MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

Border Crossings Gone Bad, and Bach

It is hard to believe that our 5 week trip will be ending soon-- 3 more day to enjoy ourselves, and then we leave on Thursday. D had begun the trip by having a hard time adjusting to the new environment, wishing he could go back home, and just this morning he was bemoaning having to leave. He likes it here now! Of course, part of his not wanting to leave is the fact that school will start 5 days after we get home, and he is starting middle school-- same building as his elementary school, but a whole new world.

We just got back last night from our last little mini-trip: we left Thursday morning for Prague, where we stayed one night, and then from there went to Leipzig, where the kids have been eagerly anticipating the World Games Convention, supposedly the 2nd largest video gaming convention in the world. Not my thing, but when L discovered it would coincide with our trip and it wouldn't be that far away, we thought we'd go. So the kids have been chanting Leipzig, Leipzig at various times throughout the trip, and it was probably the thought of it that got them through some of my b-o-r-i-n-g (to them) museums.

But first, Prague. We tried to get going early, knowing that we weren't planning much time for this great city. We have been hearing all along from people that they LOVE Prague, that if there was any city they wanted to go back to, it was Prague, that Prague was a must see. Before we left Neumarkt, we stopped in town for cash, some rolls and coffee to eat in the car, and then of course, we stopped when the polizei pulled us over as we were leaving town. Urgh, B had just been following cars and keeping up with them, but apparently, he was going 70 in a 50 kmh zone. That is one of the things about driving in a foreign country-- it takes a long time to get to know what all the rules are and how to figure out the road signs. The officer let us pay 35 euros cash on the spot, instead of the usual going to the courthouse and whatever their ritual is, but he said that it is usually 50 euros. It was hard to know if he was being nice to us or not. But we paid up and were on our way.

About an hour later, we realized that we hadn't thought about bringing our passports along. So far, we had only needed them one time, and that was at a hostel in Munich weeks ago where they wanted our passport info. But we had them with us last week when we went to France and there, the borders are open and you don't even stop going through-- just like going to Wisconsin! So we had totally got out of the mind-frame of thinking about passports. Urgh. We discovered that we actually did have four of our passports-- some of us just carried them in our neck-wallets with our cash, but our daughter despised the neck wallet because she is a teen and it makes her look lumpy under her shirt, so hers was lying on the floor in her Neumarkt room.

So here we were, less than an hour from the border-- do we go back, or do we just continue onward and see if the Czech border is any big deal? We decided to go forward and see. The worst they could do was turn us away, and then we'd have to go back, maybe cancel the Prague part of our trip.

At the border, the Czech border patrol looked at our passports, looked at G's school ID (the only thing we had at the time), and then shrugged his shoulders. He said he would let us in, but he said he didn't know how the Czech police would react when we wanted to return to Germany (I'm not sure why he said Czech, because when we return to Germany, it is the German border patrol). We asked what might happen, and he said they might fine us 40 euros. Well, that was a fine we'd be willing to pay. He said we could take our chances, but he didn't indicate anything worse than that. So we happily, gullibly rode on into the Czech Republic, blissfully unaware...

From there it was about 2 hours to Prague, and we enjoyed the rolling hills and farmland. We got to Prague, and really, this is always the worst part of a little trip-- arriving in a new city where you don't know how to get to your hotel, and you have no understanding of how the city is put together. We drove around lost for about an hour, stopped to get directions, the stress level high because the streets are always twisted and hard to follow in these old European cities, and traffic is always bad. After stopping twice for directions (and we know absolutely NO words in Czech-- I tried to look some up on B's internet phone while he drove, and even please and thank you are very complex and unpronounceable), we found our hotel. Actually, it is an apartment building that rents out rooms for short or long terms-- there were a lot of these on the hostel websites I searched. So, for 70 euros we had a lovely and brand new apartment to stay in-- beds for 5, kitchen, bathroom, TV, very shiny bathroom.

It was now about 3:30 pm and we'd only eaten some rolls and car snacks all day, so we walked a few blocks to where all the restaurants are. We learned that in the C.R., they most commonly still use their own money, the krown, which has a rate of about 30 krowns to 1 euro. Some places will take euros, but not as many as you would think. So we ate at a nice little Czech restaurant, which had prices of 150 K for a plate of food, which was only like 5 euros. I had a delicious dish called Chicken Amadeaus, which was bits of chicken, shrimp and mushrooms in a creamy curried sacue. Everyone enjoyed their food.

Then we went down the street to the metro, where B once again figured out how to get around. We went across the River to Wenceslas Square, a beautiful old part of the city. None of the city was bombed during the war, so Prague stands as a memorial to old European architecture, and it is just gorgeous to walk from building to building, each ornate in its own way. This old square was very interesting-- a place for people to gather and walk and eat and shop. We learned quickly that you need to be very careful while crossing streets in Prague-- pedestrians are not sacred in the least, and cars speed recklessly. I remembered reading about this when, over a year ago, we had researched living in the C.R. when B had had the possibility of getting a job here. One book we read said that crossing the street on foot is always taking your life in your hands. It really was. I always waited for some other pedestrian to start crossing before I did, hoping they knew what they were doing.

I'm sorry to report that we really didn't see much of Prague at all. We wandered, ate cheap ice cream, looked at buildings, rested, really didn't have any particular sight-seeing destinations at all. All I wanted to get was a taste of Prague, to see what it was like. Now that we'd been traveling for a month, we were tired of sight-seeing and had lost our drive. So I'm sure we missed the best parts of this great city. We'll have to return some day, with more energy!

The next morning, we got up and shopped around a nearby mall with an underground free parking garage, where our car had been parked all night. I discovered a grocery store in the mall that took Visa, so I had fun stocking up our car snacks. This was a pretty big store, much bigger by several times any grocery store I'd seen in Germany, and the food was all cheap. I spent 250 K, which was something like 10 euros.

After the hell of driving out of the city (almost as bad as arriving-- it took about an hour to find the freeway, it is so confusing), we were on our way across the lovely Czech landscape. It was only marred as we neared the border by a sad little town which looked worn and beaten down, with a plethora of sex shops. B suggested that it is near the border, so maybe people cross the border to have some of their less healthy needs met. There were prostitutes standing along the roadside, in front of shops, young girls looking come-hither at the traffic. Shudder!

Now we were at the border, hoping that it would go pretty smoothly. At our hotel, B had had the clerk print off a webpage he'd created before we left America, where he'd scanned in copies of each of our passports. So now we had a photocopy of G's passport, with her photo and everything. We hoped this would suffice.

