I’m less than thirty weeks from the end of my stay here, less than 200 days from moving back to the United States.  I’ve watched many of my fellow expatriate bloggers go through the process of leaving, and every time one of us approaches the end, there’s a sort of checklist that we go through.  Been to Oktoberfest?  Check.  Taken the usual picture of Neuschwanstein?  Check.  Had a beer on the Zugspitze?  Seen Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate?  Visited Prague?  Check, check, check.

I’m no different.  There’s a slew of things that I feel compelled to finish before I go.  I still have a few Category One stations left to visit.   I have a bunch of cities and countries that I want to see before I leave.    Moving back to the US won’t stop me from visiting and traveling around Europe, but it will slow it down a great deal.

Even so, the Countdown Checklist mode has set in for me too.   I just got back from Hamburg, and between now and my departure in October,  I’m going to take trips to Dresden, Leipzig, Heidelberg (#hbergmeetup!), Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Berlin again, and Furth im Wald to see a giant robot dragon!

I’m also doing some extreme padding of my “countries I’ve visited” resume before I go.  Here’s the places I’ve got solid plans to visit:

• Brussels, Belgium
• Bruges, Belgium
• Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
• Keukenhof for the Tulip Festival, just outside of Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Helsinki, Finland
• Stockholm, Sweden
• Oslo, Norway
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• Krakow, Poland and Auschwitz
• Budapest, Hungary
• Vienna, Austria (again)
• Bratislava, Slovakia
• Vaduz, Liechtenstein

…and that’s all before mid-summer!

For those of you who have moved back home, did you have a Repatriation Countdown Checklist?  Tell me about it in comments.