Geremania - a travel blog

Prague - the beginning

2009-08-19T22:47:00.006+02:00

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

2009-08-15T10:50:00.001+02:00

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

2009-08-14T23:20:00.006+02:00

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

2009-08-14T22:23:00.007+02:00

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.

Nymphenburg palace & Munich

2009-08-05T10:26:00.004+02:00

Originally we had planned that John would work in Munich for a week, since his company has an office there, but it did not work out. So somehow we just got one Munich day and decided to go to the Nymphenburger castle, because I just love it. Sophie was delighted with excitedment to ride trains, subways, trolleys and buses again.

Nymphenburg castle - not unlike other spots during this vacation - comes with a story of my past. In 1990 a friend of mine, Max and I had thought it might be fun to spend a weekend in Munich. Being students we could not afford a room, so we decided to leave early Saturday and come back Sunday night. We figured we could just sleep in the car for one night and that it would be a fun adventure. If you sleep in a small and uncomfortable car already, at least pick one of the most beautiful spots with a pretty view and therefore we parked in front of the Nympenburg palace. It was very romantic, except that we were not romantically involved at all, so don’t let your mind go there, all we had were heady, intellectual discussions. In the morning when I woke up all sore and not very rested, I noticed that there was a line of 5 tourist buses next to us. I looked up and to my shock and surprise, saw a whole group of Japanese tourists glued to the bus window taking pictures of us, how bizarre. Actually, that is probably what they thought of us.

The baroque Nymphenburg palace - comissioned in 1664 - was the summer residence of the Bavarian rulers and crazy King Ludwig II was born there in 1845. I have always loved the park for walks, admittedly more in the fall, when you have less tourists and beautiful light and foliage. The 490 acre big park was an Italian garden at first and then changed into an English Garden in the 19th century. I think what appeals to me is the big open space, there is so much sky, so much air to breathe.

The girls and I strolled towards and then through the castle and had a lovely picnic in the shade, overlooking the statues and watching the tourists., trying to figure out which statue was which Greek god/godess. Whenever I see people taking pictures of each other, I offer to take one of them together and I was very busy with that. It is kind of funny to think about all the pictures I have taken for people over the years. It is almost turning into a kind of sport for me.

13 years ago I had found a great dealer of leather material and had been wanting to go back since then, but it just was not very convenient living on a different continent. So this was the day. The kids were awesome, they were not only patient, they loved the huge halls with all the rolled up skins, they invented games and showed me some pieces they loved. When Johanna told me she would love to stay there inbetween all the cool leather for a week, I was very happy, the apple does not fall far from the tree (ir the mom :))

The second store where we were supposed to get all the hardware had moved, so that was a bust and we went to Munich’s famous market, the Viktualienmarkt, instead. By then we were so tired and hot and it was so crowded, we just looked for place to sit and drink some Bionade - Johanna’s favorite drink, a kind of alternative and healthy soda. We even took an earlier train home, not that we wanted to waste Munich time, but we were too beat.

We had planned to visit the English Gardens for a pretzel at the Chinese tower. Three years ago when we went, the moment we wanted to have dinner, the clouds opened up and dumped a torrent of rain and spoiled our chances to get anything and we had to go back to the hotel. This year we were determined, but one can imagine how hot and exhausted we were, when we all decided to skip it yet again and go home earlier instead. If three times is the charm, our next visit to Bavaria will have to have the English Gardens and the Neuschwanstein Castle!

Bavarian cousins

2009-08-03T15:53:00.009+02:00

It might almost appear as if we do nothing but visiting churches and castles, but that is far from reality. The days that we are just hanging out are just not as picturesque as the castle pictures, they can be as much fun though.

We had a lot of confusion with the train tickets with a lot of back and forth, as a result we ended up riding first class in the super fast ICE train, which was pretty cool. We loved riding first class, except that there is not much writing to be done, the train wiggles way too much to write legible. I still have not written any postcards, I should get that done soon.

A day or two after arriving at my cousin’s house, Sophie asked me how I got to know them. For some reason it had escaped her that Karsten was my cousin and we were visiting family and not friends. Of course in some instances, family can be like friends. When we grew up, Karsten and I did not hang out that much, because his older brother was closer in age and so I spend more time with him. But as adults we both moved to Bavaria the same year, to different universities though.

I was not sure if my kids would be bored with the little ones, Anna is 2.5 and Leander 1 year, but they play together nicely. Both girls like being the older cousin and helping with the little ones, must be their maternal instincts or because they are just so darn cute. It made me realize how big and grown my two are. We gave a lot of our special baby and toddler things to them and seeing them made it even more obvious to me, it is a little bit sad, difficult to put in words.

We went to a lot of Biergarten for dinner and once a huge thunder storm came through with tons of rain. The big girls taught Anna how much fun it is to run in the pouring rain.

Having a real good summer, water plays a big role in the passing of the days and so we went to a baggersee once (a quarry lake) and a pool the other. They baggersee was so nice, right in nature, 2 lakes, the water so fresh and clean and in a perfect aqua color.

The pool was nice too, very spacious and with 4 different pools and huge well taken care of grounds. Sophie wanted to jump of the 3 meter tower, but whenever she got up there, she got scared and came back down. The fifth time up she was so upset with herself, that she started crying. Johanna showed her how to jump and told her she would get Sophie some ice cream if she would jump. That is all the bribe she needed and she jumped, even twice and proud as can be. Don’t tell them that I was very happy she did not ask me to do it, I have done it and I don’t need to do it again, really...

But who needs to go to the pool, a little kiddie pool in the back yard can be just as much fun. They girls opened a car wash for the Bobby cars (German plastic cars kids ride on and a must for every child) and cleaned them meticulously. My cousin’s garden has nothing but fields and nature and lovely view, what a perfect spot.

My cousin had to fly to the states to a conference and we brought him to the airport, which is very close. There is a hill outside of the airport, a perfect spot for a picnic and to watch the planes land and take off. We even saw my cousin’s airplane take off, that was kind of neat.

The town of Freising had a festival and we got to go up the church’s tower for an amazing view. The 227 steps were a few too many if anybody would ask me, but nobody did. You can see Munich, the Alps and other intersting spots from up there.

Danube Gorge, Weltenburg Abbey and Schneider Weisse Biergarten

2009-08-02T19:55:00.006+02:00

We took it easy the morning after our Salzburg trip, but left after the little kid’s nap, to see the Danube Gorge and visist Weltenburg abbey. I had been to the abbey before and loved it there and wanted the kids to see it as well. I went once for a photo weekend and another time with my driving school teacher. Since he was a drunk, he liked to visit beer places - makes sense for a driving teacher, right? Sometimes just taking a car ride to a place near, can proof difficult and we had children that were unhappy in the their car seats, detours that had the only intention to get us lost and toddlers throwing up, but we managed to make it to Kelheim on the Danube after all.

In Kelheim, on top of the Michelsberg is the Befreiungshalle, the hall of liberation, which is a classical monument built by King Ludwig I to commemorate victories against Napoleon.

We took a boat to ride through the Danube gorge. It was a perfectly clear day and the sky was so blue and the rocks of the gorge so white and the sides of the river so green. It felt good for the soul. The 3.5 miles long Danube gorge is between Kelheim and the abbey Weltenburg in lower Bavaria. The Danube has made it a few hundred kilometers at this point and still about 2500 to go - what a long river. The rocks on the sides are up to 250 feet high and have some caves and holes to hide in, kind of neat. They have very funny names like three enemy brothers, robber rock, cuddle rock, bavarian lion, suitcase of Napoleon, Peter and Paul, two kissing each other.

This spot already had people here in the stone age, the Celts were here as were the Romans, who had a rope bridge going from rock to rock above the waters.

It was a 40 minute ride through the gorge and to the abbey. Unfortunately we came with the last boat and it only gave us 20 minutes to explore the abbey. We literally ran to the abbey, through the courtyard and into the church.

The benedictine abbey is on a peninsula in the Danube. The monastery was already founded by Scottish or Irish monks in 620 and is considered the oldest monastery in Bavaria. The baroque church St. George is in the center, it was build by the Asam brothers, who were famous sculptors, painters, architects and stucco workers in southern Germany. The abbey’s brewery (Weltenburger Klosterbrauerei) is in operation since 1050 and is fighting with the Weihenstephan abbey for the title of oldest monastery brewery in the world.

It is so interesting to go to places like this with children, as they just rarely have this overwhelming feeling of awe, they just get hooked on funny little details and it is fun to see it with their eyes. We were very lucky and got to hear the monchs chanting at six - just perfect. Even though I could not sit in the beautiful courtyard and enjoy the peaceful atmosphere of the abbey, at least I saw it shortly.

We had to run back to the boat, the girls were very afraid we would miss it, but we made it just in time. Back in Kelheim we thought it might be a nice ending to find a beer garten in the town and started walking. Just by accident we found the Biergarten for Schneider Weisse, the oldest brewery of wheat beer. What a great biergarten, one of the nicest I have been at, that is for sure and the food and beer were great - I was very happy and content.

On the way home nobody could find Anna’s pacifier and she was very upset, we had to sing one German children’s song after the other, which brought back memories to evenings when we had to do that with Johanna, singing our hearts our while trying to remember all the verses of a song half forgotten.