Dear Reader, it did not suffice! It was about 1:30 when we reached the border, and we got in the liine of cars and the German office looked at our passports and told us to pull into a parking spot at the side. There we waited about 10 minutes, since they were busy with long lines of cars wanting to go to Germany. We hoped for the 40 euro fine. But a non-English-speaking guard eventually stomped over to our car, handed us our passports and told us firmly that we were denied and we would have to go back to the American Embassy in Prague, and we might get a passport in a few days. ACK! There was no reasoning with this guard, and B shakily turned the car around and we went about a mile to the nearest gas station.

At the gas station, we found that we had phone connection but no internet connection, so we were limited on what we could do. I tore through my Germany guidebook, looking for any trouble-shooting information. I did uncover the phone number for the American Embassy in Germany (we didn't know how to find the one for Prague), and B called and explained our situation. A nice clerk or ambassador, not sure what she was, helped us out. B gave her the URL for the passport photocopy, and she was able to look it us. What followed was 2 hours of hell, with B on the phone to her, trying to see what she could do, and then us going back to the border police and B trying to talk to them, trying to get their phone number so our Embassy helper could talk to them. It was an awful, anxious 2 hours, envisioning being stuck in Prague, the kids missing out on their Leipzig trip they'd looked so forward to.

While waiting, I came up with the idea that B could take the boys across the border and back to Neumarkt for the passport, and I could wait with G. I'd forgotten that because we were on the way to Leipzig, we were far north of our previous crossing, so it would take him about 4 hours to get back to Neumarkt, so G and I might have to stay in a hotel for 8 hours waiting for him. Ugh. Meanwhile, he was talking to guards, talking to the Embassy, and eventually, he and I and G went inside (we thought it would be good to have the innocent 15 year old standing there with us, so they could see that she was harmless) to wait at the office window. The police agreed to receive a fax of the passport info-- we don't know if they thougth the embassy actually had the passport or what, we didn't care, we just wanted it to work out. The fax turned out to be sufficient and the police agreed to issue a new, temporary passport. For 25 euros. Yay! We panicked a moment when they said they needed a photo-- we had no photos! All our photos were digital! But then I remembered I had the kids' school photos in my daytimer, and a school photo was fine. Phew!

We got the passport, got back in the car, got back in line for the border. When we reached the guard and handed over the passports (again), he indicated we needed to go park in one of the spots (again). Darn, we thought we were clear! The guards in the office had just given us this passport! Could they deny us now, after all this? Were they just toying with us?

We waited 10 more minutes, long anxious minutes, awful minutes. And then a perky young patrol came up and smiled and said we were okay to go. We didn't breathe until we crossed the border at last. We were back in Germany!!

A half an hour later, we were waiting on the road in a long line of cars for some road construction, and all of a sudden B felt his car door open. He nearly screamed, thinking "ack, the border patrol is telling us to turn around!" But it was an old German man telling us to turn on our headlights in German. Apparently it is a law in this area, and he didn't want us getting a ticket. Very nice of him, but we locked the doors after that!

It took about 2 1/2 more hours to get to...

LEIPZIG

We arrived in Leipzig about 6 pm, and then had the usual driving-around-crazy-time-finding-the-hotel time. We eventually got to the Renaissance Hotel Leipzig, which is the 5-star hotel we would stay in for Friday and Saturday nights. If you've been reading this blog all along, then you'll know that we usually do not stay in 5-star hotels; usual for us is a hostel with bunk beds and very plainly furnished. But we hadn't realized just how big this World Game Convention is for the town of Leipzig, so we had failed to start looking for hotels for our stay until, um. like last Monday? And so we were finding that everything and anything was booked, from hostels to hotels. We were told the whole town was booked and that we'd have to stay in the next town of Halle, which was 30 km away. B ended up calling the website www.hotels.de to see if they could be any help, and actually they were very helpful. They easily found us a hotel in town-- a much nicer hotel that really wasn't that outrageously priced. We've stayed in hostels that ran us $150 a night for our family of 5, and we ended up paying a total of 395 euros for two nights. And it was many steps above a hostel in accomadations and service!

The beddings was very soft and cushy, the bottles of soaps and shampoos wonderfully scented, there were 2 TVs, the desk staff very attentive, and the breakfast buffet was fancy. I ended up being very very glad to have such a nice hotel to stay in, because as I've mentioned before, attending the World Gaming Convention was really not my thing. I wanted to see what it was like, but I really didn't plan to stay there as long as B and the kids. So having a nice place to lounge around suited me just fine.

We got into our rooms and then headed out to find the convention. It turned out we were not near, about 10 km away, but there was a tram that took us straight to the Messegelande, the convention center. It was a 30 minute ride, but we didn't have to switch trams, so it was okay. Unfortunately, we thought that the convention would be running late all weekend, but it turns out it ended at 6 pm Friday, reopening at 9 am on Saturday. Poor L had to wait another day to experience the convention! We went back to the hauptbanhof (tram/train station) which had a shopping mall above it, and we found a pizza place and got some dinner. By now it was about 8 pm and this was our first real meal of the day! We had had croissants in the Czech Republic in the morning and car snacks along the way (lost our appetites for awhile at the border), but not that much. After dinner, we went to the hotel and collapsed in 5-star glory!

The next day we all got up early to get to the convention center when it opened. We knew L and G would go off on their own-- L plays an online game called Guild Wars that was having their world championship matches at the convention, so he was going to be spending his time there. D would at least stick with B and I for awhile. We had no idea what to expect of this thing.

The Messagelande is huge-- It has a central area that is a long half-dome of rounded glass, where people enter and can eat at small food stands and sit at tables. Then there are four enormous halls in which to see various video game stuff, 2 on each side of the main area. It is reported that 186,000 people attended-- it was very crowded, mostly with teen boys and 20-somethings in t-shirts, some people in costumes but most people not. I followed B and D into one of the halls, and it was Really So Not My Thing. I hadn't thought it would be, but I was curious. Imagine a huge hall filled with large and small screens, colorful displays, flashing lights and loud music, different music as you walk from display to display. They would have a huge circle of bright cushions on the floor with hand-held game devices like Game Boys wired to a central station, so people could just sit on cushions and play. They had stand up video arcade style games, stages with emcees leading shows. They had a family hall that had games for younger kids, too young for D, though that at least was a much quieter area. And most of all it was people everywhere, people pushing and nudging from all sides, people crowding.

