This blog post is meant to keep us awake more than anything. I can’t guarantee that it will do the same for you. 😉

We are slowly hoping to get over our jet lag. ZZZzzz ZZZzzz. The second leg of our flight was 12 hours long. Ouch. I watched Juno, National Treasure II, The Golden Compass, and the end of Enchanted. ZZZzzz ZZZzzz. <– Elisa is really trying to participate in this blog. As if our traveling wasn’t long enough, they canceled our first flight and they had to give us a completely new itinerary with a completely different airline four hours later. It was a long day.

We’re happy to be hearing English in the streets and the malls. We feel like we know what’s going on. In Zürich we’re outsiders still. We kept ourselves busy yesterday and stayed up until 10:00! And I had woken up at 2 am! Another long day. It was more fun though. We went to the Redwoods and rode a cool train. We played putt-putt golf on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. And we bought throw-away phones.

Last night I was feeling pretty sentimental. After spending the last couple evenings out late with friends who we haven’t seen in awhile I was really looking forward to a night alone with Chad. We had a really wonderful evening and while I said our prayer before bed I became really emotional. I feel so incredibly blessed to have Chad as my husband. I am so grateful we were able to get pregnant after years of me worrying whether it was possible. I can also feel the love I have for Chad growing and expanding to include the little girl we are so blessed to have. We have both been praying a lot that we will be prepared to teach her well and to take care of her. We want to be able to strengthen our relationship so that we can be better parents and do and become all that Heavenly Father desires.

After such a peaceful, tender way to end the day I was unprepared for the chaos my self-conscious was going to drag me through. I woke up after having a very disturbing dream. As I normally do, I woke Chad up and told him I needed his help to forget it but it kept replaying through my head and made me feel so crazy.

It began with me waiting to travel into Seattle for a field trip. A women came and told me that I wasn’t to wait for the rest of the group but that we would go along right then. I stopped at the bathroom before we left. Both my brother, Daniel, and I went into the separate bathrooms at the same time. When I got inside I realized there was no wall between the stalls. I saw there was a beam between the stalls so I grabbed a blanket and draped it over to provide some privacy, only to discover it still wasn’t high enough to shield his view. I decided to wait until later. As I left the bathroom I saw my mom. She told me that she had gotten Chad and I a car. She told me it was a Ford Focus. I thought that it was nice that she had taken care of things but that I wished we had had the chance to pick out what we wanted. At this point I am immediately in the car. I step into the driver’s seat and begin driving from the back seat. There is someone in the front passenger seat. As I am driving the GPS is giving me directions that quickly turn into hysterical and theatrical requests. First it’s a weather warning for high winds even though the wind is nonexistent. Then there are trees all over the road and I am slowly driving to avoid them. The GPS directions turn into my mom’s voice. Then the urgent and whining requests, I realize, are actually coming from the passenger seat and the passenger is me. The other me is crying and whining and out-of-control and acting like a very little child. The windows begin to fog up and from the back seat I am trying to figure out the defrost. I switch something which makes the car veer off to the side of the road. I get out of the car and open up the real driving seat door and lean in to the other me-passenger and try to calm me down. All the while the other me is screaming and crying something about “mommy” who I knew was my mom. Traffic is heavily passing beside us. I lightly smacked the other me on the face to try to snap her out of it so I could get through to her to help her. I thought it is going to look like I am beating somebody up or something. I turn around to see a man walking toward the car on the side of the road. I immediately called out for his help. I thought I was crazy since I was struggling with what appeared to be me in the passenger seat. He looked in shock and I could tell he saw the other me. I was glad I wasn’t seeing things. Then he said, “She’s eating your arm!” I turned back to the other me to see her savagely biting at the arm I had held out to comfort her. Up until this point I was annoyed at the other me behaving like a toddler when she was an adult. But at this point I was completely disturbed and woke up.

I thought the dream was so interesting. And it was funny that Elisa didn’t have any idea what the dream was about. So I asked her, “When do you have two people inside of you and you worry about turning into your mother?” It’s all just a big pregnancy nightmare. And Elisa is getting supplanted or consumed by the mini-me inside of her.

1. Elisa felt out of control by trying to maneuver the car from the back seat. She felt blocked by the trees in the road.
2. She is worried about not being able to understand or soothe a baby.
3. She is worried about the baby taking her place or supplanting her relationship with me.
4. She was worried about turning into her mother.
   

As soon as Chad asked me about when I have two people inside me the dream all started to be very clear. Although I think I am more afraid of becoming “a” mother than “my” mother. I stopped feeling crazy and understood what was really troubling me. What I am feeling is normal even if it is unnecessary. I am generally really excited and feel so blessed to be having a baby that I am sure the fears I have of this huge life-changing step get suppressed a bit. If those fears are going to surface in a disturbing dream at least it is nice to have my very own dream-interpreter on hand.

We always stay in Munich when the weather is crummy. And it always makes us miss home (in Switzerland). Our hotel was in a pretty seedy area by the train station. So we checked out the pedestrian streets and the parks just a little. Then we rented a car for the Romantic Road. (That’s really its name).

We had a few stops on the Romantic Road. The road was only fun for part of the time and we were told to use the highway for most travel between towns. We did pass through a place called Hapsburg that had a cool castle and looked really nice. Our first stop was for lunch in Nordlingen. It was old in structure but didn’t have much personality. Next we stopped in a town called Dinkelsbuhl. We walked around part of its wall and into the center a bit. It was very pretty and fun to imagine life hundreds of years ago there. We then decided to skip Wurzburg and instead have a more liesurely time in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Rothenburg is a walled city and is amazing! The walls are gorgeous and the views are so nice. I loved that part.

Everyone who visits the Romantic Road should do the Nightwatchman’s Tour in Rothenburg. The guide was funny and quirky. He gets to carry a “halberd” for his job. I was in a pretty crummy mood the whole day. My only complaint about this tour is it should have been at the beginning of the day because it was so fun.

We followed a guidebook’s suggestion to go to a spa in Baden-Baden. It’s not part of the Romantic Road. It’s closer to Strassbourg, France and the Black Forest in Germany, which puts it on our way home. The spa has 17 “stations” of showers and steam rooms and hot pools and cold pools. It was really relaxing! All the stations are nude. Some of them are co-ed. This was a little uncomfortable at first! 😳 But we’ve known about it for weeks so we kind of got to prepare ourselves. On the way out, Elisa looked at me funny and asked if I was wearing this outfit earlier. “No, I was naked!” We could have just done that and our vacation would have been fabulous. And I can add one thing to the list of jobs I never want to have: the guy who gives soapy massages to naked men, which was a highlight. (You have to be there. Don’t use your imagination.)

• Photos from the Romantic Road