Unexpected Surprises

By Klaus Kirchhoff

An American couple in their seventies begin a four-week long vacation to Italy and Germany with their adult grandson Brian. They have a well-planned schedule about where to visit including friends in Germany. While in Florence, Brian sees a gorgeous girl leaving a gelato parlor.
Under curious circumstances their paths cross again. She serves breakfast at the hotel where they are staying. Her name is Gina, she is a German journalism student from Munich. Brian asks her our for dinner and they like each other.
Seeing Brian’s grandfather, he reminds her of somebody and she soon realizes who this is. She now becomes curious and attempts to find out the person’s background. When she does, it becomes an incredible revelation that leads eventually to a surprising meeting between the grandfather and her mother. This changes the planned vacation drastically to everyone’s delight. Brian and Gina fall in love as the story ends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665579865

Klaus Kirchhoff

GERMAN-BORN KLAUS KIRCHHOFF immigrated to the United States in 1964 and settled in the Los Angeles area. There he met and married Brigitte, his wife for fifty-four years. Klaus brought a degree in Architectural Engineering from Germany and obtained a Professional – Civil – Engineers in California. But he spent most of his professional career in Project Controls management on some major engineering/construction projects in several countries around the world, among them Iran and Saudi Arabia. After retiring in 1998, he moved with his wife to Carlsbad in San Diego County and he now resides in Oceanside after his wife passed away recently. He enjoys good music, traveling, creative writing and hours of companionship with friends, sharing his great sense of humor by telling jokes and funny stories.

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© 2023 Klaus Kirchhoff. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/19/2023

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7987-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7985-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7986-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023900674

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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About the Author

Dedicated to

my wife Brigitte in loving memory

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O n the last Friday in June, Chuck Kirby was driving his in-laws, Peter and Christa Sommer, as well as his son Brian to the Los Angeles International airport and dropped them off at the Tom Bradley Terminal from where the three would fly via ALITALIA airline to Rome in Italy. He said, I will catch up with you just as soon as I park the car.

Peter Sommer replied, We will check in our suitcases and wait for you before we go through the security checkpoints.

Peter and his wife Christa were in their mid-seventies and while Peter’s hair had turned white, he still looked younger than his age. He was less than six feet tall and had developed a slight pouch. His face was oval in shape, he had blue eyes under thick brown eyebrows. His nose was long, his thin lips seemed to always smile showing his white teeth. He was an attractive man for his age and he expressed a positive image of himself. His wife Christa was a few inches shorter, she had curly blond hair complimenting her pleasant face. Her eyes were a light blue, she had a short nose over full lips and brilliant white teeth. Her face was oval and friendly. She was a beautiful woman and had kept a slim figure. Their grandson Brian was about six feet tall, had a trim and muscular figure. His eyes were a dark blue under bushy eyebrows. His hair was light brown and short. His face was long in shape and his nose and mouth were well formed. He was a handsome young man and he appeared to be a friendly person always ready to smile, showing his bright teeth.

When Chuck caught up with them fifteen minutes later, they had waited for him and it was now time to say goodbye. He hugged the three of them and said, Have a great trip and let us know when you get to Rome so we know you arrived safely.

Brian said, Yes, Dad, I will text you since you will be in bed by the time we land in Rome. I will also keep you posted every couple of days how things are and what we are doing.

I appreciate it, you know your Mom always worries about you when she cannot see you. Chuck smiled and Peter replied, You’ve got that right. Linda is like her mother when it comes to worrying.

I know. Anyway, have a great flight and a super time over there, enjoy yourselves, take lots of pictures for us to look at when you get back. With that he began walking out of the terminal; turning around once and waved at the three travelers.

Peter, Christa and Brian now processed through the security checkpoints and went to the lounge ALITALIA shared with three other airlines. Since their tickets were for seats in business class, it entitled them to wait in the lounge and enjoy some food and drinks. It took another hour before their flight was called and they could board the 747 which would take them first to New York for a brief stopover before they would continue on to fly to Rome.

Once seated, Peter ordered Mimosas for them and said to his grandson, I have been waiting for this and I want to reflect on how it all started when you visited us in Chandler exactly four weeks today. Quite a bit happened, right?

Brian answered, You can say that again. When I had called you a few days earlier and asked if I could visit you over the Memorial Day weekend, I was down and you might say even depressed. I did not like what was happening in my life and decided to talk things over with you. That was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. I will be forever grateful to both of you.