B eventually went off on his own and I stuck with D for about an hour, and then I could see that it was pointless for me to hang around. He is young but I knew he could find some entertainment on his own, without us having to stick together in the crowd. So I showed him where I'd be sitting, down at the tables in the main hall, and then let him go. I did feel a bit of apprehension-- it is such a big place I didn't know if I could find him again. But he knew where he could find me if he got upset.

So I sat in this crowded hall, found a table and wrote in my journal while video nerds smoked around me (yes, they can smoke everywhere here). At noon, we had set up a meeting spot for the family, knowing that not everyone would show up for it-- they don't have watches and I knew they would just be sucked into the environment and forget time. But I found B and G there, and G, like me, was ready to go back to the hotel. B would stay and look for the boys. We knew he's eventually find them at 8 pm when the convention closed. So G and I rode the tram back, shopped and had lunch in the train station mall, and then went back to the hotel. We watched bad German TV (at least they had MTV to entertain us-- I haven't seen videos in ages), read our books (I'm half way through WICKED right now), wrote in my journal, relaxing stuff like that.

B and D came back late in the afternoon, B having found D, who was tired enough to want to go back to the hotel. L was still out there, somewhere, and we thought he could find his way back to the hotel if he needed to. B planned to go back to the Messegalande when the convention ended at 8 pm, so stand outside and see if he came out. He did that, but L ended up showing up at the hotel at about 8:45, having left and missed B. I was able to call B on the cell phone, so that worked. We met him at the hauptbanhof and ate dinner at the mall.

The next day, G and I were just going to stay at the hotel. We had arranged a late check out at 3 pm, so B, D and L would go to their convention, D and L staying until it closed at 6 pm. B would come back and help us check out of the hotel, and then we would drive around and find something to do in Leipzig until the convention was over. So G and I had a nice morning, swimming in the hotel pool, sitting in the lukewarm whirlpool, and then using the sauna by the pool. Now, I had heard that Germans are less inhibited about nudity, and that there are German baths and saunas where everyone goes nude. But we were in this fancy hotel and I didn't think about being nude in a communal sauna just around the corner from the front reception desk! So G and I were enjoying the warmth when a tall, dark-haired, good-looking and completely unclothed fellow joined us in the sauna! We were in our suits, of course, as we prudish American girls like to be, and he started upon seeing us there, suited, and him standing there, unsuited, but he just sat down and we all tried to be as casual about it as we could.

It didn't help that he was sitting right by the door, so I kept thinking, 'we'll just stay until he leaves, stay until he leaves," but he didn't leave and I was getting hot. So, very casually, we got up and walked by him, averting our eyes. Okay, lived through that!

That's the thing about being in a foreign country-- you really feel like you just don't know what you are doing half the time. Are people really staring at you, or are you just paranoid?

B came back and we checked out of our nice 5 star hotel, so easy to appreciate after all our 1 star accomodations along the way! And then we drove to a marktplatz nearby to walk around and spend some time. I wanted to see the Goethe statue. We ended up wandering into the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church), where Bach is buried. It's a beautiful old church, and I was thrilled to find the Bach grave-- his remains are in front of the main altar, underneath a bronze plaque with his name. How sweet-- several people had left roses on the plaque, a touching gesture. You can also see the organ he played in this church.

We had lunch at a nice little sidewalk cafe that didn't even have sausages on the menu, and the three of us had a lovely time. We walked around the market area, found Goethe's statue--the writer had been a student in Leipzig long ago. We heard a street musician, a steel guitar player, during our lunch and he was very good-- played the Beatles, the Bee Gees, many American melodies.

After this, we drove to the Messagelande and held our breath as B went to look for the boys. Yay, the convention was over and they were waiting right at the meeting spot. All tht was left now was to find some fast food to eat in the car and start the trip home from Leipzig. We didn't get back to Neumarkt until 10 after a very long, stressful drive. The roads were busy and there was lots of road construction. B says the autobahn keeps you awake while you drive-- it's the constant surge of adrenalin as cars race by.

Now we're down to our last few days of the trip. Time for cleaning up the G's house, maybe driving around Nurnberg some more, visiting with the people we've met here. It's hard to believe we'll be home by Thursday night!

And we're going to remember to carry those passports! Really!

Meeting with the Burgermeister

Yesterday we had the privelege of meeting with the burgermeister of Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, who just happens to be the father of our host. Herr and Frau G showed up on our doorstep last weekend, wanting to meet us and give us free ride tickets for the Volksfest that ended on Monday. The Volksfest seems to a regional fair that goes on for 10 days, one which the towns around here look forward to all year. The carnival itself is mainly rides, food and a beer garden, but they also seem to have events in conjunction with the festival, like a parade, horse show, things like that.

We did go to the Volksfest on its opening weekend, not spending a great amount of time there because our teens were being sulky and not wanting to go on any rides. Our 11 year old loved it. And we had gone to the big parade last Sunday, which was really quite a sight. It lasted more than 90 minutes and went on even though it rained for part of the time. It had all sorts of people and groups in different kinds of traditional German costume, lots of horses in the parade... it was a different kind of parade than you see in the States. You can see the pics on Bs Blog.

Herr and Frau G also brought us a gift of a special Volksfest Stein-- a special one is put out each year. How kind! And they invited us to meet them at the Rathaus, the city government building, during the week, so the Burgermeister could show us around.

So, on Monday we went back to the Volksfest with all the free ride tokens they gave us. This time sulky teens agreed to ride on rides, and they seemed to have much more fun (except when L rode one of the especially spinny-wavy rides and felt sick afterwards for the next hour. He just needed to lay down for awhile and then he felt better). We ate in the bier garten, and B was especially thrilled to have a giant pretzel fresh from the oven and bigger than his head and a huge stein of beer.

Yesterday we went to the Rathaus to see the Burgermeister. From what we can figure out, the Oberburgermeister is the real mayor of the town, but he has 2 burgermeisters that are assistants. We were escorted to a very large and fancy meeting room that seats about 40 at long gleaming oak tables. Herr Graf sat at the head table and with the help of his wife (who seems to speak English a little more comfortably) and a secretary, he showed us a presentation about the town of Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz on a large screen, the history of the town and all the important parts of the town. The whole city was unfortunately bombed in 1945, just two weeks before the war ended. It was fascinating, and we all got Neumark souvenirs as well.