Salzburg

2009-08-01T11:52:00.010+02:00

Last week we went to Salzburg and took so many pictures (300), that posting on the blog took almost a week:) - I hope my dear reader, that the wait was worth it! Sophie was in awe; riding on a train into the mountains, how magnificent.

Sharing a love for Mozart and the movie ‘the Sound of Music’, the girls and I were resolved to see Salzburg this trip. Since it was only two hours or so away from where we were, it was basically a done deal. We took a train early in the morning via Landshut and arrived in Salzburg, Austria midmorning. Salzburg is a very old town and like Lueneburg a town that got rich and important through salt - the white gold (Salzburg literally means salt castle). Sophie was very excited to be in yet another country, she is very interested in regions, borders, states, capitals and such. As usual, our first stop was the tourist information to get a map and to find out what special things are happening. We purchased Salzburg cards for us, which included all the things we wanted to do. Even though those cards (most bigger towns offer them) are a bit pricey, they offer a lot and are perfect for a dense program like ours.

Our first stop was the bakery for a second breakfast, which we took to the Mirabell gardens, known by most people as the place where they are singing Do-Re-Mi in the film. The gardens are part of the Mirabell palace and found their form in 1730. There are flowers and trees, fountains and statues, beautiful architecture - simply a lovely place to have a snack and do some people watching. It is interesting to watch tourist all take the same pictures and to be so annoyed with all the tourists in their view, myself not excluded.

We strolled towards the river Salzach and crossed it to get to the ‘Altstadt’, the old part of town and to our first wonderful view of the castle, the dome, the churches and the abbey. Salzburg is at the very north end of the alps with typical alpine mountains to the south.

Johanna was dying to see Mozart’s birthplace, so we were headed towards it, but had to stop at the little chocolatier Fuerst, they claim to have invented the Mozart-Kugel, a confection made with pistachiopaste and chocolate, but we were a little disappointed, we imagined it to be more delicious, to bring some yet undiscovered culinary joy to our palate. It did not really matter though actually, because instead we were surprised with this beautiful street called Getreidegasse.

One of the great things when traveling to a city without having any knowledge of it’s sights is the lack of predetermined and preimagined impressions. Usually I am quite prepared, but sometimes it is more amazing to just be surprised, I knew the name of this cute street, but I had no idea it would look like this.

Mozart’s birth house in the middle of the street was very easy to find, as there were throngs of people standing in front of it.

The house is basically a museum, with a lot of background information, paintings of the family, original instruments, letters and music, furniture. They try to convey an image of what life was like, what his family was like, how they were traveling. Most amazing though where the exhibits of stage designs for Mozart operas, those were really captivating and imaginative. As interesting as the objects are, the real kick is just to stand in the room where he was born, to stand on the same wooden plank flooring, look at the tiled stove that heated the room and to imagine the life of the Mozart family. Done with Mozart and off to the castle while passing all these pretty town squares, little shops and beautiful baroque buildings.

Standing on the foot of the mountain that is crowned by the castle, we knew instantly that taking the train would be the preferred mode of transportation. The small angled train car climbs the hight at an amazing speed and it is so much more fun than walking.

The Festung Hohensalzburg, the fortress up on the hill that was built in 1077 is so enourmous and fantastic, we spend a lot of time and had to walk a lot. The royal chambers had the most beautiful and intricate woodwork that was a marvel to look at. There are courtyards everywhere and in the main big one were some people doing theater and acoustics were great.

Even though we had really wanted to see the famous organ, we seemed to just get lost in the castle and after a while we gave up, we were too tired. Instead we took the train down and walked through an old cemetery on the bottom of the mountain. We tried to find some icecream, but could not find what we had in mind and to rest our weary feet, we took a boat ride on the Salzach. It was not the most interesting boatride, but at least we got to sit and listen to somebody tell us some information.

Once we landed again, we found ourselves a nice table at the river and ordered Bosna, a traditional dish, which is basically 2 pork sausages with mustard and onions in a bun and actually quite delicious, even to Johanna and Sophie, who like neither onions nor mustard.

With our energy replenished, we could not decide if we would take a bus further out of town to go up a mountain on a cable car or if we should take the elevator up the closer mountain ‘Mönchsberg’’ and enjoy the view. We decided on the latter and did not regret our decision. The elevator itself was interesting, since it is inside the mountain. The view was spectacular and it was just plain nice to hang out up there. We met some travelers that happend onto Salzburg by chance and I was able to give them all sort of tips for the next day. Sometimes I wonder if the job of a travel guide would not be perfect for me.

We ended our trip with a walk by a craft market along the river and slowly made our way back to the station. Unfortunately getting back to my cousins home took 4.5 hours, even though it is so close, but trains are not always on time, not even in Germany and on a Sunday night, that can spoil plans. Waiting at the subway station for what seemed like an eternity was so difficult for the children, they were so very tired and exhausted, they just fell into bed, they were not even able to get into jammies. It was a wonderful day though, we saw so much and had so much fun. It was a perfect day, maybe a bit on the hot side, but we will keep that day in our minds forever.

a day in the Alps

2009-07-24T23:03:00.009+02:00

The beautiful thing to do here in southern Bavaria is to spend a day or more in the alps. Last time I was visiting, we went to the quite well known Tegernsee area. This time my cousin had a wonderful destination in mind, I had no idea where. Luckily they have a VW bus and all seven of us fit very comfortably. We drove into the mountains, passed a nice lake and then the streets started to get narrower and narrower and steeper and I would lie if I’d say I was peaceful and confident. I don’t like heights and I had to force myself to always look for higher ground.

Once we made it to the top, it was so worth it though. We went to an area called Sudelfeld, across from the mountain Wendelstein. Up there is a place called Speck-Alm at 1408 meters above sea level. Alm is a word for summer pastures in the Alps. We got to walk around a little and the top had a spectecular view to three sides. This is still considered the foothills of the Alps.

It was kind of like a trail that went right through the pasture with the cows and two horses roaming around. The horses were very friendly and the cows were not exactly shy either. I think that was really neat for the children, most animals are experienced through a fence and to stand in such proximity with 2 big horses is very special. The air was so clean and the mountains so far, it was wonderful. I saw a woman lounging in the grass reading and reading, that seemed like a perfect day to me. Maybe she hiked up, lies in the grass with a good book for most of the day and then hikes down.

In the winter this is a ski area and there are several lifts. It would actually be so lovely to stay there in the winter, the inn can serve 180 people and sleep 60. The whole place is done so cozy and interesting and very unique, even Sophie came out and exclaimed “those are the coolest bathrooms I have ever seen”. It must be so much fun, their website prepares people that the whole place is a loud party until 2 am in the morning - I can imagine it quite well. Too bad I don’t ski.

We had coffee and cake and I had a piece of exquisite red currant cake - so good we are going to recreate it tomorrow. The girls went for the really big flashy looking cake, of course.

Since my back and knee are still causing some troubles, we had to find another place where we could go for a longer walk without having to go up and down much and so we drove to the Spitzingsee, a lake with an elevation of 1048 meters above sea level.

We walked around the whole lake, since it is only about 3 km.

Johanna had a great time pushing Leander’s stroller, she seems to take a huge liking to taking care of him and his sister.

And how else does one end a day in the Alps? With more food of course, so we enjoyed some typical Bavarian food in the historical inn ‘Würzhütte’, which has been at that place since 1720. What a beautiful day and I feel priviledged to have had it.

Last days in Hamburg

2009-07-23T23:52:00.004+02:00

Friday was one of those days that I expected to be a get-it-all-done day, but it was more of a slow day. We went to the big market again and I introduced my girls to paradise regarding candy: The market stand that I already stood in line at when I was 7 - yum. Friday and Saturday were marked by the typical time crunch that comes with an overwhelming power due to the awareness of leaving soon and no impending return. There are some last minute things to get while there are more things I remember all of a sudden that I did not get. Interspersed are the mundane realities of laundry, packing and organizing people. The kids kept themselves occupied with pitting cherries and blowing bubbles out of the window.

My mother took Sophie for another round of cherry picking, while Johanna and I went to a chorus concert. Consti and Peter are singing in the chorus Vokalcolorit, which is having its tenth anniversary. It was a very interesting mix of music from very old to modern and a good performance. To my surprise they had prepared a skit for the intermission and it was so funny, that I could not stop crying with laughter as it hit just the mark for singers. Another friend of mine, Lars sings in that chorus as well and I have known him for 30 years. I met his wife and is absolutely adorable and cute little daughter. Another old friend of all of us joined us from Berlin and we all went out and had a good time. It is interesting, some people hardly change at all, they just get older. Maybe that is true for all of us.

Since Johanna got to do 3 special outings with Consti and me, Sophie needed one as well. So we went for a very late breakfast at Consti and Peter’s place and afterwards walked to the museum of labor. It is a very interesting museum, housed in an old factory. They had a great exhibition about bridges in Hamburg. There were a lot of models and very old plans, software to design and test your own bridge, wooden elements to try the different types of bridges. With 2.500 bridges, Hamburg sure has a lot of history for them. The museum also offers a lot of activities for kids and for one Euro, Sophie got to coin and cloisonne a piece of copper. She did a great job with the machines that need a lot of power.

