A Long Day

I'm writing this from the food court of a mall on the west side of Bucharest.  The leadership huddle I attended this week ended yesterday, and I had to check out of the hotel at noon.  My bus back to Sofia does not leave until 4pm.  My Bucharest friends are all doing something today, so I have nowhere to go and nothing to do for the next couple hours.

My bus will arrive back in Sofia at about midnight tonight.  This is how April 30, 2015 will begin for me.  It will be a long day full of travel.  It will begin in a bus at the Sofia central bus station, cross multiple countries, and end 36 hours later in Rockford, Illinois.

After arriving at the bus station, I will take a taxi or tram to a wonderful little apartment near the Serdika mall on the east side of central Sofia.  There, I will spend what is left of the night as the guest of five of my favorite people.

In the morning I will swing by my Sofia home to drop off some things that I don't want to bring back to America before going to the airport in the late morning.

Just before one in the afternoon, I will take off and fly over several countries to Germany.  There, I will once again enjoy a brief stay in one of the finest airports in Europe before the long flight back to Chicago.

I will land in Chicago a bit after 6pm.  After taking a quick hour or two to get my luggage and clear customs I hope to step outside to the smiling face of my Dad and/or Mom waiting to pick me up.  (By the way Mom and Dad, can you pick me up at O'hare tomorrow night?)

If for some reason they are not there, I will then panic and run around like a crazy man looking for the bus to Rockford.  (I find that panic is usually the best way to deal with problems.)  Either way, Lord willing, I should find myself in Rockford sometime before midnight.

And that is how one gets from a bus in Sofia to a bed in Rockford in one day.