Christa said, I remember the afternoon you called and asked if you could visit us since you wanted to talk about issues. When I asked you about your girlfriend Ashley, you told me you had broken up with her and I really felt sorry for you. But there were other things that bothered you even more.

Peter stated, I cannot tell you, Brian, how happy you made me when you turned to us to talk things over. Seeing you when you arrived, I could tell you were emotionally in bad shape and needed advice. Just think, how things turned around. That was four weeks ago and now we are flying for a month long vacation to Italy and Germany and I am certain we will have a great time over there. And when we get back home, you are starting a week later a new job in Chandler for the City as Deputy Director for the Parks and Recreation Department instead of relocating with your former employer to Chicago.

Brian smiled and responded, Yeah, instead of living, working and most likely hating to be in Chicago, I can now look forward to starting a truly challenging job in Chandler in August with a higher salary and even better benefit package. And I have to thank you for it. I will never forget that and will be forever grateful to you, Grandpa. I will make you proud when I start my new job; that I promise.

I cannot ask for anything more and if Grandma can get you hooked up with a nice Catholic girl and you get married, you will make her very happy as well, he looked at his wife and asked, Right, sweetheart?

While Brian began to laugh, Christa was serious and answered, Why do you make it sound as if this is something bad. Brian knows I love him and I will do my best to find him a very nice girl.

About an hour later, they were served dinner and drank wine with it. They continued to talk about the places they had planned to visit in Italy. It would be for Brian the first time to be in that country. He told his grandparents he had tried to learn some Italian words and short sentences and was very much looking forward to all the sights and different places. He once again thanked them for taking him along on this trip.

Arriving in New York, the layover was just an hours and they walked to the airport lounge to wait for the connecting flight. Just before midnight in New York, their trip continued, a six-hour flight to their destination Rome. They were served a light meal and then agreed to try and catch some sleep. Christa and Brian were able to do so rather quickly but Peter had a difficult time of it because he had to think about events from his past. And not just the past four weeks but his life since coming to America fifty years earlier. He had arrived in California as an immigrant. A cousin of his had sponsored him and Peter had intended to spend only a few years in America before returning to Germany.

But five months later, he had met a German girl called Christa at a dance in a German Club in Orange County and they fell in love. Christa wanted to remain in America since her sister and her family was living nearby and she was very close to them. Realizing this, it was relatively easy for Peter to agree to stay in America as well. They got married nine months later. Within a year, they became parents of a beautiful girl they called Linda and two years after that, they added a son called Mark and now were a four-person family.

Peter had studied and received a bachelor’s degree in Germany in electrical engineering and worked for a few years as electrical project engineer on several projects before coming to America. While he had not planned to necessarily work in that particular field, it changed when he decided to stay in the United States. He applied for and soon got a job in his profession with a major engineering-construction company working on projects around the world. On some of those overseas assignments, he had been able to take his family with him while others were single-status projects and he still regretted having spent those years away from his family. Fortunately, he had never been away for more than six months at a time, yet he had missed some important dates in his children’s lives. Things like graduations and birthdays. But those days were a thing of the distant past. When Linda, who turned out to be the younger version of her mother in looks and appearance, was twenty-five years old, she married Chuck Kirby and they soon thereafter adopted Brian.

Peter and Christa had been able to be there and share in the joy of being grandparents. They had never missed a birthday or other special events of all of their loved ones.

From the day he first laid eyes on Brian as a three-week old infant, he had loved this child. While some people did not warm up fast to someone who was not a blood relative, Peter never had these feelings towards Brian. He considered him his grandson and they had bonded right away. Brian did not like every person he was introduced to and acted differently, even hostile at times but he did not do this with Peter. Their affection for each other was strong from the beginning and Peter went out of his way to spend as much time as he possibly could with his grandson.

When Brian turned one year old, Peter and Christa bought him a yellow-orange golf cart, build for children. A few years later, when Brian showed an interest in playing soccer, Peter was there to play with him and to get him ready to play on a team of five year olds. Having played soccer in Germany, Peter was taken great pride to teach Brian what he could and all those hours together were fun memories for them both. Peter recorded some of it on video.

When Brian’s sister Clarissa was born, Peter was pleased but it was not the same for him. Yet his wife Christa was overjoyed and she took right away to the little girl. She bought her granddaughter dolls and toys and whatever she could think of and they also played together once Clarissa was old enough to have a dollhouse. Peter and Christa enjoyed being grandparents to them.