Trying to squeeze in more than possible, we had a last coffee appointment with my after school care teacher from many, many years ago. She is one of the nicest people I know. They have a weekend cabin in the woods, 30 minutes south of Hamburg and we took the train down. I made sure to make it an unforgettable afternoon by pulling a huge pot of freshly brewed coffee onto me (think 2 quarts), which gave us a lot of excitement. I did not burn anything badly, but smelled very caffeinated for the rest of the afternoon while slowly drying. Too bad John was not there to smell me :)

When we left Hamburg Monday morning, the children were quite sad, even though they were very happy to go to Bavaria. Johanna cried really hard after saying good bye to Consti. It is really special to have such a good friend, who is a really good friend to the children as well.

A Thursday in Hamburg

2009-07-22T08:11:00.007+02:00

If you read my last posts, you can probably feel the exhaustion we felt at the end of our Denmark trip. Our Thursday was already booked already though and so there was no stopping. We started with a breakfast at my friend Consti’s house. She had so many different things to eat, we could have had breakfast for the rest of the day, Most exciting for Sophie though was the train ride going there, she loves the subway and if you are in the front car, you can be just behind the driver and look out.

My friend is a teacher and it was her first day if vacation and so we had planned a little stroll & shop trip. Since that is very counter productive with children of any age in tow, be met my mom and off loaded the off spring. Shopping was fun, though with the dollar being so weak, I kept it to a pencil, 3 postcards and some fantastic chocolates for my mom and some friends. The chocolate store Chocovida is wonderful, they make their own chocolate (I recommend the one with sea salt) and they sell the worlds most exquisite (and expensive) chocolate. They know a lot about chocolates and cocoa, they make it and they even do wine and chocolate tastings paired together. I could so go for that.

We also went to look at our old high school, which is right at that corner and checked it out a bit to see how much it has changed. It feels strange to look up at some windows that were once my class room. It feels surreal, really!

We met the girls my mom and some friends of hers for a wonderful picnic at the park with all the delicious things one could want and some prosecco. It was so nice hanging out in the park while munching all these great things and feeling the bubbles rushing to my head. At the same time I had to think about so many moments I had spent in that park, all at different stages in my life; sledding in the early darkness of winter days, being allowed to play soccer with the boys, because I looked like one table tennis Easter Sunday, simultaneous sunbathing and studying for film class, swinging while the trees were ablaze in fall colors, running around and around the park while desperately trying to memorize linguistics, passionate kisses in the moonlight after a night out...

Consti had gotten tickets for the new Harry Potter movie in original version (no hideous dubbing) and we met her partner Peter and his son Joern at the theater. We have known Joern since he was three, he is as tall as me now. I still think that he is cute, but nobody should tell him I wrote that, because he probably would be so embarrassed.

Johanna and I spent the whole way home lamenting the important parts left out of the movie and the excessive snogging related hormone craziness being included. There are little moments, when your eye rolling daughter can be like a friend. Right now she is reading HP in German and is almost as quick as in English, let's hope she is not just skimming through the pages.

Copenhagen

2009-07-21T13:01:00.012+02:00

After our 'three castles and a museum' tour, we all ended up quite tired and of course late at he house of our friends. Everybody was up very late, watching Sound of Music and I think the Danish girls were surprised that we knew and sang every song in the movie. We woke up early though, but everybody else was sleeping in, so we spent more time with the bunnies. Anna, who did not come on the tour the day before, got to decide what to do with the day and opted for swimming. There was a slide and how much fun we had with that. Logically, we ended up in Copenhagen pretty late, so there was not too much time for sight seeing or doing a tour. And so we decided to just walk from the main station to Nyhavn and in a round about way along the castle back to the station.

Walking out of the train station, the first things we encountered were Hard Rock cafe, Build-a-bear, McDonalds and Burger King and promptly I was asked, if we really needed to come to Copenhagen for that. Turn a corner and you see the city hall, with its tall spire, surprisingly it is actually only a little over 100 years old.

City Hall is a very appropriate place for lunch. The girls absolutely fell in love with the Danish Hot Dogs (with remoulade, roasted onions and thinly sliced sweet pickles in a bun).

Now if you think of quaint Danish streets and fresh temperatures, you are well off, it was hot, hot, hot and VERY crowded. For some reason it must have been a very popular week, to me it seemed as if anybody vacationing in Europe was in Copenhagen that day.

St. Nikolaj church

The Royal Danish Theater

Finally we reached Nyhavn. I only got the children this far, because I lured them with icecream, but one we got there, it was about 3 times the normal price and not even for good icecream, that even they thought we should wait. Sometimes children can be reasonable, always when we least expect it :) Nyhaven, which means 'new harbor' is despite its name the oldest part of Copenhagen's harbor and was built in 1670 by Christian V. Today it is a hot tourist spot since it is just so picturesque and it is lined with cafes and restaurants and most waterbound tours start here.

Another very interesting renaissance building is Europe's oldest stock exchange (Børsen), built by Christian IV from 1619 - 1640. The unusual spire are four dragon tails twined together. I wish I would have a better picture, as it is quite a remarkable building, but a quick tour in the summer heat cannot always produce good photos.

We walked through Christiansborg Palace, which seemed very boring compared to the what we saw the day before. I love the palace Amalienborg, but we had not enough time to go and spend time, we had gone by on Monday, but without a photo opportunity, so sorry, just a picture of the gray Christiansborg, which was partially under construction. I looks serious, quite appropriate, since it houses the executive, legislative and judicial power in Denmark, the only place in the world to have them all in one building.

For some unknown reason, Johanna is very afraid that we will miss a train and so we always end up too early at the train station, which is not a bad thing anyway, because it left time for the very deserved ice cream and watching other travelers. I love people watching and to imagine stories about all the people I see. The Copenhagen main station is very beautiful I think.

Just sitting in the train and relaxing on the sunset was a welcome change.

A five hour train ride goes by rather quickly, if there is a ferry part involved. It is quite amazing to have a train drive into a ship one way, cross the water and drive out the other. People are not allowed on board the train during the ferry ride and so we had some dinner and spent the rest of the time watching the sun over the water and the other boats and ships.

Compared to Copenhagen, Hamburg seemed less busy, partially, because it was night by the time we arrived. I like evenings in the city when it is not completely dark yet and the deep blue sky and the golden lights produce such cozy colors.

Museum Lousiana

2009-07-17T22:56:00.013+02:00

We ended the three castle tour Tuesday with a visit to my absolute favorite museum in the world: The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, which is directly on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, 35 kilometers north of Copenhagen with a spectacular view of the Sea, Sweden and the island Ven.

The museum has a large permanent collection of over 3000 pieces of modern and contemporary art, many of them very important art pieces, dating from WWII to now. It is one of the biggest in Scandinavia and includes artists like Picasso, Giacometti, Warhol, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Baselitz, Fontana, Pollock etc.. The museum has several wings, all connected through glass corridors. Except for the special exhibition, I never felt like I was inside really.

The Louisiana is a wonderful synthesis of art, the landscape, architecture and the visitors. The landscape and the buildings have something labyrinthine to them, like an unusual maze and it feels as if - as a result of the unique interaction between nature, art and architecture - that the visitor itself becomes part of the process. No longer is the visitor standing on the outside, but is rather inside of it all, maybe one could even go so far and say become art themselves.

It is not quiet in this museum, people are sun bathing, having picnics, children are running around, people are discussing pieces of art, take pictures everywhere, there is a dock for swimming and lots of places to sit and hang out. This is not the typical museum atmosphere.

This is most apparent in the Sculpture Park, strolling the paths and exploring the niches and hidden places is a big part of the Louisiana experience. The view of the Øresund, with the sculptures all around is breathtaking. The sculpture garden contains many works from artists like Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Jean Arp, Henri Laurens and Joan Miró. I have always liked Moore, I love these huge, organic shapes and John turned me on to Calder.

I had been to the museum a long time ago and always wanted to go again, of course due to kids being tired from the busy day, I could not stay too long. They entertained themselves - supervised by Peter (Thank you) - in the children’s wing (Børnehus). On three levels are different activities for children of all ages. Painting, sculpture, architecture, collages, really anything you can imagine. It had a great atmosphere and the kids did some painting and made some clay sculptures, Johanna did the bunny and Sophie made a clay Bailey - our host’s dog.

Louisiana’s exhibition program claims to cover a wide range primarily focusing on the interaction between the different art forms and they succeeded in their special exhibition this summer “Green Architecture for the Future”. I wish I could have had more time, I liked the way it was done. The focus is on new architecture that is designed in accordance with our changing and very complex world (i.e. climate, population, materials, processes, environment, culture etc.). There were different themes and it was a very multimedial exhibition. It was a great symbiosis of art, statistics, architectural models, documentaries and sensory input. I could have spent a day there.

If there is any museum I want to visit again and again, it is this one!

