Prague - the beginning

Prague - the beginning (or: ...next time I bring a tripod)


Good that bad beginnings are not always an omen for what is to come, because our much anticipated Prague trip did not have the best beginning at all.

The train from Nuremberg to Dresden - where we had to switch trains - was nothing but 2 cars and therefore way overcrowded with people, bikes and luggage. This is a train in which you cannot reserve seats and so we found a bit of space in the hallway on the floor. After a few hours people were getting off and we snatched seats. Nuremberg and Dresden are not that far apart, but the train winds slowly through the countryside and takes 4.5 hours - which under better conditions could be beautiful. We had just a few minutes to change trains in Dresden, where my mom was already on the train. Two more hours and the train spit us and hundreds of other travelers out at the most ugly train station ever: Holešovice; welcome to the outskirts of Prague.

It took us almost 45 minutes to find out where we have to take which streetcar, get czech koruna - thousands actually - and tickets and make our way to the hotel. In the hotel we found ourselves not in the beautiful advertised rooms, but directly under the roof, with half broken sky windows and no view whatsoever - at least they were spacious, which I was telling myself, while trying to be positive.


A few days before we left, a friend posted on Facebook that he is ready to leave on a tour through Eastern Europe and with a bit of back and forth, we found out that we will be in Prague at the same time, what are the chances of that? We had not seen or spoken to him since we left CA over 10 years ago and had just gotten back in touch via Facebook. My mother stayed in the hotel, being tired from traveling and we set out to meet our former Tanner colleague Owen. Come to think of it, we met a lot of old Tanner folks on this trip, as Owen called it: the Tanner Diaspora.


We met at U Modré kachničky (The Blue Duck) on Michalská street in the Old Town and had a good time, even though the kids behavior was impossible, they were antsy and tired at the same time, did not like anything and were complaining and whining - which I truly detest. We had a misunderstanding about the menu, which led to an unanticipated big bill, but in the end, it really did not matter and we had a lot of good food and the presentation was nice too. Johanna was amazed at her mushroom soup in a mushroom shaped bread.



I was so happy to meet Owen again and I wonder why we lost touch in the first place. Thanks to Facebook and Serendipity, we had a fun night. After dinner Owen took us quickly to the town hall tower with the astronomical clock that is even nicer than the one in Venice and the square around it. Even though it was crowded with tourists, it was pure magic to see it at night and the not so fortunate beggining made way to the excitement of a new city.


On the way home along the river Moldau we also saw the castle towering above the city - so beautiful. (picture above, but really, I need to bring a tripod!)

Fürth, Nürnberg & Erlangen

Festivities over, all focus could move to our visit in the Nuremberg/Fürth/Erlangen region with our awesome friends Stefan (we went to school together) and Michaela and their daughters Lena and Maja. Lena is right between our girls and Maja a bit younger. Our four girls get along so wonderful and have a great time. They had not seen each other in three years and last time there were a lot of tears at good bye time. This time we came equipped with more time. I love visiting Stefan and Michaela, because I feel so comfortable and right at home with them. We can talk about everything and nothing and forever, what a gift to have such great friends. I just wish we could see each other more frequently or live closer and do some conceptual art projects with Stefan.
Even though there is a huge amount of history and fantastic buildings, we kind of took a break from it and instead of visiting culture, we talked about it and had fun.
They live in a loft right by a big park in Fuerth, so hanging out in the park was our start. I noticed that I need to work on my badminton skills and that Sophie is very good with the Frisbee. Maybe she should play Ultimate.

We tried ourselves at mini golf and I think the course was about 50 years old and everything was crooked and uneven, but still fun. Math was useless in this case.
Johanna has been bugging us for two years to have her ears pierced and if you look closely, you can tell that we caved in. She really wanted to do it with Lena and so we did.
One of the big city squares is called 'Fuerth's Freedom' and has a big, modern sculpture fountain that was fun to horse around on.
The best fun park in the world is the Playmobil Fun Park outside of Fuerth. I think we could easily spend a few days there. It is a park to be active and do things, you entertain yourself on about 12 huge and complex playgrounds that offer anything you can imagine to do. Sophie was very sad that we only went once.
Oh yes, another Biergarten (only 335 years old), this one had 'Schnitzel'-day, yum - and very good beer.
The paper featured an article about kids tours in the catacombs and cellars of Nuremberg and it seemed an appropriate activity on a hot very hot day. We were almost 60 yards under ground in cellars where water was collected and beer was stored. It was an interesting tour, though I am not sure if the kid actually listened to much of it, they had more fun just walking around in the labyrinth with their flash lights.
Sophie of course was very busy taking pictures of about anything we saw, a lot of her pictures are quite good and she picks interesting perspectives and motives.
City walking, walking, walking...
...and resting. The girls got americanized in Germany since their friends are obsessed with Hannah Montana.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner were usually taken on the big roof terrace...
.... the setting sun ...
... and rising moon included.
The kids tried to skype some of their friends back home.
When Michaela had an appointment in nearby Erlangen, I jumped at the chance and visited my old school and the town I used to live in many years. It was very strange to visit, I felt completely out of place, somehow it was all the same and all different. It made me feel a little uneasy, but I have a hard time putting it into words. It might be that there lies a certain melancholy in visiting a place from the past. Good memories that I had not thought about and that make me yearn for the past and memories from the other side of the spectrum, that I wish I had forgotten and still leave a bad taste in my mouth. To be honest, I was kind of happy to leave Erlangen.