He toured us around the building, including the top floor where we got to see views of the entire city. We also got the see the inner workings of the large clock that is on the Rathaus exterior wall. After this, Herr and Frau G walked us over to the 2 churches in town and a musuem. We had seen some of these sights before, but the Gs were able to tell us about many details and history that we would never have gotten on our own.

Our visit ended with them inviting us to come to their home for coffee next week... really, so very kind of them.

We passed the afternoon shopping around Neumarkt and driving around to find a waterpark-swimming pool that they'd told us about. D is very excited to go swimming, and woke up this morning to put on his swim trunks right away!

Last night, B and I decided to go and visit some of the neighbors we'd met when our hosts were still here. August is prime vacation time here, so we knew that some of them had been gone on trips themselves, and the weather hasn't been nice enough for us to just sit outside and see neighborhs coming and going. (Really, it's been cool and rainy here the entire trip! And it is't usually this way, they tell us.) So we just knocked on doors and ended up having 2 neighbors join us at our place to look at pictures and share stories about our trips. One of them had been in Egypt, and that wa great to hear about.

Well, I'd better get going. D wants to swim! And luckily, they tell us that the outdoor swimming area is a heated pool, otherwise it would be too cold.

PARIS, DAY 4 AND 5

(If you want to read the Paris trip in order, scroll down to previous entries first.)

On Thursday, it was time to pack up and move to our other hotel for the stay. I hadn't been able to find 5 consecutive nights in a hotel for us, so we had to change. At the Grande Hotel Magenta near Montmartre area, we would all 5 be able to stay in one room. However, this was a much busier, less safe area of town, very close to Gare du Nord (a train station) and a hospital, so we got to hear ambulance sirens frequently throughout our stay. It did have more room at this hotel, though the rooms were dingey and old and worn out. There was a room with a double bed and single bed, another room with a double bed, and a roomy bathroom.

After settling in and finding a parking garage where the van could be safe (we won't mention the heroin addicts shooting up in the stairwell, will we?), we headed off for the Picasso Museum. I was thinking that this might be a refreshing change from seeing all the classical paintings at the Louvre the previous day, getting to see the span of artwork throughout the life of a very experimental artist. (D of course dubbed it all Boring. Well, maybe someday he'll appreciate having seen such things.) I enjoyed it all, and came away with a real sense of Picasso's playfulness. Artist Daughter G came away from 2 days of art wanting to go home and work on her own art. Yay!

We decided to walk from the museum to Notre Dame, even though it would be a jaunt. It seemed preferable to walk a ways than to run down to the metro and climb stairs and wander hallways and wait for trains. We found some fascinating windy little streets with some fun shops. The boys all tolerated the girls going into a jewelry store and buying some Paris earrings (yay, I found some!). Thank you boys!

We arrived at Notre Dame, unfortunately too late to actually climb the towers and see the gargoyles up close. B and I had done this on our last trip, and the kids would have liked it. We didn't realiye the tower visits close up so early. We did get to walk around inside the cathedral though, and this is my favorite fo the Paris churches. There is so much to see inside, and everything is on such a grand scale. Statues of saints and religious icons everywhere, colorul stained glass, a forrest of pillars, neck-craning arches to gaze up at. And because of the Hunchback of Notre Dame movie, the kids knew about Notre Dame, so even D who called every old thing boring enjoyed seeing this church!

I had seen in an online Paris guide a mention of a must-visit cafe to get ice cream from by Notre Dame. We asked an English speaking guard at Notre Dame, and she pointed the way to Berthillion. It was just across a little bridge, right by the Seine River. We got our ice cream, various flavors of chocolate for most of us, and It Was Really Really Good. There were certain bass notes to this ice cream, a thickness and a depth you don't find in ordinary ice cream. We sat on steps by the Seine and savored the moment. The kids had fun feeding bits of cone to little birds that they eventually got to fly up and pluck the cone off their outstretched fingers.

We went back to our hotel after this, then went out for pizza at a nearby restaurant for dinner. Instead of the brusque manners we've found from some German and French waiters and waitresses, here we were welcomed in enthusiastically by a darker-skinned French maitre d'. He seemed to love speaking English with us, and helped us order from the waitress who spoke only French and Spanish. The pizza was great (thin salami, which seems to be the equivalent of pepperoni, with an egg in the middle of the pizza). The maitre d' chatted with us a bit about America and our trip-- he claimed to love our president, even though we said we didn't!

DAY 5

Our last day in Paris was a trip to Versailles, which I guess is technicallly outside of Paris. It was tricky to figure out how to get there-- you had to buy special tickets for some train that traveled outside the metro area. After some hits and misses we got on the right train.

Again our museum passe came in handy, allowing us to skip the longer lines to get in. We shelled out the $30 for the English audio guides and it ended up being worth it-- I think we all got a lot more out of the castle and its contents in getting to hear the stories and factual information about the rooms.

Everry room in this palace is sooooo elaborate, with painting on the ceilings and gold gilding everywhere, mirrors and enormous portraits and statues everywhere. I especially enjoyed the long hall of kings when we first went in, which is a long pale hallway with a white statue every few feet on one side, each one of a king or queen of france, dating back to the 700s AD. I also liked the opera hall that King Louis XV had built. It was all a soft blue with gold trimming. Unfortunately, it was one of the rooms where photography wasn't allowed.

The crowds at Versailles were not much fun. Some of the rooms were small, and it seems like every other tourist isn't satisfied at any famous sight in Paris to just take a picture of the famous object--- no, you must take a photo of your friend/child/spouse/whatever standing next to the famous object, and this makes it difficult for anyone else who is trying to get a picture. Why is this? Must they prove that they were there, smiling and posing next to the object? Obviously, I'm just a take-a-picture-of-the-object type!

After about 2 hours touring the rooms, we went outside to find bathrooms. While the palace of Versailles is splendidly royal, the bathrooms are not. Especially for women. You had to wait in line for 15 minutes outside to use one of the smelly 4 stalls. Of course it decided to rain just when G and I had gotten up to be 4th in line. Everyone else had raincoats and umbrellas (we had put our coats in a backpack that we'd checked at the museum entrance), so the heavy downpour got us. We waited, and after we were pretty drenched a nice man waiting for his wife came and stood next to us, sharing his umbrella. We were grateful!

The storm didn't last too long, and then we toured the gardens at Versailles. They seem to go on forever in three different directions, with sculpted shrubbery and trees, numerous fountains, flowers, statues. We walked around until we were too tired to move and then plunked down on some marble steps to just enjoy the views.