Frederiksborg, Fredensborg and Kronborg

2009-07-17T17:38:00.013+02:00

Three - Castle - Tour on Tuesday

After a typical European breakfast in the sunshine (don't a lot of our days start like that?) Peter took us three and Maria, his oldest on a tour of the area. In the village Hillerød that they live in, is on of Denmark's biggest tourist attractions, Frederiksborg Palace. We did not do any tours, most of the time it does not turn into fun when children are involved. We did a long walk along the buildings, through the gardens and the woods. The kids had bikes, lucky them.

The palace was named after Frederik II, who built the oldest parts of the castle in the 16th century. Most of the palace was built for King Christian IV. It is the largest Renaissance palace in all of Scandinavia and houses the Museum of National History. It is built in the middle of a lake and there are lakes, canals, fountains and water features everywhere. It has a very beautiful baroque garden and a lot of gardeners who tend to it, I saw at least 7 people working in just that part of the grounds.

If I would live in that area, I would come to walk and bike, picnic and enjoy the garden a lot.

Just a few kilometers away is Fredensborg, a completely different castle, but very nice in its own right. It is less fancy and the charme lies in the bright and quaint cheerfulness. Built as a French inspired baroque pleasure palace for Frederik IV in the early 18th century and of all the Royal Family's residences, it is used the most by the family as well as for important state visits.

We only stopped shortly, I took a short walk and some pictures while the others enjoyed some icecream.

Off we were to Helsingør, the town on the northeast corner of Zealand, right on the
Øresund. The Øresund is one of the three Danish Straits that connects the Baltic Sea with the Atlantic Ocean. It is a very narrow straight and a busy waterway. Kronborg Castle in Helsingør shows off all its cannons pointing to the water, because ships had a to pay a sound due to pass or else.

I like this castle with the big courtyard inside it and the huge fortifications. Strange though, I remember it so differently from when I visited 24 years ago. It started as a fortress in 1420s and was built up to a Renaissance castle by Frederik II in 1585, then there were fires, Swedish conquests and other interesting bits of history, a truely remarkable place.

It is so beautiful right on the water, Sweden is so close, you think you could reach out and touch it. Actually, my cell phone registered with a Swedish tower and my European phone calls became cheaper - I just didn't have anybody to call.

Kronborg Castle and Helsingør (in English Elsinore) are also famous because it is the castle in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Sometimes the play gets performed in the castle - that would be wonderful to attend, unless it would be in Danish, which I don't understand except for a word here or there. The children were as usual less impressed with the architecture of this fantastic castle, they were happy to get their feet wet and look for seaglass. They did find seaglass and no Ophelia floating about, that would have been a strange turn of events.

We drove along the Øresund to Humlebaek for some pizza which was as bad as expensive (tourist trap - kachink), but we needed sustenance for our next part of the trip, Museum Louisiana!

Visiting friends in Denmark

2009-07-17T17:05:00.005+02:00

So much has been going on in the last days, which means I have a lot to blog about while being behind with it and I am almost to exhausted to write. But if I don't do it now, I can never catch up, so I better start. A few weeks back, while I was sitting at the computer, all of a sudden somebody started to chat, it was Peter and I know a few of them, so it took me a moment of detective work to figure out which one. It was Peter from Denmark, who I had not seen or spoken too since we left California when Johanna was a little baby. I had never met his wife and in the meantime he had three girls. So while we were chatting we worked out that we would come up for a short visit.

On Monday we took the express train to Denmark, it actually drives onto a ferry and then the ferry ships the train over to the other side. The kids thought is was most awesome, but they were surprised, that the ship had so many shops and restaurants, it was more like a mall on water. It is rather nice to have a train ride with an intermission of being outside in the wind and look at seagulls.

Peter picked us up at the train station and due to not being allowed to turn left where he wanted (that can be a HUGE thing in European cities, I know from experience) and so we ended up with a quick Copenhagen sightseeing tour. He lives with his family about half an hour north of Copenhagen, quite remote and with a lot of land and nature and peacefulness.

The children met and were very shy, it is not easy when you have no common language, they speak Danish and Russian. Peter's wife Tatiana is very nice, her mom was there too, she was so nice, I wish I could have had conversations with her. This is the oldest with the youngest, just 9 weeks old. All three girls are beautiful and lovely.

When you cannot converse, you just do some other fun things and there was enough fun to be had. They had a very big fantastic trampoline, my kids have been yearning for one forever, that was nice, even better that there was the cutest and nicest golden retriever and best of all, bunnies. Johanna has been bugging us about bunnies for years now and was in paradise. The bunnies kept escaping and the girls tried catching them - very funny and never successful, neither was I by the way. Our favourite was a little brown one, he was the softest thing imaginable, they offered it to us, but I consider it very impractical to travel with a bunny, even such a cute one. We had a lot of fun imagining it though, like a bunny loose on the airplane or on a leash hopping up to the castle in Prag.

It is light out so late, even longer than here logically and the kids were up till late, when it got buggy and they got tired, they just watched some TV - Sound of Music was a big hit.

The girls got along fast despite the language barrier and so it turned into a sleepover rather quickly.

It has been happening many times that we have not seen people for a long time, I am often amazed that somehow you just pick up where you left off. We just get a bit older and wider, but in essence, we do not change that much. At the same time, I feel guilty that it has been that long, that it is so difficult to stay in touch. Lately it appears to be easier, maybe because the children are getting older, maybe because I am getting older and the importance of connections is more apparent?

Just another Hamburg Sunday

2009-07-12T22:44:00.003+02:00

As mentioned before, Sundays in Hamburg with my mom mean flea market. Today my mother went to sell some stuff herself, she has so much to get rid off after selling her house. That meant that we got to sleep in, yeah! We had a very slow breakfast and to my joy with Hungarian salami, my weekness. We strolled about the flea market and the kids each found more treasures. Johanna got a necklace of blue topaz and Sophie an old Swiss pocket knife.

We had all sorts of ideas about the activities of the day, not being sure if we should rent kayaks, a canoe or a paddle boat or maybe visit one of the many, many museums. We never actually did anything but relax, stroll through the neighborhood and take it easy. I think those days are important, even though I do have the tendency to fill them to the brim due to the pressure that we only have a few days here. It turned into an evening of extreme rain, so maybe it was fortunate that we did not spend so much money on kayak rentals. Hamburg is perfect for water sports though, with all the rivers and canals and the 2.500 bridges, more than any other European city.

There are some fantastic places along the rivers and canals, above is an example of a beautiful garden, albeit small, and the canoe just waiting for take off. Some places have fantastic villas and amazing gardens, there are also many cafes to stop at. It is very easy to spend a whole day on the water (and it is amazing at night too). Another past time is going for ice cream. There is a place with Italian ice cream at every corner with a multitude of flavors. They are bought by round scoops, usually two or three in a waffle cone and in a nice mix of flavor. Except for us though, we are absolutely hooked on woodruff (Waldmeister), which is awesome. It is a very local thing, I think it is just known in the north of Germany.

We also got a beautiful rainbow, we all agreed on its beauty and also its unfortunate placement in the sky while we were in the one ugly street in the area. Johanna wants to tear it all down and rebuild, I think maybe some planning and planting and communal effort is needed. Isn't it strange to have three beautiful districts of old houses meet at this one ugly street? It used to be an amazingly wonderful road, but was destroyed in WWII and rebuilt ugly and hastily. I wish city planners would put more effort into areas like that instead of huge projects for tourists and prestige. ... Come to think of it, maybe it is an unfortunate road with ugly buildings that needs a rainbow anyway.

Good bye Amrum

2009-07-12T22:43:00.000+02:00

Why must everything end? Just a rhetorical question really, but some things in life end too quickly. Our last day came so quickly. There is something quite peculiar about vacations. We spend so much time planning them and then we have this huge chunk of time filled with anticipatory joy. For month I have been looking forward to our week on Amrum and on a daily basis did I catch my thought drifting there. And then, all of a sudden, faster than you can say 'blink', is is over, done with, past and you find yourself on the way home.

Despite our hopes and prayers did we not succeed in coaxing the weather to be splendid, but no use bitching and moaning, on with the raincoats and off we go. I took the kids to the light house that we had been seeing all week. It is the tallest on the whole North Sea Coast and the kids wanted to climb up. I was really tempted to do so as well, but with my leg still not being in great shape, I decided that 295 steps are not in my best interest. The kids were up in no time, I was very surprised. I took pictures of them while they took pictures of me taking pictures of them. They had a little light house festival going on and the mood was great, who cares whether the sky is gray, if your heart is full of sunshine.
All week we had waited for a visit at the Friesen Cafe, a very, very old cafe in Nebel where the original Friesentorte originates. I had a piece on the neighbouring island of Sylt many years ago and still remember every bite. It is a very cozy place and it was packed with people - everybody was tired of rain, wind and sand storms. Your would not guess from the photo, because I took that earlier in the week :)

So all four of us ordered the Torte and none of us broke out into song over it or danced a dance of joy or hollered in excitement. The one I had decades back was very different, maybe not the original, but better. I will have to make it myself, no doubt about that.

I have to lie when I say we did not mind the last day being so gray and rainy. We were a bit disappointed. We went to the beach and did not even go to our 'Strandkorb', instead threw the key into the box at the rental station. The sand was blowing everywhere, we still have sand in our ears and shoes and bags now.

