Trajectories

Welcome to our blog! We (Chris and Laura) will be posting here on our travels and journeys–wherever they may take us

Chris and I have been dreaming and planning to move abroad for years now; Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Japan, China, and Hong Kong have all been discussed as possible places. I can honestly say that “Eastern Europe” was not on that list. But, here we are, on our way to Budapest, Hungary after more than a year of planning. The more I learn about the city, the more excited I get about this adventure upon which we are about to embark. (Side note: The above sentence is–I believe–the correct way of putting a preposition into a sentence, but it sounds so pretentious…)

While I had a whole month off from work before we left Minneapolis, it still felt like there was a ton to do the last few days. The photo below shows Chris in the middle of the chaos. You’ll notice there’s absolutely no furniture because we either gave it away or sold all of it. I was a little overzealous about making sure we sold everything and left us without anywhere to sit for over a week.

Chris in our skeletal Minneapolis apartment

Our lovely friends Bob and Lauren let us stay with them our last night and Javier took us to the airport. He snapped this photo right before we took off. All of the bags that we took with us are there. That’s right, we’re moving to Europe with two small bags each. Luckily, I was able to just squeeze in my toothbrush.

We decided to take the scenic route to our new home, so our first stop was in New York for four days. I love New York–if we weren’t moving to Budapest, I would want to move there. The fact that it is always changing is good for someone like me who fears change. I think it would keep me from becoming what I fear even more that change: a frumpy homebody. We stayed with some friends in SoHo and had a great time just bumming around. Literally, we bummed around–it’s far too expensive to actually spend money in New York.

We left for Ireland on the red-eye flight Sunday night. After renting a car in Dublin, we drove up to Coleraine, Northern Ireland, where we are staying with Simon, a friend-of-a-friend. He’s super cool. So is driving a stick shift on the other side of the road. And by “cool” I mean “terrifying”. Here’s Chris trying to not get us killed:

See how nicely his hands are at 10 and 2?

We’ve been to a few lovely places today, and I’ll post more pictures from the trip later. Until then, please sit back and enjoy a little something I like to call, “Chris, can you PLEASE smile for the picture? PLEASE??”