Today is the last day, which means lot of hugs and maybe a few tears. I suppose I should write some post about how life-altering this experience has been (which it has), how much fun we have had (which we’ve had) and how deeply we’ve changed. But now all I can think of is making sure I get my last few boxes of office stuff shipped to Denver, getting my mail forwarded, meeting the landlords today, and all of those other last minute things. Including “Will all of this stuff somehow fit on an airplane?”

People have asked if this blog will continue once we’re back in the boring ol’ U.S. and although it’s been fun chronicling everything here, I doubt I can keep this up on a daily basis. So perhaps occasionally I’ll show up to let you all know we’re still alive and well, but don’t expect anything consistent.

So for now, tschüß to all and thanks for helping us, commenting here, sending good thoughts our way, visiting us, and most importantly loving us through this whole crazy experiment.

Travis and Milli are now officially back on Colorado soil. Travis reports that Milli did “really awesome” but was still happy to be free of the cage after almost 20 hours in it. Poor thing.

My lonely weekend without Travis involved cleaning (lots and lots and lots of it), packing the remaining few things, and more cleaning. Yesterday I did break free to enjoy an afternoon picnic at the river for a friend’s birthday.

Hard to believe only three days of work left! I get rid of the car today, so I’ll be completely dependent on Jenni from here on.

Well, all 20 of our boxes (plus 2 small suitcases and 1 duffel bag) are on their way to the good ol’ US at the moment and we are left with just the few items that fit into our suitcases. And Milli, of course, and she’s NOT very happy about this situation.

Travis’ flight looks like it will be as scheduled, so for the rest of the day we’ll be working on some final cleaning and tonight will be Travis’ last doner kebab. A sad, sad day for him.

The weather has been absolutely beautiful and we couldn’t have asked for better conditions to be running around, delivering furniture, moving boxes, hoisting a washing machine, etc. Mom, you’ll be happy to know the blue couch was a hit. Tonight, air mattress. Tomorrow, no more Travis

Ash. A big pain in the ash.

I’ve been losing sleep the last few nights over whether or not Travis will be ok getting out on Saturday. A lot of planes are flying, however United (which he’s flying) doesn’t even have any planes on this CONTINENT and every day they cancel their flights from the US to Europe. Basically, he can’t leave if no planes get here. But we still have a few days to think about that. And in the meantime, I’ve read there is another nearby volcano that has gone off like clockwork about every 80 years for… well, forever, and the last time it erupted was 1918.  So even if flights run today, what’s to say they’ll still be running on Saturday?

A lot of people have been asking us if we have dust everywhere, if it’s hurt the air quality, etc. And actually, it’s almost the opposite. These are some of the the clearest blue, cloudless skies we’ve seen in our entire time here. On Sunday we had a picnic by the river and enjoyed the beautiful weather and reminisced about our adventure. It was an absolutely perfect day, although the lack of jet engines over the city was a bit unnerving.

So obviously, yesterday’s post didn’t make any sense. Those weren’t pictures of the Luminale. Those were pictures of the pillow fight from Saturday. So instead of switching those pictures out, I’ll just pretend like I MEANT to put pillow fight pictures up. And today I will talk about the pillow fight and post pictures of Luminale.

Confused yet?

A group of people (3,000 people, to be exact) organized a Pillow Fight in downtown Frankfurt. We heard about it through our friends who heard about it through the grapevine, and so on. Everyone was to go to the specified area at a certain time, holding a disguised pillow (we both had pillows in bags, but I don’t know how disguised that really is). Someone in the crowd was to indicate when to start and then… fight time! For 45 minutes, pillow chaos ensued. Onlookers were shocked and entertained (or at least I’d like to think so).

See YESTERDAY’S post for pictures.

And now, pictures of the Luminale:

The stages of the moon:

That darn pesky volcano ash appears to be ruining our weekend. Our friends from Berlin were set to fly in this weekend and now Berlin’s airport is closed and ours may be as well. I just hope this all clears up in one week when Travis flies and also when I fly, because I am scheduled to go through London where the worst of it is. Might be messy!

Because I have nothing else to write about today, I did do some research on the question I had yesterday and the best answer I found was:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Weeks_Notice
Reference is made to Lynne Truss’s book “Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” in which she cites the example of the film title “Two Weeks Notice” as incorrectly punctuated because there should be an apostrophe after the “s”.

So, two weeks’ notice is correct, and two weeks from now I will be on a plane back to the U.S.

We also sold our last two pieces of furniture today, so that’s pretty much all we own! Time to update the “For sale” page…

(Can someone tell me if it should be two weeks’ notice or two week’s notice? Or maybe just two weeks notice? That one has me stumped and I don’t want to hurt my brain thinking about it.)

Two weeks from today will be my last and final day here in the office. Today I started pulling things down off the walls and dusting off all of my junk in preparation.  We’ve officially sold all of our “big” items and have just a few items that don’t make sense to take back to the US - a hair dryer with an EU plug, a book on Germany, a big heavy uncomfortable couch. This weekend we’ll finish packing up the kitchen and then that will pretty much be it!

List of things we no longer have:

• Beds
• Wardrobe (which means closets for the Americans reading this, because apartments usually don’t have closets)
• Winter jackets (already packed somewhere, perhaps prematurely as it is still winter here apparently)
• T.V.
• Lots of furniture

List of things we still have:

• A very uncomfortable and way too small couch
• A still-sold car (YAY!) for 500 euros more than we originally asked, even with a bad clutch (which has also been disclosed)
• New bite-free hoses in car
• Lots of love (which is very important when sleeping on the couch mentioned above)

I took the car in to the garage this morning and had it checked before we try to sell it. A few things have my head spinning.
1) Some kind of an animal has been munching on my hoses. There are small bite marks in them all that need to be replaced.
2) The clutch is bad. $$$$$.
3) The car is actually worth a lot more than we were planning on selling it for. Which is good, but I already have a buyer at a lower price. So now it’s back to wheeling and dealing, which I hate.