There was hardly anybody on the beach, the life guards were gone, the vendors too. Just not the best day. We went to the restaurants in the dunes and had something to eat, all in a bit of a glum mood. I was sure that the sun would give me a great sunset on the last night, but like the night before - nothing. The next day we packed and cleaned and hung out in the garden playing soccer between rainshowers until it was time to leave. We were all a bit depressed, nobody wanted to leave. The kids distracted themselves with games and so did the adults.

Having a long ferry and train ride home gives you plenty of time to think and ponder. There was one very clear theme centered around expectations. Sometimes expectations are our enemies, when the stakes are high, we are more likely to stumble. We had a certain picture in our head and were disappointed on some occasions. Our week was nonetheless wonderful and fantastic, but it did occur to me that sometimes it is better not to have precomposed pictures in our head, as they are often bound to fail.

There are good days and bad days, that is life. While being on vacation we are trying to make every moment great to have fun now and to create wonderful memories for tomorrow. Some days turn out way better than our expectations and on other days we are faced with reality not living up to them. Or things just go differently and that is usually not a problem, if we go with the flow. I had no expectations regarding Fish'n'Chips or kite flying and that was surprisingly great. I thought I would eat the cake of my life and did not. I expected the kids to fall asleep early every night from the fresh air at the sea and they went to bed late every night. I did anticipate for them to be scared of waves and they were not. Lesson learned? Maybe not, it is hard not to imagine, but maybe I can make anticipations less concrete.

All in all our week was great and I wish to go back for a longer stay some day and I have no expectations for going to Copenhagen/Hillerød, except that I am very happy to meet an old friend and to get to know his family.

Stormy

2009-07-10T19:06:00.002+02:00

We all had gotten sunburned on our one ideal sunny beach day and it seemed as if I have gotten a sunburn on my lips. By Wednesday it started to blister and when I woke up on Thursday my lip was so swollen and blistered, something needed to be done, beside the horrendous pain, I could not really eat or drink. Thanks to the internet and a quick search, I found out the cause (a viral infection caused by UV) and needed to bike to the next village for some medicine. Inbetween rainshowers we took a chance and went on a little bike trip. We took a different path this time, overlooking the sound side, meeting a lot of horses, cows and birds and biking through wheat, rye and corn fields. What a beautiful bike ride.

It was fun to be just the three of us - my mother opted out of the bike trip - and so it was a bit more relaxed. We walked through the town, picked post cards for the friends and had some crepes to eat and German Sprite, which is made with real sugar and has lots of lemon and tastes really good, even though not healthy. It gave the kids enough energy to bike back and instead of going home, we went to the old windmill in town, which has a little mill museum, exhibits paintings and people can go up and see all the parts and working of the mill - very neat. I don't recall ever having been inside one actually.

We were supposed to meet my mom at the beach, so we did the beach preparation thing, strip naked and put sunscreen from top to bottom. I cannot stand doing it and it takes forever for one adult and two kids. By the time we are in bathing suits and have everything packed and are about to bike to the beach, my mom comes around the corner in a mix of excitement and agitation. Apparently the strong wind had pushed so much water onto the beach, it flooded everything and they had to move our 'Strandkorb' to safety. And really, the beach was quite flooded, it was awesome, it was like gigantic tidepools everywhere.

The wind was pushing the water with such a force, the waves did not even crash one after the other, it was one chaotic toppling of waves over the other and it was fun to stand there and get completely soaked. As usual, Johanna sat shivering in the 'Strandkorb', while Sophie and I where hollering with joy at every single wave. But even the two of us got a bit cold after a while and we retreated to the safety of the 'Strandkorb' for a snack. Look at the picture below, that was all sand just an hour or two earlier.

Of course my structure (above) that I had errected in a fit of the creative curse and that withstood all the rain and wind of the days before was gone now, how nice of my mom to have saved the shells though. After a while feeling cold and being blasted by sand lost its appeal and in a moment between rain we headed to the little restaurant at the edge of the dunes. Hot chocolate while watching the raindrops has its own beauty I have to say. There is something very comforting in that.

While the children were emailing friends and family, which takes forever since they cannot type and Sophie corrects Johanna's spelling constantly, I was determined to believe that the weather at the coast changes within minutes and that there will be a great sunset. I actually took the bike at 9.30 at night to fight my way against the storm to the beach. But when I got there, not one ray of sun was allowed to penetrated the gray wall of clouds and the sand storm was so fierce by then, that I could not walk very far at all and had to give up. At least I had an easy ride back with the wind pushing me home :)

Amrum on a Wednesday

2009-07-10T18:35:00.000+02:00

Oops, already Friday night and here I am just blogging about Wednesday - my apologies, but it is not always easy to find some undisturbed time, actually, sometimes it is darn impossible.

My Tuesday ended with a dusk bike ride late at night, appropriately I started Wednesday Morning with a very early bike ride. Amazing that I was actually able to get up that early. It was rather peaceful, though I was surprised how many people were up as well. I had hoped for some beautiful morning sunshine from the East, but it was rather cloudy and I spent a lot of time waiting for clouds to move.

I ended the biking with a stop at the local bakery, but got a nice loaf of bread since we were not exactly thrilled by the bread rolls. The bread was good though. Since it was an interesting mix of sun, clouds and wind, we packed ourselves up and headed to the beach. The waves were super crazy and we had to jump in. They were perfect for body surfing and we had a blast. I anticipated for the children to be more apprehensive with the waves and scared that they might break their necks, but they were fine. Johanna stopped early, because she got cold, but the Soph and I kept going. I wish I had a water proof camera that attached to my head to film fun things like body surfing and Sophie's joy of jumping around in the waves. Sophie is able to live so completely in the moment and have such exuberance, it is gratifiing to watch her in these moments.

We had bought another stunt kite, one that is easier to get back up again after it plummets down and we had to try it. The wind was strong and it was so much fun. The kite almost lifted me up and when the kids tried it, they had to hold each other not to lift off. I am absolutely hooked on stunt kite flying, feeling one with the wind and the kite and moving it about, it is amazing. I was really tempted to get a really big one, but this small one (1.3 m) was hard enough to control. Today a lot of people went kite surfing, but I think I prefer terra firma under my soles. When we are back from our vacation, I have to take the kids to Newport to our favorite kite flying place.

Hanging out in the 'Strandkorb' was not as much fun as usual, the extreme wind was kicking up so much sand and on a beach that wide, the result resembles a sand storm and none of us found a liking of sand in the face and everywhere else. We went home to come back at low tide in the hope that the winds would die down.

When we came back it was even windier and even more sand, the rain in between had not helped that much. The only way to escape the sand is to swim, but swimming was forbidden, it was too stormy. The lifeguard station has flags to post conditions, no flag is clear sailing, yellow flag means a bit dangerous and red flag means no entering the water. They also have a black board where they post the temps, Wind speed and direction, high and low tide etc... and a nice quote of the day (lovely!)

We had another round of fish'n'chips and walked around town to take some pictures (it was still sunny every now and then), visited the famous and beautiful cemetery with the multitude of old gravestones that have life stories engraved in them. There is a book about just these old stones, which is so interesting, because the history of the people here is so unique, but they are impossible to get and it seems like a new edition is always just about to happen, but never really materializes. We had taken a church (St. Clemens) and cemetery tour on Tuesday, so it had a lot of meaning to us. Isn't it unbelievable, that the first part of the building was built in the 12hundreds? There used to be around 80 churches in the area I think, at that time this was all mainland, but a huge flood in 1624 turned this into many islands and drowned many villages and over 10.ooo people. Now the mainland is 20 km away (about 13 miles).

My mother and I went downstairs to the wine bar in our lodging. She had a coffee and I had some wine, another good wine from Germany that one can never get outside of the country. I wonder why the good wine does not make it to our wine stores in the States - I guess we have to export the good wine ourselves. It is a very cozy space downstairs, very authentic and original and quite inviting. My mother is not a person for a night on the town, she feels out of place and so we did not stay quite long. I felt a bit out of place myself, it is hard to explain, maybe because everybody was there with a group or people, their partner or family. My mom and I just did not feel hip and trendy enough. I also feel very self conscious in places like that, knowing that my appearance and the person that I am inside have such a discrepancy and people need to know me to see the real me. Especially in Germany do I have the problem that people think I am dumb and uninteresting because I am overweight. Of course they do not know about my medical problems, nor that I am actually a quite interesting and capable person. I get a lot of rude comments from strangers and very judgmental looks and I have never grown immune to it. It is strange how my mother and I are so similar in this aspect. Once we are in a conversation with people (and get a chance for a real conversation), people's first impressions get nullified. Maybe this is one of my big motivators for writing, to actually have a chance for a voice that is untainted by appearance. It is not completely different in the States, but not as strong as here, because Germans in general are very judgmental.

I always find refuge in nature and therefore another sunset brought the evening to an end on a good note despite my thoughts of loneliness and feelings of being misunderstood.