As we left Versailles, we walked slowly over the long cobblestone walkway to go back toward the train station. Versailles had what we ended up calling Wobblestones-- cobblestones that have larger rounded rocks that make it so you have to watch your step constantly to make sure you know where you are putting your foot. I've seen women walking around Paris in flip flops and in high heels, and I can't imagine how those wearing such foot gear could even manage a bit of the Wobblestones walkway.

Before leaving, we ate at a McDonald's in a mall by the train station. This is the first time we'd eaten in one here, and the kids were happy. It was all so, dare I say, comfortingly familiar? And the Big Mac, fries and Coke were filling and tasty. It was nice to order and know what you were getting, which is not usually the case when eating out while traveling. B decided to order anything he couldn't get at an American McDs-- beer and a cocoa crispie bar. The beer came in a malt cup! During lunch we struck up a conversation with a British family visiting a friend in Paris. We had a good chat, talking about traveling and where we were going and how they'd loved New York when they'd been there.

We had a few extra metro tickets, so we used them up by surprising D with another trip to the carnival at the Tuillieries. He was so happy, and had a good time running around and playing.

After this it was back to the hotel to rest and pack, our last night in Paris. In the morning, we grabbed one last breakfast from a sidewalk bakery and retrieved our van and we were off for Germany again. It had been a full week!

PARIS, DAY 2 AND 3

(If you want to read the Paris trip in order, scroll down to previous entries first.)

On Tuesday, we got up and had the little 3 euro breakfast we'd paid to have every morn at the Garden Hotel. Now, this is a very narrow hotel-- doors are right up next to each other in the hallway, inches apart, and the stairway was the tightest spiral. When we went down to eat breakfast, at first we couldn't find where we should go. The main floor is just a narrow checkout desk with a tiny bathroom and some private workroom in the back. We finally found out we had to go out the front door to the next door down, and there on the corner was the breakfast room, a small sunny room with tables set. After we figured out that a guy would serve us the breakfast, we sat down and he brought us coffee, orange juice, hot milk and chocolate powder, and baguettes with butter and jam. It seemed we could have as much as we wanted. (What, no sausages?)

We headed off for our first destination, one chosen by me because I knew it would be a hit with my science fiction crazy family. It was La Cite de Science and de l'Industrie, a rather new science museum in Paris. It helped that they were also having a Star Wars exhibit there, one of those that travels around to different museums with the costumes and props from the movies, and lots of videos on how the movies were made. We had seen something similar years ago at the Minneapolis Museum of Art, but that was before all the later movies were released. So this was a fun exhibit to see and especially thrilled the kids.

The rest of the museum was pretty good, with exhibits on light, glass from the Roman Empire, space, the human body. Some of the displays were in French only but some had English. We spent several hours looking around.

We wandered outside and found a whole park area, very family friendly with playgrounds and fountains and strange bridges and a carousel. Then it was off to a metro station and our next destination, Montmartre.

Montmartre is an artsy neighborhood of Paris that is on a tall hill. At the top of the hill is the church, Sacre Couer. We climbed the hill, very steep, with lots of rests, stopping to take pics of the view along the way. We went up one very touristy narrow winding street near the summit, and I had to laugh as I saw the "artists" all standing around with their sketchbooks in their hand. I saw at least 20 of them, all men, some already sketching tourists and others looking beseechingly, going through their banter as people pass by. B and I had gotten "caught" in Montmartre on our previous trip by two of the artists. They wanted to sketch us, they implored us/pestered us, we wouldn't have to pay if we didn't like the pictures. So we let them, one sketching me and one sketching B. They were so awful, there is no way we would have paid for those unflattering sketches! And the artists were so mad when we said no and walked away. So, seeing them still here, the same old routine, I had to laugh!

Sacre Couer was lovely, a regular who's who of catholic legend inside, with statues and side altars of so many saints. It's lovely but it's not my favorite church. I didn't like the mosaic tile of the Sacred Heart on a white background above the main altar. I prefer the old magestic stained glass churches.

We walked down the hill from Sacre Couer, starving but I was skittish about going into some restaurant in the touristy area and paying too much. We found a little market where we bought apples and Coke and Fanta, and then after more walking we came to a bakery that sold sandwiches. The kids discovered the French hot dog-- actually, 2 hotdogs shoved into a baguette with melted cheese. We bought our food and then, not seeing any benches or anywhere we could eat, we settled into the doorway of a closed shop and sat down and ate. It was a busy part of town so people were constantly walking by us, barely glancing at the strange Americans. One woman smiled and said "Bon appetit!"

Fortified, we found the nearest metro and went back to the hotel. The kids asked if we could watch V for Vendetta on B's laptop, the only movie he has on there. So we piled onto the beds in the boys room for our evening entertainment.

DAY 3

Today after our baguette breakfast, we were off to the Louvre. Daughter G, herself an artist, always rolls her eyes about going to art museums, but I managed to get even her excited to see the famous art at the Louvre. DH and I had been here on our previous trip, and we'd also recently seen The Davinci Code, so it was fun to see the glass pyramid in the courtyard again. We had bought museum passes, which allow you to enter certain museums and sights without having to buy a ticket and you often get to pass up the line to get in. So we went to our special entrance and walked right into the Louvre without waiting, very nice.

Of course it was crowded, packed with people as I'm sure it alway is. We headed for the wing that had paintings by Italian masters. Everywhere you look in the Louvre, for the hours you spend there, all you see is fabulous art, the hours/day/years of effort of artists over the ages. It is truly amazing, and easy to get overloaded and tired, so that after awhile you barely glance at beautifully crafted, centuries old art.

We of course saw the famous pieces-- the Mona Lisa, which everyone always says is so much smaller than they thought it would be. I have seen it before, but for some reason this time it appeared larger to me than I remember! I love her eyes, how she seems to glow from the canvas, and the details of the background. We saw Winged Victory of Samothrace, placed stunningly at the top of a long marble staircase, as if she is about to fly away. We saw a bust by Michael Angelo, and Venus de Milo. Her pearly skin is so luminous, the folds in her wrap so life-like, and I just found myself wondering about the artist who created her over 2,000 years ago-- what skill for that time period, how much more modern she appears than what you think of as B.C. art. We also made a special point to look at the wing for the Dutch masters-- we really wanted to see the Vermeer paintings. The Lacemaker was awesome, a tiny painting with exquisite detail and the colors so alive. Next to it is The Astronomore, another richly elaboarate painting. I fell in love with Vermeer after reading Tacy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring years ago. (I'm trying to learn how to add links to my blog, so hopefully this will work!)

