May of 1981 Barbara and Morris went to Austria to visit their daughter Brenda, her husband Tom and their three sons.  Brenda and Tom had been in Austria the past year serving as missionaries for the Baptist Foreign Mission Board.  When they left in May of 1980, they had two sons Kristopher and the newly born Jeremy.  Their third son, Andrew arrived in March of 1981 while they were in Austria. Mom was excited about seeing her new grandson and so her and Dad had planned the trip for some time, but it was delayed until May due to their youngest daughter, my sister, Beth getting married in April.  Mom for many years kept journals of her and Dad’s travels and their trip to Austria was no exception.  Upon arriving in Austria, one of the first thing she did was buy four paper spiral bound Austrian “Schul Blocks” or school notebooks which she wrote in each day. This is Mom’s journal of their trip to Austria.

Notes

I tried to type the journal as Mom wrote it including spellings like her spelling kindergarten as “kindergarden”.  I grew up with her saying “kindergarden” and thought that was how it was spelled until I was in my 50’s when spell checker kept complaining.  Other words she, and all of us kids say, are “sorta” for “sort of” and “til” for “until”.   

In a few cases I added clarifications which are framed with [brackets]  

At times Mom addresses her journal entry to a specific person or persons as if she expected them to read her journal someday. The first reference to such persons is marked with an * and they are described in the Glossary at the end. 

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