Instructions to a successful day at the beach:

2009-07-07T23:23:00.001+02:00

After a slow German breakfast with fresh bread rolls from the bakery, some delicious local yogurt with fresh raspberries, a soft boiled egg and a pot of caffeine of your choice, you slather some sunscreen on and hop into your bathing suit. Pack some towels, kites, water bottles and snacks and of you pedal towards the shore - in this case a short mile.

A few minutes later, you park your bike with all the other bikes...

... and walk down the wooden board walk .

You look at all the 'Strandkörbe' (literally beach baskets)...

... and decide to rent one as well. We got a yellow one with the number 45. We really wanted a blue one, but then again, yellow is easy to find and it was front row view- more important.

You play around in the sand until it get's too hot and you jump into the salty waves. You take the fear of waves out of the children by inventing wave games, like assigning each wave a Weasley (HP) name based on character and temperament.

You start building sand structures...

...look over the wide expanse...

... and decide to fly a stunt kite in loops, circles and crazy maneuvers.

When it has been a few hours, you take a break from the beach and say good-bye to Emma (all German seagulls are called by that name)...

...and bike to the center of the village,

where you can have some yummy Fish'n' Chips.

And before the day is over, another little bike trip to see the sunset gives the day a lovely finish.

Amrum

2009-07-07T00:24:00.000+02:00

I would say that any place that you need to take a ferry to get to is probably a nice place, but having to be on the ferry for 2 hours is a certain guarantee for being wonderful, if you like islands that is.

When I was 13 I spent a few weeks on the north frisian island Sylt with my mother and a friend of mine. One of the weeks my friend - actually best friend ever - went to a different island to a horse camp and I took the ferry to visit her one day. This is how I got introduced to Amrum and since then I have wanted to come back for a vacation here. I have been to Sylt many, many time, because it is easier to reach, since there is a train damn connecting the island with the mainland and it is possible to go for just a day. But I never made it to Amrum until now. I think there is hardly any place I like this much in the world. There is something very special about the light, the dunes, the sand, the waves, the people - I think it is total bliss!

We took a train for about 3 hours, a ferry for 2 and then a bus for a few stops to almost in front of the house. The house is wonderful, I love it here. It is an old brick house that belonged to a captain. Across are fields and a meadow with horses, we can see the light house and the old windmill. To the other side we can even see the water (sound side). There is a backyard with a lot of nice places to sit and hang out and downstairs is a wine & tapas bar, with a perfect yard to sit in and taste all sorts of wines. The people running this place are awesome and make their guests feel very welcome. It is going to be hard to ever leave again, that is for sure.

This island has three main villages and we are in the middle one called Nebel, which still maintains its quaint village charm, yet has everything one could need. We rented bikes and bike everywhere, like everybody else. Very few people use their cars on this island and it is not really that necessary, after all, it is a small island.

Amrum is famous for its very wide beach with the finest and softest sand one can imagine. With all that space and the steady winds, it is a paradise for kites and Johanna already learned to fly our stunt kite rather well. We are planning to get a second one today that does not need a person to bring it back up when it is down.

My favorite time of day is the blue hour, the time between day and night, dusk. It is especially nice at the sea side given that there is a huge sky above reaching from one end of the horizon to the other. This is probably one of the main reasons why I am a sea person and not really a mountain person, I love the space and freedom, the wide sky. I love sunsets - there it is, I said it, think of me what you want, I do love sunsets. When I was a teenager I collected postcards of sunsets over the North Sea, I must have had hundreds. I admit though that the photo of a postcard cannot compete at all with the real thing. Still, it is a kind of magic. Sundays sunset was beautiful, the difficult things was, that it was so late and Sophie was getting very tired. We got home at 11pm. It was worth it though, because while the sun was setting on one side, the full moon was rising on the other. Unfortunately I only had my little Canon with me, oh well, in our minds we remember it perfectly - or maybe even better.

Washing and waiting

2009-07-06T16:40:00.001+02:00

Before going on a trip, even if it is a trip during a trip, laundry is to be done. So off we went to the laundromat. Since it was a really hot day already, the inside of the laundromat was a complete sauna, except that the cold dunking pool was missing. Doing laundry is so mundane and boring, one would think it does not warrant a blog entry at all, but I think it is just as much part of the traveling as the exciting history we experience and the magnificent buildings we see.

Lüneburg

2009-07-06T00:12:00.000+02:00

Lüneburg is a smaller and very old city not too far from Hamburg, just about 30 minutes, and one of the cities of the hanseatic league. I have been there many times, but never as a real tourist and I was blown away this time. Maybe I look at things different now? It is one of the nicest and prettiest cities I have ever been to. A lot of the old architecture was preserved, because there was little war damage and obviously no huge push for wrecking and rebuilding. A lot of new buildings are made to work well with the old buildings.

Lüneburg was a very wealthy town, they discovered salt deposits and were mining it extensively, 24 hours a day with the only exception being good Friday. There was a lot of lead involved in keeping the kettles working and a lot of people died of lead poisoning back then. The salt water contained 24% salt, almost the maximum, and salt back then was as valuable as gold. A sack of salt could buy you a house. Because of taking out the salt water deposits, a lot of buildings in the city sank or tilted, it is funny to see the crooked houses, some rooms have an elevation difference of over a foot, must be weird to live there.

Since this hanseatic city was so rich, it has a tremendous amount of beautiful architecture and a lot of city squares and churches. A lot of the buildings and churches are so old, it is hard to imagine. We even went into a crane building that was built in 1436. It had these 2 huge wooden wheels for 6-8 people inside to move them - like hamster wheels and even the whole building could be rotated by people. To see such an ingenious structure that was built even before Columbus set off sailing west, incredible. Also quite magnificant is the town hall, which has been a work of 800 years, we had no chance to go inside, I just saw pictures and I have to go inside some other time to see the halls. We did visit the court yard and were able to see the different parts and additions added through the centuries.

We took a carriage ride through the city and had a wonderful tour guide who was as informative as funny. The girls got to sit in the front with him, what a treat.

The last thing we visited was St. Johannis, a very old five naved church that is built in the beautiful and typical North German Brick Gothic architecture. It was erected between 1300 and 1370. I think it is so wonderful, because a lot of the architectural elements are accentuated by paint which is done in a light green and a terra cotta color. Most of the walls are whitewashed and the space is enormous and features many different stain glass windows.

Even though history and architecture is might exciting, there are also little shops and many of them and many cafes and restaurants and old breweries on the many squares or along the river Ilmenau (a great kayaking river!). Since it is also a university town, it is young and vibrant. We had very nice Italian ice cream, a good treat to dangle in front of the children to get some sight seeing done :)

I will definitely go back, maybe even for a few days. The surrounding countryside is just wonderful for bike trips and kayaking, hiking and excursions.

Vacation Blogging

2009-07-05T17:41:00.000+02:00

I am so behind with my blogging, but I do not want to go out of sequence either, so I have to do the last 3 days real quick to get to today. Blogging on vacation has a few stumbling stones in the path to success like internet access, charged laptop, loading photos from the camera onto the computer, converting them and then uploading them. The photo part is the hardest actually, since formatting the photos in Blogger is a complete nightmare. I have to think of a different approach to make this whole process more stream lined. I got a little discouraged, because it appeared as if there are not that many people reading the blog, but I installed a widget and to my surprise, there are actually more readers, just that almost nobody leaves a comment on the blog. Thank you Readers :) I am enthused now to keep going.

Cheerfulness is not the escape from sadness, but rather the victory over it! Gorch Fock

We are all taking a break from the beach, we have been beach combing, bathing in the waves, biking, flying a stunt kite, constructing a sand fortification around our “Strandkorb’ (if you don’t know what that is, you will learn tomorrow). Anyway, it has been enough burning sun for the day, we already have some sun damage and so we retreated into our wonderful apartment, kids playing with their 2 webkinz travel companions and my mom on the couch asleep. This is a welcome break for me, traveling and trying to keep the peace with everybody is really hard. My mother, who has lived alone almost all her life, is not an easy person, she has some strange passive aggressiveness, but has no clue that she does. Anything that does not go her way is treated with pouting silence - sheeze, it is hard enough to deal with a moody inattentive and sensory malfunctioning Aspie children. This all puts me in a very strange mood, alternating between elated happiness to be here at one of the best places in the world and the wish for somebody to shoot me. The good thing: as soon as we are on the beach, everybody is HAPPY!

Visiting my aunt

2009-07-04T23:03:00.000+02:00

My mother's oldest brother, married into a kind of aristocratic agricultural family in Lower Saxony and they lived on a big estate where I visited every now and then as a child. I had not been since my uncle died 22 years ago. Strangely, it was all the same, nothing had changed at all, it was like I had just been there. It was a bit an odd visit, my family is getting older and people that live alone are definitely getting stranger, I notice it in my mother too. Of course they don't notice themselves and with pride and stubborness thrown in, it can make things a bit difficult at times. I don't want to go into details right here, so just some pictures (only a few, because we were not really allowed to go outside unsupervised).

