Flights Cancelled! Christmas Plans Scrapped.

Christmas is one of, if not, my favourite time of year. I love the cold nights wrapped up all warm, drinking mulled wine and eating (excessive amounts of) delicious food. I also love decorating the house all Christmassy – I blame my parents for this who did tend to go a little overboard at Christmas, even having special Christmas plates along with the usual stuff.

The great thing about being an international teacher is we get at least two weeks off for Christmas. This year we’d planned well in advance how to make the most of them and were very excited to share those plans with you.

Copenhagen

We very nearly spent a month in Copenhagen this summer before moving to Bucharest as part of a house sit but unfortunately, it fell through at the last minute. So when we started to discuss where we wanted to go for Christmas this year it was at the top of our list, I was probably even more excited than in the summer because of the Christmas markets in Copenhagen, they look incredible and are exactly my sort of thing.

However, for the second time this year our trip to Copenhagen is cancelled.

CC Flickr Credit: Susanne Nilsson

Christmas

Then, we were coming home to spend Christmas in Bucharest but not alone. Poi’s Mum and sister were flying out to join us for a traditional Romanian Christmas! Although I’m not sure there’s much difference between a UK Christmas and Romanian one judging by what the kids at school have told me.

With winter having finally arrived in Romania after our extended summer, I was building my hopes up for a white Christmas (it didn’t happen last year despite being in a ski resort!).

Christmas in Romania is also cancelled.

New Years Eve

I enjoy spending New Years eve in different countries. Most of us do the same thing, go out get merry and count down to a new year and obviously a new me! My favourite so far was last year where we celebrated New Years twice within an hour – with fireworks over Zell am See lake at Austrian midnight and then again at UK Midnight with beers in hand in our favourite bar. It could have helped that the beer was free, as it was all season!

I have been told that Romanians particularly love New Years. Everyone doesn’t just count down to midnight but they celebrate until the sun comes up – around 7:30am!

But we won’t be in Romania for new years eve either…

Something happened on Friday and we now need to change our plans completely.

Poi’s Dad had a heart attack on Friday morning. Luckily he sought help very quickly and received excellent care.

It’s quite amazing just how well he’s doing just a couple of days on but it’s enough to make us want to go home and spend Christmas with our family. So…

…Christmas 2015

Five months after arriving in Bucharest we’re driving all the way back again. We loved it so much the first time we thought we’d do it again.

Hitting the Road Again

The plan is to drive through: Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Beligium, France and finally England. The total driving time is about 28 hours so we’ll be doing it in around 3 and half days. Hopefully making it a little more bearable for both the humans and dog alike.

We’ll be home for around 10 days and are very much looking forward to spending time with our friends and family and of course, all the home cooked food we can stomach. Most of all we are looking forward to spending time with our 6 month old nephew, we receive daily pictures of him and talk blow bubbles over facetime a couple of times a week but it’s not the same as getting hold of him and giving him a big squeeze.

While our Christmas may not be filled with travel adventures anymore it certainly feels like the right thing to do, it only took us both a matter of minutes to agree on that.

Merry Christmas!

What are your plans for this Christmas? Doing anything special?