We held tickets for Saturday's train from Chicago to La Crosse, but this was Monday and Amtrak had threatened to charge us $30 each for "changing our itinerary." Obbie got to the ticket counter and told the agent that our plane had gotten us there two days late. She went ahead and changed our tickets without charging us, and we moved on to our last holding corral.

Main line European trains run hourly. Main line American trains run daily. But after two months on European trains, Amtrak felt luxurious. If we could trade in the luxury for the utilitarian but comfortable trains buzzing around Europe, would we get more trains? We think a lot of people would ride trains if they were as cheap and plentiful as they are overseas; but most of the Amtrak system is designed for the mid- to up-scale leisure traveller, not for the ordinary folks who just want to get somewhere. As much as we've railed in the past about America's nasty habit of putting quantity and price ahead of quality, this is one area where there's too much emphasis on quality and not enough on making something cheap and plentiful. We'd been spoiled by Europe's rail system, and as our Amtrak made its way through the north side of Chicago we saw the price we pay for lack of such a system: big parking lots everywhere, and highways choked with oversized cars and trucks.

From our spacious and cushy seats we continued to add to the travel journal for week 8 while the sites through our window became more and more familiar. First it was the landmarks of Milwaukee, then a grand Wisconsin lake (still no ice, it's been a warm autumn while we've been gone), and the barns and silos characteristic of Wisconsin dairy farms. Not long after treating ourselves to dinner on the train we pulled into La Crosse where our friend Sherry was waiting to cart us the rest of the way home.

Remembering that our keg of home brew had gone dry just before we left home, we stopped to get a couple of weeks worth of beer. Faith greeted us at the door of our own house, which we found pretty much as we left it, clutter and all. We'd worn the same clothes for two months, so the first thing we did was change into something else. Ariel, our bird, was glad to see us.

There's nothing like coming home to the comfort of a familiar ritual. The Packers were playing on Monday Night Football half an hour after we got home. Ariel sat on Obbie's shoulder to watch the game, as green and gold feathers blended in next to green and gold tie-dye. We left the sound turned down so that we could talk to our friends and exchange our tales of Europe for their tales of life at home while we were gone.

So how does it feel to be home? Too many things are too much the same. When we left there were flags flying all over the place and the news was full of war, and the local bickerings were about naming the football stadium and whether the Doerflinger Building is up to code. Two months later, we come home to flags flying all over the place and the news full of war, and the local bickerings are about the naming of the football stadium and whether the Doerflinger Building is up to code. Hey, did we miss anything? Good.

It's refreshing to note that dissent is still alive and well in America, even though it didn't appear to be from overseas.

Now that we've been home for a ten days, friends are gradually checking in. Everybody always says, "we would've called earlier, but we wanted to give you guys some time to adjust." Let it be known that anyone who has been waiting to give us a call doesn't need to wait any longer. We're as adjusted as we're going to be. Our stuff is unpacked and put away (well, almost), the mail has been sorted, the bills have been paid, and we are settling into a day-to-day flow-of-life for the winter. We're ready to take and make calls, and we'd rather hear from friends than from telemarketers.

So this will close our travel journal for the purplearth 2001 european oddyzee. Expect a quick note when the last of the photos appear on our web site (www.purplearth.net). We appreciate the many messages of praise, kindness and encouragement we've received along the way; and we hope that more people get encouraged to embark on adventures of their own, because the rest of the world is not as scary as some people want us to think it is.
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Obbie and RoZ