Hundertwasser train station

2009-07-03T23:02:00.000+02:00

On Wednesday we were scheduled to visit another aunt of mine, because nobody else ever visists her. The nearest trainstation in Uelzen is still a distance away and in a vey boring town, but it got an overhaul a little while back by nobody else but Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928 - 2000) was a painter, architect and sculptor from Austria. He was a very original artist, a true individual, with strong environmental and philosophical convictions. His architecture is wonderful, it has some fairy tale feeling to it, it appears rather grown and natural and less man made. In a way it represents life and not rigidity. I cannot help but feel happy when I look at his buildings.

The train station in Uelzen, between Hamburg and Hannover in Lower Saxony, has been the victim of damage in war and subsequent changes and additions and was nothing special and a concept was developed to turn it into an environmental and cultural station. It runs on solar energy and the roofs are all planted.

Hunderwasser’s philosophy saw the vertical line as the line of people and the horizontal line as part of the natural world and as something that needs to be greened, he wants roofs to be turned into meadows and woods. That is a sentiment that I already shared as a child, when I believed that buildings need to replace the green space they take away by having that green space on the roof.

The architecture of the buildings feels like a fantastic piece of fairy tale. There are colorful columns throughout the whole complex, since he believed that a column gives people the same feeling as standing under a tree. Even though I think columns do not offer the same feeling of shelter we get from a tree, the strong support that both give is very similar though. Also there are towers and happy spires with golden tops. Hunderwasser who despised the straight line, made sure everything possible is in curves and feels natural. Every elevator and doorway has its individual treatment and the corner between floor and walls are like waves on the ocean.

The designs of Hundertwasser always use a lot of mosaics, irregular stone and ceramic pieces and plenty of color. He only designed the train station, unfortunately he died before it was even finished. Nonetheless did he give the town of Uelzen and the region a wonderful gift. Since its opening in 2000 the Hundertwasser train station has beckoned loads of visitors to show off. It used to be an uninteresting brick bullding and has been turned into a piece of art, not high brow but rather eclectic, fun, happy, organic, ecological sound and absolutely accessible art. It is one of the most beautiful train stations in Germany.

Hakuna Matata

2009-07-02T22:48:00.000+02:00

Hakuna Matata:

River Cruising and König der Löwen (Lion King)

Tuesday afternoon we took a bus along the river Elbe to take us a bit downstream where we hopped onto a ferry to cruise back to the harbor (biggest one in Europe). It was one of those really oppressive days, a white gray sky and very high humidity. Thunderstorms have been in the forecast since before we even arrived, but it just does not quite get there. Sitting atop a ferry boat and enjoying the breeze is the perfect thing to do and it is especially nice when it involves seeing a bit of the harbor, the interesting shoreline and plenty of boats.

We took the ferry back to the main dock from where we were to get the boat to the theater on the other side of the river. We had a picnic and strolled about before joining the crowds of people going to the musical. They have a tent like structure for the theater, which is quite big, probably around 2000 people. The musical has been running there since 2001 and has won over 25 awards.

Now I have to admit that I am not a Disney person, rarely like musicals and I hate crowds. My mother had paid an ungodly sum for the 4 tickets and so I could not even show my skeptical thoughts. Well, I had it all wrong, because it was truly amazing and wonderful. It was a little bit difficult for the children, since it was in German and there was more dialog than anticipated, but I don't think it minimized their experience. The actors/singers were so fantastic, as was the set and the music and the humor of it all. The animals and how they were moved around was just so astonishing and beautiful. Both girls loved the two children who played Simba and Nala. We had a really good time.

To no surprise, as soon as the show was over, everybody seemed to run out of there and of course had to wait for the boat. Instead of standing in line with everybody else, we sat down at one of the Niki de Saint Phalle statues and had the second part of our picnic while watching the city slowly getting enveloped in dusk and more and more lights turning on. Once 5 boats had come and gone, we decided it was time to go home, though it was not dark yet.

I love the harbor in summer evenings, it reminds me of my childhood, when my mother still knew so many people there (she was a specialty chef on a ship before my arrival made that less than feasible) and we sometimes would come to Hamburg on a boat and arrive late at night. Johanna and Sophie were so excited to yet again be on the subway, apparently a good place to horse around and to pass again through St. Pauli.

We sang Hakuna Matata all the way home.

Beatlemania - we went to Hamburg's newest museum

2009-06-30T13:37:00.000+02:00

Just last month Hamburg's newest museum opened, "Beatlemania", a Beatles museum and is at the Beatles Square, on the corner of the street Grosse Freiheit, where the Clubs Top Ten, Kaiserkeller and Starclub were located. The Beatles played these clubs. Since I spent many years as an extreme fan and my kids had been infected with the bug (get it - bug!) last year, there was no doubt we would visit.
The museum stretches over 5 stories, though in actuality, only 3 are exhibits. Mostly they recreate the feeling of the early sixties in Hamburg and the exhibits themselves are lots of memorabilia, papers, bills, letters, documents and multimedia experiences. To understand the beginning of the Beatles, this is a great spot.

We got Beatles passports with a map and a keycard to start interactive displays, record our bad karaoke singing or take a picture behind all the people in the St. Pepper's cover. One of the coolest thing was a room that started with one screen showing a concert - I believe Shea stadium - and then more and more screens are being turned on all around you, all showing different, but similar shots of the concert. All this happens while being immersed in the sound of the concert and it was such an interesting experience, because it totally caught me and I got so emotional - no wonder the fans were fainting left and right.

Of course the girls were exited, but they are not THAT interested in the history and the background, after all, they are only eight and ten. Mostly they just loved looking at all the photos and hearing the music everywhere. There were interviews with people that were friends with the Beatles at that time, which was interesting, but it was hard to hear them, because the music was too loud. Sophie's favorite was the control room of the yellow submarine, Johanna liked all the fan paraphernalia and I was thrilled to see all these newspaper articles, old magazines and photos that I had collected many years ago.

We got an additional kick out of coming through the St. Pauli subway station 4 times today. Why it is so funny? Because Paul's 'grandfather' calls him Pauli in 'A Hard Day's Night'. Of course the museum is located in the red light district on the Reeperbahn, the one street known to everybody in the world, but my children did not notice anything at all - lovely innocence. The museum was completely empty though, not a good sign after just having opened, we paid a fortune though to get in and you just don't get enough bang for the buck.

Peaceful Monday and the campaign for good beer

2009-06-30T00:30:00.000+02:00

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, which is was not, so we declared this Monday as a day of rest and slow pace. It was a perfect day for it, with blue skies and happiness all around. We slept in and had a late breakfast with a selection of bread rolls, yum. If you have not been to a German bakery and you are an indecisive person, I would not recommend going, the selection is enormous. A slow day dictates that if a child asks to play a game, the answer has to be yes and so we played a round of "Mensch ärgere Dich nicht", which literally means "don't be annoyed", which can be tough in this game. Sophie won yet again and I lost so completely, I just could not roll a six!

While Johanna went grocery shopping with Oma, Sophie and I headed to the park that is about half a minute from this house. The park, called Innocentia Park, was my stomping ground as a kid, I came here every single day to roller skate, swing and and ride my bike in circles or up the two hills (and down). I also played soccer a lot, I looked like a boy, so I was allowed to play with the other boys. Once I wore a skirt and the boys thought I am somebody different - a girl - and did not let me participate. Every time there was snow, I went sledding there until it became so dark and late, I had to go home eventually. It is amazingly beautiful though, to sled in the dark, with all the cozy lights of the houses shining around the park. How neat to be there with my children - Johanna joined us later and came with cherries, yes, cherries again. It is a little odd though to think about the child molester who loved this park when I was a kid and took a bit the fun out of being there. That memory I did not share with the children though, but I could tell my mother was thinking about it just as I did.

I left the kids with my mom for their baking project and I headed downtown to meet my old friend Consti, we had a coffee in a very interesting store/cafe before heading to a meeting of "Kampagne fuer Gutes Bier", which is kind of like a beer social club with outings, lectures and a lot of beer tasting. Today a guy lectured about Wheatbeer and we got to try a lot of them. The club/campagne was started by another old friend, whom I have known for 30 and not seen in 7 years. Later we sat outside by a canal and had such a good time. I am baffled by how bright it is late at night, it was still not totally dark at 11pm. The long dusk, called the blue hour, is my favorite time of day, couple that with a beautiful evening and sitting somewhere gorgeous with nice company and you get a Monday Night of Bliss. Before we parted to take subways in all different directions, we made some plans for the next weeks.

Tourist corner: Below are pictures of one of the train stations and city hall, both from the back actually.

A nice idea in theory is no guarantee for what happens in reality

2009-06-28T23:12:00.000+02:00

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” ~ Samuel Johnson

Yesterday we had the perfect day to exemplify the discrepancy between imagination and reality. We had read in the paper that a wilderness preserve outside of the city had a big celebration and the description sounded like the most fun to be had ever. Since we had contemplated visiting the park anyway, due to fond memories of a visit 35 years ago, it seemed like a slam dunk.

After walking around so much on the flea market, we were already a bit tired on the on set, getting there appeared much harder with overcrowded buses, late subways and waiting outside of the worst subway station for a bus for an eternity. By the time we made it to the park, we were already tired. It had been very cool in the morning and had looked like it might rain and there were thunderstorms in the forecast. I thought that would be perfect, because nobody would go on such a day and we would not have to deal with sun and crowds and the like. It appears that our weather information had been off, since it was quite warm and sunny, resulting in lots of people everywhere and us lugging around our sweaters and rainjackets.

