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).