Kids are not bogged down by those musings, they are more concerned with Nintendo DS dogs pregnancies...

... or which slide in the local pool is better.

Our favorite Biergarten is very difficult to reach with public transportation, but we had been to the Lederer Biergarten in Nuremberg three years prior and so we decided to meet friends there. Well, in three years, some thing change, the great playground was almost gone, but instead there was a live soccer television event. If I would have wanted to see the game, it would have been great. After a first round of beer and pretzels, we decided to take a walk by the river.
Arne worked with John at Fraunhofer Institute when John lived in Germany and we became friends with him and Gisela. They have two girls now, almost 4 and 2 and they are so adorable and funny. We walked to this old water wheel and it is all made for having fun with the water. Are there children that don't like to play with water? I have never seen any.
Across from the water wheel is an interesting structure made of tree trunks, it is a a kind of balancing obstacle course that is for all ages, though I kind of think mostly kids do it. The kids all had a blast and John and I were thinking of how we could do a park like this in the States. In our menagerie of old friends are also Dirk and Britta. I went to school with Dirk, when we were both transplants from North Germany. They came to dinner to Stefan and Michaela's house one night and I made mushroom risotto and they invited all of us over for a German Kaffeeklatsch (Coffee, cake and well, actually, Britta and I had tea).We always have a good time together and we will see them again before we leave.
To make our last night with the four girls special, we took some gigantic sparklers into the park and lit them at a fountain. We will go back to their place, but they will have taken off to Italy by the time we are back. Goodbyes are so sad, I really wish we would not have to wait so long between visits. But if we would move here, we would miss our American friends, so the only solution is to be rich enough to fly around the globe more often (and at the same time supress our eco conscience).

Sophie's birthday

Having her birthday in August, Sophie is usually somewhere else on that day. She had never been in Germany on her birthday though. If she could, she would interrupt my writing here and insist on telling everybody that her birthday is really on two days, since she was born exactly at midnight. The moment I planned our vacation, I knew she would want to celebrate with Lena and Maja and so we left my cousin and his family the night before.


Sophie had an awesome birthday morning, who gets to wake up with friends on their birthday after all and on top of all, they gave her an awesome present - a pony ride!


After the ride-out, we had a nice birthday celebration with cake sparklers, paper air snakes, humongous bubbles, crowns, tongue tattoos and what not, it was the most perfect weather and hanging out on the roof terrace was bliss and gave the bubbles many stories to float down.

When John had looked for tickets a few month ago, he had found a flight that would arrive on Sophie's birthday in the evening, so we had planned everything around that. However, he did not buy that ticket, instead was to arrive a day later as we found out. Sophie thought that was quite alright, after all, he would come on the second birthday day, which he did not, he arrived finally on Monday, 2 days later than expected. Missing was half his luggage, according to the standards of Murphy's law, the one containing her present, a camera. Eventually even that arrived and she has been behind the lens ever since.

Burghausen

As the finale of our stay with the Bavarian cousins, we took a trip to Burghausen, a very old town on the river Salzach (remember Salzburg) and the home town of Hellen. Burghausen is about 2 hours east of Munich on the border to Austria. Hellen's parents were so nice to invite us into their home and were lovely hosts. I am two weeks late with my entry, which bothers me, but for some reason I never found the time while being in Frankonia and then in Prague, I sure hope to catch up a bit before we leave and post enough to catch up before we return home.


Burghausen is a small town, but was very rich due to the salt trade and has a spectacular castle, hence the name Burghausen. This castle is so special, because it is the longest castle in all of Europe, being 1043 meters long, over a kilometer. It has all these different court yards, the most outer one being the least important and the inner one the most important. Nobody was ever able to reach the important part.

Unfortunately the light was not cooperating and it was a very overcast and gray sky and therefore my pictures are missing their typical luster. Even though it is not necessary to have blue skies and sunny light - it can make it hard - bright white can be very annoying.


A very interesting style of defense were these round stone balls, that people pushed down the mountain. I think it must have been an aweful job to make these obviously labor intensive balls and see them all go so fast in a fight.


The town lies down in the shadow of the castle, which is sitting high atop a mountain ridge. On the other side of the Salzach is Austria. There are some interesting stories with the castle, like the one when Napoleon came riding towards Burghausen, but since I am already about 2 weeks behind with the blog, I think I might have to add them at a later time and just show pictures.


There is a well known dress maker for dirndl dresses, the traditional alpine dresses which Johanna absolutely adores and we went and bought some fabric and a pattern book, so don’t be surprised if you see us looking like we jumped out of Sound of Music. Even without a dress, Johanna did a nice 'model shot' for us.


It was a bit strange to leave, because the little ones stayed with their grandparents and so we had to say goodbye to the Bavarian cousins. Johanna left in a very mixed mood, she had been very sad for days to leave the children, but she was also looking forward to see Maja and Lena, such an emotional zig zag is hard for a girl with preteen mood swings.