Well here we are safe and sound back in England.
It has been an interesting trip and we often asked ourselves why are we doing this! We dragged all our luggage through 4-5 countries and on 2 trains and 3 bus rides. As you can imagine we have lots of things to remember and took many photos, but we are only able to share a small part of this with you.
Leaving Ukraine
We found this very hard to do as we have made some really good friends here but we left anyway to Lviv (west actually) and spent one day there. It is a very old city and quaint. (See photos for streets being made). We then took an overnight bus to Poland, with a 3-4 hour stop at the border!
Poland
We enjoyed Poland, esp.. the city we stayed in -- Krakow. We spent one day visiting Auschwitz (hard to comprehend and really believe) and we also visited Schindler's factory (from Schindler's List -- the movie), and Wawel castle. It too is an old city and has an awesome town centre and atmosphere.
Germany
We then took another overnight train to Berlin, hoping to get in early enough to catch the All Blacks in a pub, but again the we were late and we managed to get the last 30 mins or so in an internet cafe -- Go the All Blacks. We camped in Berlin in "Tent City" which is an urban camping ground in the middle of the city the set up for the world cup. It was an awesome place to stay, we had great tent neighbors and really enjoyed it there. We hired bikes one day (and became a menace to the general public -- esp.. because they had bells on them!) and took a look at the Brandenburg gates, parts of the Berlin wall and other parts of the city. After this, Jono left us to go back to Ukraine and we headed off for Holland.
Holland
It's hard to know what to write about this place... we caught an overnight bus to Amsterdam, and this time arrived early (4:30am) with nothing really organized we started wandering the streets with all our stuff. It then started to rain and before we knew it we were in the red light district!!! I believe that God sent us an angel tho as a guy offered to find us a hostel. He was a really nice guy and helped us get rid of some other unpleasant characters! Without too much detail (the full story is at www.roofellin.blogspot.com) we were pretty shocked with Amsterdam, and decided to stay only 1 night. We did manage to visit while we were there the Van Gogh museum (again hired bikes!) and also Corrie Ten Boom's house in Haarlem, known as 'the Hiding Place' as her family helped Jews during the war. I had read the book as a child and it was almost surreal to be in the house where it all happened.
London
From there we caught another bus overnight to London, crossing the English Channel by ferry and landing at Dover. We arrived in London at 6am in the pouring rain and had a terrible day (see www.roofellin.blogspot.com for the story). The short story is that we now have a flat which we shifted into today (address at bottom of email) and we are thankful to God for good friends, and his provision.
Jon will go into the school next week to sort things out, and I will start supply (sigh) teaching again when school resumes on 4th Sept.
Our updates will become more scarce, but we do aim to keep you informed with how we are and what we are doing. Please let us know if you would rather not receive these anymore.
Until next time...
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