When Brian got into his teen years, the relationship between him and Peter did not change at all. Instead, being older, Brian brought up other issues with Peter and they talked at length about all sorts of things. Brian had learned to play the piano. In fact, Peter had paid for the lessons and was proud when Brian became an excellent musician. At age fifteen, his first year in high school, Brian had falling in love with a girl in his class and when it appeared that she did not like him, he had come to his grandfather to ask for advice how to get closer to her. Peter sat down with Brian and suggested how to approach things and when it worked, Brian thanked him.

This went on and whenever Brian had a problem or wanted to discuss things with someone, he would turn to his grandfather. Peter was more than delighted that their closeness did not vanish with time. Peter treated Brian like an adult and would share some of his own experiences of his past.

When Peter retired at age sixty-five, he and Christa moved to Chandler, a great place to live in Northern San Diego County. The town was a quaint coastal community with slightly more than one hundred thousand residents.

While Brian lived at home before, during and after finishing college, some topics made him uncomfortable to talk to his Dad about but he could always do so with his grandfather and he visited his grandparents several times a year.

As a pre-college graduation gift, Peter and Christa had decided to take Brian after his junior year at USC to Germany and spent time with friends and family coupled with some sightseeing. They did not travel to where Peter had lived in northern Germany but instead stayed in Bavaria near Munich where Christa grew up. They took several trips into the Alps and even visited Austria. During this vacation the two men had gotten especially close five years ago. Peter and Christa could show Brian the way they had grown up and by doing so were able to introduce Brian to a side of German lifestyles which tourists and other visitors never experienced. Instead of just rushing from one tourist attraction to the next, they visited friends and Brian learned so much about the way German families lived their daily lives and he had thoroughly enjoyed it. The memories of that trip were still vivid in his mind and he loved to talk about those days five years earlier. It was clear that he looked forward to visiting Germany again and also that Italy was on the agenda.

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2

A fter Peter visited the toilet at one time during the flight, before returning to his seat, he asked a flight attendant if he could have a cup of coffee. She told him she would bring it in a few minutes. His thoughts now turned to the events of the more recent weeks. It all had begun with a phone call from Brian, asking if he could visit them over the following weekend. Brian indicated that he had some issues he wanted to discuss with them. Peter and Christa agreed and could not wait to see Brian again. From the way Brian had sounded, Peter assumed it had to do with his job and still living with his parents at age twenty-five. He got the idea to offer Brian to come along with them on their trip to Europe and talked it over with Christa and she agreed with him completely, That’s a great idea, he would love it..

But Peter felt that Brian’s major issue had to do with his job and decided to do something about it. Since moving to Chandler ten years ago, Peter had developed friendships with business leaders in a variety of industries, as well as the Mayor and Council members of Chandler. He had met executives of many local companies and even a program director at a television station in San Diego. He decided to make some calls to some of them in the next few days to inquire about potential employment opportunities for Brian if that was the main issue Brian wanted to talk to him about.

Brian had arrived at his grandparent’s home on a Friday night. He had looked tired and Peter decided not to talk about anything important but wait instead until the following morning. After breakfast, they had driven to a nearby park where Peter asked Brian to share what issues he wanted to talk about. Brian opened up and said he was unhappy at his job. He felt he was getting more work assigned to him and the group he supervised but it was not reflected in his salary. To boot, he had been told that the company had been sold and would relocate to Chicago in about three months. When Peter asked him how he felt about that and what his parents had suggested he do, Brian replied, he did not want to stay with the firm and relocate to Chicago but now did not know how to look for another job, especially one that was paying more than what he was making now.

That is when Peter shared with him that he had contacted Mayor Patrick Waller of Chandler and inquired about any potential job openings with the City. As it happened, there was a position open as Deputy Director of the Parks and Recreation Department. Peter had arranged for them to meet with Mayor Waller a few hours later where he had introduced Brian to him.

The meeting went well, Brian was encouraged to apply for the job which he did within a few days. His resume was impressive and it resulted in him being asked to return to Chandler for interviews with several other people. All went well and Brian was offered the job with an annual salary of nearly eighty-thousand dollars plus benefits. He was thrilled and accepted the offer. While it required the formal approval of the full City Council, it was considered merely a formality and would take place within two weeks.

Based upon this, Brian had terminated his job with his current employer and that is why he was able to travel with his grandparents to Europe. Peter smiled when he thought back about how grateful Brian had been towards him, thanking him repeatedly and offering to pay his own fare. His grandparents had told him he should accept their invitation and save his money.

