Monday: Departure Hall

A very early start this morning for the long journey home to Vancouver. This is the ceiling of the new Zagreb airport - it's a funny trend that every place I've worked overseas in has had a new airport built as soon as I left. I'm trying not to take it personally.........The new airport is definitely an improvement on the old one.

Our transfer time in Frankfurt should, in theory, have been sufficient but the airport was chaotically busy. Even the staff said they didn't know what was going on. We made our flight by the skin of our teeth - to the extent that there was a big debate as to whether they could still let us on our not as boarding had closed. But as they were aware that we'd come from another flight, they let us on - it was touch and go, though. Strangely, we weren't really worried as we knew we'd get home at some point.

Saw two good films on the flight, 'On Chesil Beach', and the CNN documentary on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 'RBG', which I would really recommend. And some hilarious episodes of 'Portlandia'.

Landed just after 1100, stopped off at home to pick up the car, and then we went straight to pick up Barney who had been boarding at the vets - he seems absolutely delighted to be home (as much as you can tell with cats).

We've had an excellent trip and it's also been quite thought provoking. It was odd to be back in a city that is so familiar but to know that we're not really part of it anymore. But if felt very comfortable to be there. By the time we left Zagreb a couple of years ago we were really feeling the fact that it's quite a small town. This time that's what we really liked and it was lovely to go back and be reminded of what it was that we had loved about living there. I also realised that I miss the history of Europe but I've come to really love the lifestyle and open spaces of Canada. You can love both places and one doesn't take away from the other.