Our feet were weary after several hours of the slow museum shuffle. we wandered outside, finding a small carnival near The Louvre in the Garden of the Tuilleries. D was very excited-- he had suffered the whole museum thing-- who cares if it is the most famous museum in the world?-- and now he could go on some rides! So we hung out at the carnival for awhile, eating ice cream and letting the kids roam. People were sailing large toy sailboats in the garden fountain.

After this, we headed over to Les Halles, an underground shopping mall that B and I had discovered on our last trip to Paris. We had walked around this courtyard many times before discovering that a whole mall was built three stories down. The kids wanted to have some shopping time, so we stopped there. We let the kids go off on their own while B and I took turns waiting at our meeting place on an outdoor terrace and walking around the mall. To me it was utterly boring, just a lot of clothing stores and some houseware stores, but G ended up forgetting the time and went on a shopping spree, buying clothes and not returning for 2 hours. By this time we had combed the very large mall for her and not seen her, and as shops were closing at 7:30 pm she showed up, after I'd already had visions of talking to French police about my daughter being kidnapped. Huge sigh!

We had planned to try and see Notre Dame that afternoon, but since the shopping trip took too long, we went back to the hotel, eating once again at the very convenient Chinese restaurant.

On the Road Again... to Paris

Paris is not somewhere I usually think of DRIVING to, but that's what we ended up doing (trains and planes were too expensive for 5 of us). It's odd, coming from the US, where we've driven 16 hours just to go to Tennessee, but from Newmarkt, driving to Paris was more like driving to Chicago from Minneapolis. Not bad!

Our drive was unremarkable, except that I actually did some driving this time. I've been skittish about driving in Germany, where the signs and driving rules are all different, and the speed on the autobahn makes me too nervous. Besides, the van is a stick shift, which I haven't driven with in over a year, so I've felt uneasy about that. But once we crossed the border to France (and there is no stop at the border-- it's just like driving from state to state now) and the driving was tame, with drivers sticking to the 130 km driving limit and using the left lane only for passing, I knew it was time for me to give B a break. Happily, driving with the stick came back to me like riding a bicycle and every thing went smoothly.

As we entered Paris, we could get a real sense of the size of the city, how long it took to get to the center of it. I had been looking forward to this jaunt to Paris, a chance to revisit the city where B and I had our honeymoon 17 years ago. I was also looking forward to getting to see how much of my French I remembered. I took French from 8th grade through my first year of college, and while I was never fluent, I had a pretty good vocabulary and could construct sentences and get an idea across. For weeks now we have been struggling here without knowing more than a handful of German words, pointing and nodding a lot, and I've found French words coming to me as I try to find a German word that might express what I want.

The first trick was to find our hotel, one I'd reserved online near the Bastille. We had a map, we had mapquest directions but all the streets are curvy and as hard to follow as untangling a knotted fine gold chain. It's not easy to follow a single street as arrowed signs point two different ways at once, or the fact that some streets don't seem to have street signs, just small blue signs on the corner walls of buildings that are hard to see. We decided B should pull over somewhere to look at the map, but just finding a place to stop seemed impossible. All the streets are narrow, all the parking spaces filled, no parking lots, even the gas station ended up being a drive through with no place to stop. He did find a spot on the street, illegal we think, but it gave a chance for him to stop and me to jump out and see what street we were on.

We eventually made it to the Garden Hotel, after B was so stressed from the very aggressive drivers, an attempt to go up a one way street the wrong way, and streets so narrow it seemed like the van wouldn't fit. I was nervous about the hotels I'd booked, sight unseen, these budget hotels listed on the hostels website with some good reviews and some bad ones. I had to find places that would work for 5 people, and at this hotel, we had 2 rooms, one for the boys with 3 beds, one for G and me with 2. The rooms were small and plain but clean, and I loved the floor-to-ceiling window with the wrought-iron railing which I could open and look out onto the quiet street below.

After getting settled briefly, we were off to find a parking garage for the car. We'd been warned by the G's that if we traveled to Paris or to the Eastern European countries, we should find a guarded garage for the car because they'd heard about theft and window-breaking happening in those places to German cars. So after the car was safe in its spot, we headed towards the Bastille area, our first Paris sight.

The Place de La Bastille is actually only a monument, a tall pillar with a gold spirit of Liberty statue at the top. It marks the spot where the Bastille prison stood for about 400 years, until the French Revolution. The monument stands in the center of a large traffic round-about, very busy. After admiring the monument, we sat down at a sidewalk cafe and had our first meal in Paris. The kids and I all had croque-monsieurs (a toasted ham sandwich with a layer of cheese grilled onto the top) and B had quiche lorraine. Here we discovered how expensive Paris restaurants can be-- the sandwiches had nothing served along with them, the kids all had Cokes (small bottle for 4 euros each), B and I had coffee, and the meal was 42 eruros. Tasty, but not all that filling. Drinks are very expensive in Paris (we thought drinks were expensive in Germany, but much worse in Paris), and yet asking for tap water is frowned upon, unless you've already ordered drinks. And ice is unheard of!

We found a metro station and gave B some time to figure out how it works. Then we ventured on to the Eiffel Tower... what can I say, it is just suck a striking sight! It is so famous and everyone has seen it in pictures, that just to be standing there in front of it is amazing and unreal. We spent time looking at it from afar, taking pictures, and then wandering the park area that is in front of it. The lines to go up the tower were very long and the kids didn't seem to care if we did or not, so we went on to see the Arc de Triomphe. We went several stops on the metro, walked a long ways and got to it about sunset. B and the boys decided to climb to the top and G and I were tired already and rested below. The Arc de Triomphe was the first Parisien sight I saw on our honeymoon trip, the first thing I saw that said "Paris" to me after having studied French for 6 years. It is so much bigger than you imagine, so classically engraved with carvings, so solid. I love it.

After this, it was the metro back to our hotel. Even though we'd only been in Paris for a half day, we were already discovering how exhausting the metro was... every station has labyrinthine hallways that unfortunately smell of stale urine, many levels that trains can possibly be on, stairs or broken escalators. Often you are taking 2 or 3 trains to try and get to your location, and at every stop you must get out and figure out where you need to go to connect to the correct train (or let your DH figure it out, if you're directionally challenged like me!), climb or descend a few levels, walk through more smelly dank hallways. I'm sure if you live in cities with metros you get used to it all and it just becomes second nature, but it feels a bit like the underworld to me.

