It’s so hard to say goodbye
Yesterday was such a blurred, long day of travel.
It was quite emotional leaving Veronica and Maarten’s cozy apartment in Amsterdam, a place we had come to know as our transitional home during our trip.
Veronica and Maarten were delightful hosts, taking the day off work to pick us up from the airport when we arrived on our first day - and letting us crash immediately after reaching their apartment to catch a much-needed nap.
Throughout the trip, they did countless kind deeds for us, even washing, drying and folding our laundry while they were at their family vacation home in Austria so we wouldn’t have to wear dirty clothes or pay to wash them in a laundrymat.
When we were in Munich, they got each of us little gifts — Chris a feather that is traditionally worn in the caps men don for Oktoberfest, me a stuffed dog that looked like Simone that they won at a carnival game (and it probably cost them 100 euro to win). They were into gifting stuffed animals — gave Chris a won snoring bear which I said resembled his loud snores at night and snuck away and bought me a little animal wearing lederhosen and holding a frosty beer that when you pushed his foot, sang a song that was played about every 10 minutes in our tent. It was about “prost-ing” which is the way of saying cheers in Germany. They got Carrie a really cool necklace.
And, the list goes on and on about how their kindness abounded during this special trip. I just cannot thank them enough for letting us take over their apartment and their spare room/laundry room and run off for a week and them come back for a few days — this of course continued for three weeks! That is quite a long time to upset someone’s routine.
I have to say, that tears were shed on at least my part when we left yesterday morning. Veronica is a dear friend who I love, and I feel like I have know Maarten forever. We hope we can attempt to extend the same sort of kindness towards them when they come visit us in Nashville. I am holding them to that commitment! They are simply a joy to know and be around, and a lovely couple.
So to Veronica and Maarten — Cheers, Prost, Skal! We love you guys!!!
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