Run for the Border Part 2

It is with mixed emotions and no small amount of sadness and disappointment that I announce that the Occasionally Magnificent Seven have had to return to the United States. In obedience to the US State Department directive, we left Vienna on Saturday and drove to Frankfurt, from where we were lucky enough to get a direct flight to San Francisco. After hours of in-flight movie-watching (I watched 6 features personally, a new record), we rented a car and immediately drove to our house in Truckee, CA, where we are now holed up like the rest of you, home-schooling the kids, planning lots of baking projects, going on walks and hikes, Facetiming with friends and relatives, and testing the limits of online ordering.

TOMS friends, I must apologize for the paucity of posts in recent months. But worry not: I still owe you tales from Tanzania, Innsbruck, and Vienna, and we will not disappoint! In the meanwhile, I give you some photos of our strange trip home.

The best part, of which I unfortunately have no photos, was making it across the Austria/Germany border en route to the Frankfurt airport. We had some online information that the border had been closed completely, but also that commercial traffic was able to get through. We also heard that some cars were waiting in line for 10 hours to get across. À la Sound of Music, we were considering finding some minor roads to use (or perhaps hiking through the mountains?) should we be rejected at the border along the main highway. As we approached the border crossing, we were met with a veritable parking lot of giant trucks and a few cars going the opposite direction, waiting to cross from Germany into Austria. Ten hours seemed optimistic for them. We cruised along, wondering when we would hit the big traffic jam. And then, before we knew it, we were chatting with a friendly German police officer, who, without checking our passports or any other documentation, briefly listened to our story that we were driving to Frankfurt in order to go home and instructed us to make no stops other than roadside service stations. “Yes, sir!” we all replied, and had no problem whatsoever making to Frankfurt. What a relief.