Just in case I never get around to writing about the rest of my trip around Europe, I want to make sure I say a little something about my stop in Denmark.

In other parts of Europe, I found more famous churches and castles, including the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and Neuwchanstein in Germany. Yet Denmark remains the most special stop on my trip, because in Denmark, I found family.

For years, my father and I have been in contact with a man named Kim Bernhard Tornby, who found us a few years ago on Facebook and explained that we were related through my Danish great-grandfather. We have been in and out of contact for the last few years, filling in a few of the gaps between his family in Denmark and mine in Oregon, but the connection largely remained the type of cyber relationship I normally try to avoid.

Then, when the possibility of meeting each other in person became a real possibility when I moved to Europe this last spring, I said why not and made plans to include Denmark in the list of countries I wanted to visit.

But when I got off the train in a small town in northern Denmark to stay with this long-lost family of mine, I felt more like I was taking my chances than when I decided to stay up all night in Barcelona so I could make a 7am flight. I knew only a handful of facts about these Danes from Kim and really had no idea how it would go or even if the mystery distant cousins who had come to pick me up could speak English. I prayed to the Danish gods I knew nothing about that all would go well.

I really had nothing to worry about. Within ten minutes and before I could even figure out exactly how we were related, we were joking around about everything from our “hobbit height” to our families and the fat tourists from a country that shall not be named.

Whatever apprehension I had held evaporated as soon as I met the rest of the family, who was all there to greet me at Kim’s house. Immediately I was ushered into their home, introduced to Tornbys’ of all ages, and then sat down to enjoy a number of Danish cakes and coffee.

Perhaps it was because I was exhausted from three weeks of being on the road or because I had not been home in five months, but I immediately felt more safe and relaxed at the Tornbys’ than I had been since January when I moved out of my own house in Oregon.

It was all too easy to sit around with all of them in their backyard and chat about how one of the cousins had gotten a little too drunk at a festival yesterday. Taking a walk on the white sand of Denmark’s northern coast before dinner recalled the hundreds of walks I had taken with my own family on our favorite Oregon beaches. And every hug I received felt exactly like an aunt’s or an uncle’s – a hug from someone who was inextricably part of my life.

There are no names for how we are related (my grandfather was cousins with Kim’s father) but it did not matter. We still took family pictures and I felt accepted as one of their own as soon as I stepped into the door.

I came to Europe for a number of reasons – learn a language, eat cheese, grab some stories. I never could have imagined I would have been able to see the things that I saw, do the things that I did, or meet the people that I did.

And never in a million years would I have guessed that I would leave Europe with a whole new family, especially one as warm, welcoming, and all-around awesome as the Tornbys.

It is all too clear to me now that I will somehow have to find a way back!

*The Tornbys that moved to the United States added an ‘h” **