By now it was 10 pm and we were very tired and hungry, and 2 blocks from our hotel we were happy to find a Chinese fast food restaurant open, with food for us to point to and buy and take back to our hotel. Egg rolls for 50 cents each! We were so used to everything closing up early in Germany that it was a blessing to find late night food.

A Long Day of Driving

We are home from our week in Paris now. We breakfasted on mini-quiches and croissants from a bakery on Bouldevard de Magenta in Paris this morning, and we are heating up dried soup packets on the stove in our Neumarkt "home away from home" for a very late dinner tonight. (That's what you get if you're too late in coming home in Germany and don't feel like going out to a restaurant-- all the stores close by 8 pm and no stores of any kind are open on Sundays, either, so we'll be scrounging tomorrow!) It was about a 7 hour drive, more or less (a little tricky, trying to figure out how to get out of Paris).

It was a very good week, getting to visit and revisit some favorite places that B and I had seen on our 1989 honeymoon trip to Paris. And we had better weather in Paris than we've had so far in Germany, where it has been cool and rained at least for a bit every day. There was some rain in Paris, but we had lots of sun and some heat, so that was nice. In August, I like to have a little warmer weather!

I'll write more about the trip tomorrow, just wanted to check in for now. A bientot!

Of Munich, Castles and Mountain Peaks

On Monday we left for a mini-trip to southern Germany-- our plan was to be gone for 2 nights, but we ended up staying an extra night when things took longer than we expected.

It took about 2 hours to drive to Munich, or MÜnchen as the Germans say. My first impression was that it was a bigger city like Chicago without the skyscrapers, very busy and much older. We got lost driving into the city but thanks to B's super-duper phone and mapquest, we found our way to our hostel. This was our first time staying in a hostel, and it really wasn't half bad. We had our own room with 3 sets of bunkbeds. It was small and plain and clean. The bathroom (with the toilet and sink) was just a skosh bigger than an airplane toilet. There was another separate closet sized room for the shower. There were lockers to put our stuff in, and a small table and five utilitarian chairs, and one electrical outlet, in the toilet room. Our children said it looked like a homeless shelter they had volunteered in last year. They are obviously spoiled-- I was thinking it could be much worse!

We found out we were at least 6 long blocks from the train station, which seemed to be the best way to get around the city, so after a delicious lunch at a Vietnamese-Thai restaurant (which had items listed in Vietnamese with German descriptions), we began what would be the first of many long walks to traverse the city. When we got to where you could enter the underground, we were confronted with the dreaded ticket machine. All in German, of course, and very hard to figure out what kind of ticket we need and what it will cover. After pushing random buttons, we managed to find an English speaking passerby who said we could purchase the $20 family ticket and that would get us around for 3 days, trains and buses. Whew!

Our guide book indicated that several of the sights we wanted to see were closed on Mondays, so we headed for one we knew was open, The Residenz. This huge palace has been turned into a museum; it housed Bavarian rulers from 1385 to 1918. It had quite a diversity of rooms and exhibits-- some of the gold trimmed/mirror/chandelier type rooms we'd seen in other palaces, some very regal looking halls with giant painted murals of medieval stories, darkened rooms of original tapestries. One of the favorites for the Alberti family was what we called "the Hall of Albertis"-- a long hallway filled with dozens of large portraits, one after another and climbing the walls three or four deep, like my teenage bedroom with wall-to-wall posters of Andy Gibb. Except these "posters" were all framed in gold and had name plates, many of which held the name "So and So Alberti." We were amazed-- Alberti after Alberti, portraits of men and women, hundreds of years old. We'd never thought that Alberti could be German at all, but someone later told us that it is a Latin form of the name Albert, so that's why these people were called Alberti.

Now, my family rolls their eyes whenever I mention it, but one of the exciting things about being in Munich for me is that Betsy Ray, heroine of the Betsy-Tacy book series (by Maud Hart Lovelace, who modeled Betsy after herself as a girl growing up in Mankato, Minnesota, back at the turn of the century) stayed in Munich for 6 weeks about 1917, on her solo European voyage at age 22. Her trip is detailed in the book "Betsy and the Great World," and so I took notes from my book to see if we could see anything that Betsy/Maud had seen on her trip, almost 100 years ago. We visited the Frauenkirche (church of Our Lady) which she had mentioned, but it was rather underwhelming as a church. Many of the walls were white-washed and the stained glass windows were rather plain. My guess is that the church suffered in the bombing of WW2 and these were methods of patching it back up.

We walked around Marienplatz and Odeonsplatz, different parts of the city. We marveled over the old architecture of church spires and the Neues Rathaus, a long ornate blackened gray building with amazing gargoyles and statues all over it. (As a reminder, I refer to to DH's blog, where he'll have pics of all this, http://albatross.org). We took more trains, walked all over, and ended up at a beer garden in the Viktualienmarkt, a large plaza with market booths set up. Most of it had closed by then, but there were a few eateries still open and a large eating area with picnic tables set up, so we ate bratwursts and pretzels and fish sandwhiches and schnitzel and potato salad and drank beer and pop. It was lovely and sunny outside, and the crowd was very jovial. We felt like one of the bunch!

Unfortunately, our second day in Munich turned out to be our bad luck day. It started off hot and sunny, and we took a longer train ride out of the city to Dachau, the concentration camp memorial. It was a train ride, a bus ride, and then walking and walking across the enormous lot to get to any of the buildings there. The camp is just a flat lot, with most of the buildings removed, and now covered in white gravel. How big was the lot, I couldn't say how many football fields could fit in it. But it took forever of walking in the hot sun across the treeless lot. I imagined how hard it was for prisoners there to walk just from one end to another, emaciated and worked to death and weak. It was not a fun place to be.

There was one bunk house open, where you could see the triple high rows of bunks where hundreds of prisoners were squashed into. There was a very long building set up as a mueum, but it was mostly informational boards set up in many languages with pictures and historical facts and info about so many aspects of the time period and life in the camp. It was very interesting but also a tiresome way to see a museum. There were hardly any actual artifacts from the camp. So it was mainly photos and quotations and written information.

The crematoriums were also still standing. There were empty rooms, one after another, and the placards would say, "here is where prisoners were told to undress, here is where they were led to the showers, here is where the dead bodies were piled." The "showers" here were never used for mass extermination, it said. The crematoriums were still intact, a row of several long ovens where it was said 2 or 3 bodies would be cremated at a time. You could really see what a death factory this was, so matter of fact. Very chilling.

