Berlin, Germany

This is the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

What an amazing history Berlin has! In the picture above, K is pointing to bullet holes in a building from WWII. I can't imagine finding bullet holes on walls in Indianapolis from a war.

We were astounded by the stories of landmarks our tour guide relayed. For the people living in Berlin, it seemed as if the Berlin Wall went up basically overnight. Families were separated from each other, some on the Western side, while others were stuck on the Eastern side. Western people could enter the Eastern side, but Easterners were trapped. People went to drastic measures to reunite, or just plain escape from the Eastern side. One man and his family zip lined from a restroom inside a building where he was employed as a janitor. He sailed right over the wall, onto the other side. His little son was so scared to go that he bribed him with a new bike if they made it safely to the other side. This and other stories came to life in the museum we visited.

Here are the kids standing along the graffiti filled wall. Below is another view of the wall. It's immenseness is overwhelming.

The bricks represent where the wall stood throughout the city.

Checkpoint Charlie was where people could cross back and forth.

At one point of the walking tour we supposedly were standing directly above the bunker of Adolf Hitler.

At this eerie location, there are two levels of Berlin's past. The brick offices toward the bottom of the picture were used for Hitler's offices, and the Berlin Wall stands directly above.

We walked through the Holocaust Memorial.

Part of it seemed small, then at other times I was scared of losing my child around the next corner.

Luckily, we brought them both back home safely!

St. Petersburg, Russia

Normally people need a visa to enter Russia, but tourists exploring the country with a cruise line are exempt from that rule. The only problem is you are required to stay with the cruise tour guides. With all the drama going on back home with trying to purchase a house and quickly move back to the other side of the pond before schools in Indiana start, K had no time whatsoever to try and research Russia. So, we just blindly signed up for the "Best of St. Petersburg" tour. It had to take us to the BEST places, right? All we really needed to see was the famously photographed Russian building, the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood (which at that time we had no idea what it was called, but had seen it many pictures of it). Well, apparently it didn't make the cut. So, K and I were touring around in St. Petersburg's museums all day, while listening to oh so boring facts about the city thinking, "When will we get to the Spilled Blood Church? Well, that never happened. We weren't the only disappointed ones. A sly American family was organizing a plan to leave the tour to walk down and get their prized picture since we were just a few blocks away...I saw it in the works (the teacher in me) with all their wispers and glancing around, but K and I are too much of rule followers that we just couldn't get the nerve to do it too. Those rebels! But, they got the picture. I came very close to asking them to e-mail a copy to me so I could pretend to claim it as my own.

Even though we didn't come home with our prized picture, Catherine's Palace was one of the highlights that made "The Best of St. Petersburg" list. Inside was one of our all-time favorites...an amber room. There were all kinds of amber stones and mosaics made with amber glued to the wall. It was pretty incredible.

After quite an exciting lunch of Russian entertainment, we continued on our tour, visiting the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Tallinn, Estonia

Ruins of St. Birgit's Convent in Talllinn.

We loved this! Alexander Nevsky Cathedral just had a beautiful facade.

Stockholm, Sweden

Kinda funny that yet another European city is called the "Venice of the North."

Our next stop, Stockholm, allowed us to tour a rescued sunken ship that was built top-heavy with war ammunition. During it's unveiling, it sailed less than a nautical mile in 1628. It was left at the bottom of the ocean when rediscovered in the 1950s while a hull was sticking out of the water. The Swedes pretty much built this museum (above) around the ship (below) after recovering it from the water. The kids saw skeletons found in the ship, but we decided those pictures might be a little morbid.

We are leaving Sweden behind, glancing for some nice summer homes in the area.

This house was secluded on it's own island.
This was our favorite to dream about owning.

MSC Poesia First Stop - Copenhagen, Denmark

During our month long return to the States, we found out we were moving back to America. Quickly, we found a house to purchase, flew back to Belgium, cleaned out some items we didn't need to move back with us, and boarded our last cruise as expatriots. This one was a northern European cruise with the first stop being Denmark.

Thatch roofs were all around in the quaint fishing village of Dragor.



This was in Copenhagen - the Amalienborg Palace.

This was just a little walking tour we did through part of the city.