From May 18 through June 3, I was assistant staff for the 2009 Big Sky Expeditions missions team. Our group was made up of 7 college students, team leader Scott and his wife Anna, and me. We spent 8 days in Slovakia, and then another 8 in Poland. My itinerary from there: Krakow, Poland to Banovce nad Bebravou, Slovakia (June 4); Banovce nad Bebravou to Bratislava, Slovakia (June 5); Bratislava to Vienna, Austria (June 6); Vienna to Brno, Czech Republic (June 8); Brno to Prague, Czech Republic (June 9); fly out of Prague (June11). A canceled flight left me in Salt Lake city for an extra day, and I got back to Missoula on June 13, tired and sick with a cold, but happy.
And now, some highlights:
- Seeing Wagner's Die Walkurie at the Vienna State Opera. Watching from the very top step of the top standing area in the hall, I was enthralled from the first notes in the cellos and basses. While I still can't condone the plot (yikes!), it is very fine art. I never thought I'd like Wagner.
- Seeing the Vienna Philharmonic in the Musikverein, also with a cheap standing area ticket. Music there was pretty good, too. :)
- Meeting people from all over the world. At the international church in Vienna I met Americans, South Africans, a Kenyan, a Romanian, a German, a Pole and even a few Austrians. After lunch at a Mongolian grill, most of us went out for coffee at McCafe. Totally sacrilegious, I think, to get lattes in Vienna at McDonalds, but that's what they wanted to do! And it was there that I discovered that one of the aforementioned Americans recently met someone in Minnesota that I know from Boston. Small world.
- While I mostly traveled alone, I was met at bus and train stations by old and new friends at every stop along the way. Yes, all that email correspondence paid off! "Hello. Are you Sylvia? I'm..."
- A few of these friends were able to show me around their cities - my own personal tour guides. Sweet.
- Waking up and wondering, "Where am I?" Between the time I left the Big Sky Expeditions team in Krakow on June 4, and when I slept in my own bed again June 13, I slept in 5 different apartments, 5 buses, 3 train cabins, 4 planes and on 1 basement couch. This morning, somewhere between waking and sleeping, it happened again. I woke up just enough to remember, smile, and roll back over.
- Watching the beautiful Central European countryside pass me by on buses and trains: green and hilly, accented by the red roofs of villages, a few kilometers apart, and the occasional castle.
- There were a few moments when things got interesting - for example, the first day of my solo trip when I traveled alone into central Slovakia, far from the tourist path. On my second train of the day, I asked the young lady sharing my cabin if she spoke English. She shook her head sheepishly. With gestures and a few words of Slovak from the phrasebook I had bought, I asked her when the train got to Banovce nad Bebravou. Our attempts at understanding each other were not very successful. I couldn't tell if she couldn't understand me, or if she didn't know the answer to my question, or both. A little while later, I was thinking about trying to find the train conductor. Then I overheard my cabinmate say "Banovce nad Bebravou" to someone on her cell phone. The next thing I knew, she was handing me her phone.
"Hello," I heard a woman say to me in halting English. "This bus... no go... Banovce nad Bebravou."
"Oh, thank you! Thank you very much."
Smiling, I returned the cell phone. My cabinmate said to me "Trenčín," and I knew she meant that it was the stop at which I should get off. I replied "Ďakujem veľmi pekne!" [Thank you very much], a phrase I repeated a few more times before we parted ways.
Things like this happened a couple of times, people helping me out in moments when I really needed it - the lady at the airport on Vienna who told me where to find free internet for a few minutes, the train conductor in Trenčín who pointed out my bus, the family in Salt Lake City that took me in for a night and a day. I felt surrounded by angels...
- Meeting and chatting with missionaries and ministry leaders in Brno and Vienna - just getting a taste of the reality of these places and what God is up to there. Exciting, challenging, raw.
- A few God encounters, particularly in Krakow and in Brno, when He felt very near and I felt a hairsbreadth away from knowing what He has been leading me in to. So close, but not there yet. Still, the experience made me think I'm on the right track. Some things I know: I really like it there, I know I'll go back, and I'm sure I'll live somewhere in Europe at some point. Probably Central or Eastern Europe... but who knows. And the exact date I may be arriving? No idea. Sigh. Guess God will let me know just in time. That seems to be His way with these things. :)
From what I understand (which is very little!), this phrase means something like "Everything is okay." It's what you tell your mom when she calls to ask you if you made it somewhere safe. I think in English I would say, "I'm good." I felt this was an appropriate phrase to end this post since, despite all my stress and worry over this trip (before and during!), everything was... good. And some parts were very good. And I arrived back in Missoula safe and sound enough to set even my mother at ease!
Update (June 30): to see pictures from my trip, visit my Central Europe '09 set on my flickr photostream. Enjoy!
