Welcome, Welcome Sabbath Morning!

Going to church for the first time when living overseas is always an adventure.  You don't have your car yet, so you are forced to figure out the public transpo system, and by nature public transpo is ALWAYS an adventure.  Today was no different.

Church started at 1 p.m. and Ben figured that for us to be on time we'd need to leave the hotel at 10:30!!  I'm sure you're thinking why not just take a taxi?  But it would have cost 40 Euro for a 30 minute drive.  No thank you. 

So, the first leg of our journey was a 2 mile walk to the train station.  No buses available.  

I was excited to get out and get moving since we've been cooped up in our small hotel room for the past several days.  

Mock my Ushanka all you want (Ben got it for me in Moscow), but it keeps me warm!  And get used to it, because I'll be wearing it in almost all my pics!

The only problem was that the trail either had snow or worse, ICE.  So slippery.  We almost face planted like 15 times, but Providence was on our side.

It was a beautiful and invigorating walk... so many trees around here.

Ben said this is what the Germans exclaim when they fall on ice:

I cringed as Ben very carefully rolled the stroller down the icy steps onto the platform

 The platform was like an iceskating rink, people were slipping and sliding all over the place.  This lady was awesome... hair to match the earrings and leggings. 

A rare smile for the camera from Caroline, so had to post it

The icy platform

And the train!!  You can tell we're new here, can't you?  Taking pics of the train.

The girls loved looking out the window

After making a switch from the S-Bahn to the U-Bahn, we finally arrived at our stop.  One-half mile up a slippery slope to the chapel.

And finally, at 12:30 after two hours of transit we arrived at the church!! (Ben always builds in extra time where ever we go, hence we are always early to where ever we go.)

The sight of the chapel was very assuring, but do you sense something amiss in this pic?

The parking lot is empty!!

And the doors were all locked

Not long after our arrival, this sweet family came upon us.  They are members of the ward here, from Hungary, and were also looking to go to church.  They let Ben use their cell phone to call the elders, and yep, church was cancelled due to the ice.  They didn't want members out on the treacherous ice.

Oh, the irony!!

So, what did we do?

That's right, we went to a Doner Kebab restaurant

  

Judge us all you want, but the girls were fetching cold and we had to get in somewhere warm.  My mom said when she was a girl back in Chicago the whole clan went out to dinner every Sunday after church.  And her grandpa was the bishop!  Why can't it be like back then? 

 Then we repeated the entire process to get back home, this time, not so excited to be taking pics.  We got home just before 4:00, frozen solid.  But, hey, at least we got out of the hotel room.