Proximity and The Black Forest

THE PART THAT STILL AMAZES ME about Europe is proximity. We lived here for seven months and I still find it incredible.

Take, for example, our vacation next week. Come Monday we will take the week off from work and school and spend the week in Paris.  We can do that because although its in a different country, it's about as close to us as Minneapolis was when we lived in Ankeny.   We will hop in our van and be at our vacation home in a little over four hours.  It's so convenient and close it will actually be our second trip to France in five months, as we drove to Normandy in the fall.

OR TAKE OUR TRIP IN APRIL when we have another vacation planned, but we aren't sure yet where.  If we draw a circler around our house within a driving radius of, say, six hours, the choices include:  Northern Germany, The Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Italy,  France, Luxembourg, Belgium, or the Netherlands (to name a few).   Decide to go by Ryan Air or train and the options for 6 hours open up even more. Compare that to driving six hours from our  Midwest home in Iowa...and we'd still be in the Midwest. The scenery barely changes.

OR PERHAPS WE MIGHT FIND ourselves sitting around some morning on the weekend with nothing to do, and decide to take a drive. We could, for example, pack a lunch, hop in the van and go check out the Black Forest. The Northern edge of the Black Forest is about an hour away, and we could keep going and check out a place like Triburg and Germany's Highest Waterfall, or the Cuckoo Clock Capital of the World, visit a Chocolate shop and buy some very odd looking Chocolate figures (Geldscheisserle, I'll let you try to translate that yourself).  Then we might go on a stunningly scenic drive on the way back, from South to North, and make it all the way back home for dinner.  I mean, we could do that....if we wanted ;).