We arrived. It was a long trip, 22 hours, end to end.

We were litterally packing to the time of departure and left at noon for LAX. At the bag drop, three of the four bags were overweight, or more than 23kg, but the British agent was pretty stoic and simply added the overweight stickers to the bags without saying anything. we made it through security, in fact the security officier let me skip the full-body millimeter scanner and let me pass throught the metal detector only. What really helped was the anti-lost toddler bear back-pack that Lukas wore, as this kid likes to run. For a moment we were thinking we could run a luggage-sled with Lukas pulling the entire load, he was so energized. Once, on the flight Lukas decided to sleep, while Anton watched a few movies on the 10.5 hour flight. it is so much easier to fly with the kids this time around it was pretty relaxing. In London, one of our 4 carry-on bags got flagged for a special search and the poor guy had to go through the full contents of a maximum-sized overstuffed bag, which was a good review of what we had packed, some of the stuff weeks ago already – mostly electronics, numerous cables, adapters, pens, papers, and small items, which were all individually checked. He even collected all the liquids, toothpastes, etc and repackaged them. But it took so long, that a huge line of people formed, we left before it became a mob, but I heard some people were not too happy. On the second flight, Lukas kept sleeping, very convenient, and Anton kept watching movies, while Quynh was sleeping on an empty row on the flight. I took advantage of the Indian-style lunch.

The real test was to transfer our 8-pieces 150-plus-kg luggage from the airport to the train along with two kids. The main problem was that due to overcrowding of people entering the train with lots of luggage at the airport, I needed three trips to get the luggage in, while I had to move against the stream of people on the way out to retrieve more luggage. Fortunately, some people came to help me ther, and again at the transfer point in Zürich. At 7pm on Monday, we arrived in Tartar, just 5 minutes before arrival, Anton said, I will close my eyes, but not sleep, the next second, he was deep asleep, and we pretty much carried the kids into bed, where Lukas continued sleeping.