17ish hours on trains from Friday to Sunday

Friday morning I hopped on the 8:35 bus out of Hemberg and began making my 7 hour, 11 minute journey from deep in the heart of Switzerland towards Meckesheim in Germany. My destination was the Germany/Switzerland Intermenno Spring Retreat where I'd meet the 6 other D/CH Trainees, plus the committee and Tim, Heidi and Gustav. At past retreats in Meckesheim, Heidi has cooked for the weekend and she (and Tim and Gustav) didn't disappoint this time. It was a fine balance between family and trainee time, and unfortunately, trainee time cut into family time whenever an interesting discussion began. I did get some Uncle Jon time with Gustav:







One of the purposes of the Intermenno program is learning more about European Culture. What better way to do that than tour a brewery? That's exactly what we did on Friday night after supper. Aside from it being a FREE tour, in ENGLISH, at the end we got to sample the product for FREE. Alone, those are good, but combined it was fantastic!









It's always a good time when the trainees get together. Everyone tells stories from their respective travels and placements, which are always nice to hear. There is usually always wonderful food to snack on (the trainee from Bavaria works on a strawberry farm and Friday was the first day of the season so her hosts sent a couple baskets of berries). We also do interesting activities.

Saturday we were turned lose in Heidelberg with the aim of completing a photo-scavenger hunt. These are becoming ever more popular with the advent of digital photography. We met back with the committee for a picnic lunch on the banks of the Neckar River. Fortunately the weather cooperated for our day outside.

That night we went to a 'Jugend Gottesdienst', or youth church. As one might guess, there was a worship band who probably pulled out all the English P&W/throw up music that they knew. This was evidenced as Charles and I single-handily rescued a male/female call and response song for the males.

On Sunday, everyone slowly left between 1 and 3 pm, with Alyssa and I being the last trainees to leave. I have the longest journey (7 hours) so I wasn't looking forward to the late leaving time. Luckily I made all my trains (with a close call at the Basel Badischer Station) and returned to Wattwil and a ride from Dirk at 9:26 pm.

Last week Maya was gone on a retreat for the school that she teaches at, so Dirk's mom came down from Limburg a.d. Lahn for the week. This meant that I got to work outside all the time, since she was able to be with Salome and cook all the meals. She was fun to chat with and later in the week, I brought up that Heidi was a trainee but couldn't remember where she had been placed. Inge had remembered a Heidi in the 2000/2001 group that was near Limburg. Showing how small 'Die Mennonitisch Welt' is, Heidi had indeed been a trainee there. I love the Mennonite Game. In Inge and Gerhardt's time as trainee hosts they had a few people from Kansas. One name they remembered was Leroy Penner (their first). If anyone who reads this might know of trainees from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, it'd be interesting to hear about that.

On Thursday of this week is a holiday of which I forget the name of. I plan on working a normal day, gaining an extra day off of work while not feeling like I should be taking advantage of a three-day weekend and traveling somewhere. This will also save money for the long awaited visit of Jessica and her family. They arrive on the continent next Monday and I'll be meeting up with them in the Wintersheim vicinity next Friday. It'll be the end of a long 9 and a half months of waiting!

Keep it up,
Jon