The children were not really that excited about the black, hairy potbelly pigs running around - and to be honest, they are kind of ugly. The wolves were sleeping, the bears nowhere to be found, the moose dad was munching away leafs, refusing to give us any clue where his recently born moose baby twins were hiding. Johanna and Sophie loved feeding all the deer, but it is something we have done many times before, so not quite worth the huge effort. I have to say though, that there is something so enchanting and endearing about deer, they are so beautiful and shy and lovely.

Then again, we were there to see the medieval market, which turned out rather small and not exciting either, since we have seen much better ones. Trying to make the best of it, we all had a picnic of the big bag of cherries we had bought at a road side stand and even those were not exciting. When the supposedly awesome show finally started, we were unable to see anything due to the crowds and decided to head somewhere else in the park.

Johanna waited in line for a really long time to have her face painted and the lady did a fantastic job on making her a tiger; a very sad tiger though at bedtime when the paint needed to come off. The hall of crafts was very disappointing and the stations to make your own crafts had been packed up. We thought another visit to the wolves would cheer us up, but they had gone off into the wild and only one lone wolf was to be seen a distance away.

So we left the park and made our way back home, which involved more waiting for crowded public transportation, and once we got home, we were all completely exhausted. Even on days that don't turn out the way we envision them, usually at least I bring home a plethora of great shots, but unfortunately my big camera had mysteriously drained it's battery and the little one had a tough time with the dark animals and the high contrasts of forestry.

On the way home we came up with a lot of things we should have done instead of visiting the park, because in retrospect we are all smarter. My children would say this is Murphy's law, when our expectations are high, we are bound to be disappointed, and of course in general reality of travel hardly lives up to what we envision. The best moments always come unplanned, spontaneous and without expectations weighing them down. It is silly to think every day on such a long trip will be memorable and special. At the same time, if we would have had a low key day spent with games and the park, it probably would have been very special in it's own way.

Fleamarket

2009-06-28T11:51:00.000+02:00

If you happen to be visiting my mother on a Saturday or Sunday, there is no question about it, you get up early and head to a flea market (Flohmarkt) for some surprise finds. So we did just that, against our desire to sleep in. Flea markets here are wonderful, there is anything and everything to be had, from toys over antiques to books and dishes, crazy things, odd things, jewelery, well really: Everything! Unlike markets in the US, here it is just private people selling off things they have no more use for and of course antiques dealers. It is so much fun, because you have no way of knowing what to expect, sometimes the greatest things for little money change owners, sometimes you find something fanatastic and it is too much. Of course we saw so many things that would have been awesome to have, but too big or heavy to take overseas. At one table they had this really cool travel typewriter from the 30s, Johanna and I were smitten, but it was just not reasonable for us to lug it with us.

Johanna wanted a purple scarf and found one, a friend of my mom's gave her a pocket knife she had her eye on, she got a game about Venice - including the thrill of paying 2 Euros for something that would cost 30 in a store - and she also bought a scarf for Sophie, who found herself a wooden owl. For myself I got an old 'Sammeltasse', which is a cup-saucer-plate set and a small sauce ladle in the pattern of our silver. There was a nice woman making these wonderful hats and I had to buy one for Johanna, it looks so nice on her and I am a bit envious, it looked really stupid on me, it's not fair (stomp, stomp, pout).

Now we are all reading while lunch is being made and then we are off to a wilderness park.

Cousins and Cherries

2009-06-27T23:58:00.000+02:00

Even though we were still jetlagged, we had to get up very early today and board the train to Himmelpforten (literally heaven's gate) to visit with family. The children were tired, but so excited to ride the bus again and then take the awesome Metronom.

First we visited my uncle Gernot and aunt Sophie for brunch. My cousin Christoph the chimney master was there and I got to meet his girl friend Maren, who is very nice, and their brand new baby boy Eric, one of the most content babies I have ever seen. Johana fell in love with him :) Later my cousin Jan the architect came with his six year old son Linus, a real cute one, who loves soccer like Sophie and they kicked the ball around (kind of a theme with ALL the boys we meet here).

One of the big attractions was the humongeous cherry tree, we were all enjoying the cherries right there under and in the tree, spitting the pits into the adjacent hedge. There is always something liberating about spitting cherry pits.

In the afternoon we went to visit my aunt Regina and her children and grandchildren, it was a bit strange at first, because I had not been in the house since it was still my grandmother's 7 years ago and who died 5 years ago. Also, recently my uncle had died. I was surprised though, that I actually did not mind being in the house. We had the typical German coffee and cake affair, which is always lovely. I think life would be better if we all would have cake and coffee every afternoon. My cousin Silke was there, very pregnant and due in August and also her brother Michael and his wife Michaela with their kids Matthias and Melanie.

Our kids had played with each other many years ago and did not remember each other, our reminding of how Matthias used to kiss (and bite) Johanna was not helping much either. After a while they had a blast though. It is amazing how well the girls are doing with their German, I guess all the Oma (German grandmother) training is paying off.

It was a bit sad to see my aunt mourning and to realize that I had not seen her in 7 years because of typical family disagreements. I think she was happy to see us again.

But it is also funny to think back to old times. I reminded my aunt how she once broke a wooden cooking spoon on Michael's leg in anger ( I am sure he deserved it ;)), he is sure it was at least 20 or more. We reminisced about playing with playmobil in the basement and I blamed him for my obsession with it now. When I saw Christoph's big motorcycle (what a machiiiiine), I had to laugh and think of the time we went out on a small motor schooter and were thrown out of the local pub for messing with the billiard table. Oh yeah, I had some fun times with cousins and we all love cherries, actually, there seems to be a genetic disposition in my family to be just completely crazy for that fruit.

Looking out over my past

2009-06-26T23:17:00.000+02:00

My mother sold her country house in January and after two month in the tiny studio appartment she always had inthe city, was lucky to get a bigger appartment next door. My first appartment was in this building as well - a long time ago. I love her new appartment, it is not big, just 2 rooms, kitchen, bath etc, but the view is just wonderful. We are on the seventh floor and are overlooking a beautiful part of Hamburg, the area where I lived from age 6 to 23. It feels funny, I have not really been here in such a long time - we always visited her in her house 50 miles outside of the city - and now I am looking out over my past. Houses were friends have lived, places I have worked at, all the different places I have lived, the park I played soccer at every day, my childhood library, the church I got married in... and so forth. I am not sure if this feels similar to other people, but it is almost like it was not me or my life, it all seems so far away that I don't feel the connection any more. It is like meeting and old boy friend after many years and one feels bewildered and awkward at the thought of having been intimate with a person feeling so estranged.

We walked a lot today, since we had to run errands downtown and then we needed to run even more errands, so basically we walked all day. I smothered my knee in arnica now and took some advil and hope it will do alright. I am using the cane and have found that people treat me so completely different with a cane compared to crutches. With crutches everybody offeres help and asks what happened, with the cane people probably think I have some disability, which would be rude to notice and so they try to ignore that it is there. This evening I went to a salon to have my eyebrows and lashes dyed dark, something I cannot find in MA, and I took an old bike my mom had. Actually I had it from an old boyfriend and gave it to her in a trade over 20 years ago. It was so wonderful to bike in the evening light on the bike paths that are everywhere. This is definitely the best mode of transportation ever and I miss it so much. The kids have expressed a desire to bike around as well and I had to console them with our bike reservation for the island and that we are taking an awesome train tomorrow to see all these aunts and uncles and cousins and their children. It is going to be interesting.

Arrival

2009-06-25T20:32:00.001+02:00

No, not the ABBA album of the same name, but our arrival here in Germany. We left Boston Wednesday night with Swiss International Airlines and in just under 11 hours, we flew to Zuerich, changed planes and hopped over to Hamburg. As usual the weather was gray and rainy. I forgot the very fine and steady mist that get's you wet much faster than you would think - I love it, it is very relaxing.

Traveling with children is definitely easier when they are older compared to traveling with infants and toddlers. But this would have been the flight for families, there were actually more children than adults, the captain was there to greet us when we boarded and he remarked that he had never, ever had this many children on board. It is still not easy though to take my kids on an overnight trip, one is so highstrung and pouty and sees the worst possible scenario in everything and freaks out easily over nothing and the other one does not deal well with anything outside of routine and familarity - flying kind of does not fit into that scheme - and as a result cannot regulate things like volume of voice or her body in physical space. I admit that partly the annoyance is my fault, I am just not laid back enough and I have no patience for a child that tells me 7 times in 3 minutes "I am thirsty!!!!", when the drink cart is already on the way.

I was relieved though that it was somebody else's kid that threw up this time. Strange enough, imagine that girl sat in the same seat that S. was sitting in 3 years ago, when she kept throwing up. Unfortunately my girls have both inherited the inability to actually get comfortable on the plane and subsequently sleep. So needless to say, we were extremely tired once we got here and S promptly fell asleep. Of course we want to stay within the German time and nobody was allowed to go to sleep before 8pm, resulting in us waking each other agian and again, to keep that schedule working.