where we enjoyed dinner with the family.

Peace Everyone. Pete