Peter and Christa were very happy about Brian living and working in their town come August and looked forward to having him close by. Christa was determined to do what she could do to find out if there were any nice girls she could introduce Brian to. She told all her friends and was hopeful it would happen.

Brian’s parents were at first skeptical about this development, especially his mother who worried that Brian had quit his job before knowing whether or not the Chandler City Council would approve hiring her son for the position he had applied for. But Peter assured her that it was just a formality and he would let her know as soon as he would find out from the Mayor that it had taken place. He expected this to happen via e-mail as Mayor Waller had promised to do.

His thoughts returned to their trip agenda. They would be in Rome for three days, rent a car and drive south for two days to visit Sorrento, take a boat’s trip to the island of Capri and also visit the ruins of Pompey near the town of Naples. From there, they would drive north to Florence where they planned to stay for eight days and visit sights in the surrounding Tuscany region. After that, they would fly to Munich in Bavaria where they would visit friends nearby. Peter planned to rent another car to take several trips into the Alps. Their stay in Germany would last two weeks before returning to California. He just hoped that the weather would be pleasant in that it would not be raining too much. This was the only unknown for them but he thought it should be okay, especially in Italy.

Peter had finished his coffee and returned the cup to the galley; he now tried to get some sleep before landing in Rome. He managed to do so for just two hours before they were served breakfast on the plane. They landed at eleven o’clock in the morning local time in Rome. It did not take much time to clear passport control and customs. Taking a taxi to the hotel and after checking into their adjacent rooms, they freshened up, changed clothes and decided not to rest but instead visit the Vatican right away.

Waiting for a taxi in front of the hotel, Peter said to Brian, The first thing I have to do is find out where I can make arrangements for your grandmother to meet the Pope in person for a private audience. She will be very disappointed if this does not come off.

Brian looked at Christa and waited for her response, she did not let him wait long and said to Peter, Why do you always have to make fun of everything, especially something like this? She just shook her head and punched his arm. He laughed and answered, Let me at least try, okay? Who knows the Holy Father might have regular meetings for small groups of visitors, especially if they have traveled as far as you have.

Just shut up. Instead let’s enjoy being here.

Brian had to laugh about how his grandparents could still joke about things and needle each other. They were married for almost fifty years and yet Peter would not allow an opportunity to pass by without trying to still needle her when it came to religion and her faith. The nice thing was that they never really got mad at each other over what was said.

They took a taxi to the Vatican and began to enjoy being in St. Peter’s square before entering the Cathedral. It was for Brian a very impressive time and he enjoyed being inside. When Peter inquired about a visit to the Sistine Chapel, he was told, there were tours at certain times during days and they needed tickets for that. They bought tickets for a tour on Monday morning.

By four o’clock, they decided to return to the hotel, have an early dinner at one of the restaurants on the premises and turn in for a good night’s sleep. The food was excellent and they drank a bottle of red wine with it.

Peter asked Brian, What do you think you and I should do when Grandma goes for Mass tomorrow morning to St. Peter, any suggestions?

Brian laughed and looked at his grandmother who said, Don’t even think about it, you guys are coming with me. She looked at Peter and added, If you keep talking like this, you might find a change in your marital status soon.

Brian could not stop laughing and waited for Peter’s response. But he just sat there, smirked, raised his shoulders and whispered to Brian, I don’t want that. I better stop now. It looks like, we have to go with her tomorrow. He then got up, leaned over and gave Christa a kiss on her cheek. Brian knew all was okay between his grandparents and he envied them for being the way they were.

Sunday morning, they got up early, enjoyed a huge breakfast and returned to the Vatican to attend Mass. They got very good seats in one of the front pews and it was for Christa an absolute delight to be this close to the Holy Father. Peter and Brian were equally impressed being in his presence and all three enjoyed being there. Peter knew how much this meant for his wife and how much she had been looking forward to it. After Mass, they joined the thousands of worshippers in St. Peter’s square who received the blessing from the Pope from the balcony shortly thereafter. They took their time at the Vatican and did not return to their hotel until early afternoon. They skipped lunch and took a bus tour to some of the ancient sites in Rome, among others, the Coliseum.

During dinner, Peter said to his wife, This was a wonderful day for all of us but especially for you and I am happy for you. I know how much this meant to you. He leaned over and gave her a kiss and she thanked him.

She asked Brian how he had liked it and his answer was that it had been an unforgettable experience for him and