After Dachau, we went back by bus and train to Munich, where we thought we'd try to see the Englischer Gartens, which is one of the largest public parks on the continent. By the time we got out of the train station, our sunny day started to look gray, but we were counting on any rain to pass in a quick burst, like we'd see happen so many times in Germany. A little rain and a little sun. So we walked several long blocks and it started pouring just when we got to the gardens. We sat under a tree and stayed semi dry, watched bikers ride past, sat for a half hour and the rain never stopped. It didn't help that this section of the garden was unimpressive-- merely a grassy parkway with old trees, not much else. After we grew tired of waiting, we decided to walk back to the train in the rain, our feet already tired. It did let up and we only got partially soggy. We ended up back in the Marienplatz, found a restaurant to sit down and eat in. It was more of the German meat and potatoes menu that we had a hard time figuring out. Our waitress was a bossy matron in a German costum, fussing when we didn't give the menus back to her properly, and practically shouting "Nicht!" when G tried to order an appetizer of weiss-wurst (a white sausage only proper to have for breakfast). My duck came with some strange gelatinous balls that the menu seemed to have said were "potato noodles"-- imagine a bland ball that you could bounce on the floor!

After a little shopping along the busy street, we decided to try for the Alte Pinakothek, a museum of classical paintings that I thought was open until 10 pm. (This is one of the museums Betsy visited in Munich, rolling of eyes). We walked and walked to get there (so much walking in MÜnchen) only to find I'd read the time wrong-- it said 20:00 in the guide book, and that is 8 pm, not 10. It had just closed. Augh! So now we'd tried to see a garden and a museum after much effort and no reward. Ah well. Our way back to the train brought us right by another Betsy place-- the Pension Geiger, the student pension she had stayed in so long ago. It is a regular hotel now, and much changed from when she'd stayed there. Still, it was thrilling to find it on a street and peek inside.

After breakfast the next morning, we were off to:

SCHWANGAU-- MAD KING LUDWIG'S CASTLE

We drove south about 90 minutes to get to the little city of Schwangau, which is the tourist destination for seeing Schloss Neuschwanstein, one of the castles of Mad King Ludwig (poor guy, to be labeled that way forever, just because he was a little strange). As we drove the windy roads we approached the Bavarian Alps, and B couldn't help stopping a few times for photos-- the scenery was devine. Purplish-blue mountains laced with tendrils of smoky white clouds. The little town is at the foot of the Alps, and right above it in the steep mountainside, you can see the tall white spires of the castle-- I've heard that this is the castle Walt Disney modeled his after. Ludwig is also knows as the fairy tale king for his love of drama and story. He hired a theatre designer, not an architecture, to help him create this castle.

The line for tickets was 2 blocks long, and then the tour we ended up getting was for 2 1/2 hours after we bought them, so what we'd thought might be a quick tour ended up being a whole day event (we'd thought we'd see something else in the afternoon and be on our way home that night). So we adjusted our plans and called a hotel listed in our guidebook in another town we wanted to visit, and planned to stay there.

We shopped and had lunch and waited around for our tour, then caught a bus up the steep mountain to the castle. From where the bus dropped you off, there was a steep walk down to the castle. Our English tour started at 4:10 and lasted 35 minutes. Only a fraction of the castle was finished-- Ludwig died mysteriously before it was done, deeply in debt. This castle had a different feel to it than the other ornate palaces we have seen so far on the trip. The colors in the rooms were rich and deep, with an emphasis on the wall paintings-- scenes from the opera stories of Wagner. It wasn't all the gold and curlicues and fancy-leggd furniture. There was a much more solid but still jaw-dropping detail to the rooms. Swans in the decor were everywhere (L's fave animal). And there were lots of steps to climb. Every window had an awesome view of the Alps or surrounding green countryside or a lake. So it was a long day with a lot of annoying tourists from many lands (we are starting to appreicate the true politeness of Minnesotans), but it was worth it.

We left Schwangau about 7:00, and it was off to our hotel in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

THE ZUGSPITZE

We stayed the night in the Hotel Schell in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (G-P). We went to this town because we wanted to ride the cog wheel train there up the mountain and take a cable car (yes, dangling on a thin wire) up to the Zugspitye alpine peak. Well, everyone else in my family wanted to do this and me, afraid of heights, nervously agreed to go along. After an hour's drive again through many windy roads along the Alps, we arrived and couldn't have been more pleased with our rooms. We ended up with an attic suite in this traditional looking German hotel (white building with dark brown wood framing it). There ended up being 4 rooms with beds in them, and the owners had tried to do some fun things with the decor. Our bedroom had a mountain scene projecting out of the wall, snowy mountains against a golden sunny background. Another room had a huge gold framed mirror and brick columns in the wall that made the kids call it the castle room. Another room under a sloping wall had a huge floor to ceiling wave sculpted onto it, blue and 3-D. There was also a whole kitchenette where you could cook and sit and eat. Very charming! If you want to see a bit of it, there are a few pics on their website: http://www.hotel-schell.de/html/traum-hotel.html

Shortly after arrival, we went out to find supper. We ended up at a cute Italian restaurant that served all sorts of pasta and pizza (I was so tired of sausage!), and across the street was a park. In the little gazebo, a German band was playing-- about 20 people dressed in lederhosen, playing polkas and such, a brass band.

By the next morning it was Thursday, August 10, B's birthday. After breakfast, we bought tickets for the train and cable car that would take us up to the Zugspitze peak of the alps. First there was a slow train to a town nearby, then there was another slow train to the Eibsee-Sellbahn, where you could choose to take a cogwheel train up the mountain, or get on a cable car to to to the peak. It was B's birthday, and he wanted the cable car, which turned out to be much faster anyway. You board the cable car at the foot of the mountain, about 30 people in a car. The worst part was waiting for our cable car and watching the one before us go up the steep slope of the cables. It looks so intimidating for a person with a fear of heights, just this little wire holding you up! But actually, riding the car up wasn't bad at all. Somehow, I just didn't have that "dangling over a cliff" feeling. Instead you saw tree tops and gorgeous views of the mountains all around, and after awhile, you rose into a cloud and arrived at the peak.

B and I both felt some of the effects of the altitude, with it being harder to breathe and feeling tired after any movement. But the kids were fine and teased us about being old. It was a great novelty to be on the observation decks outside, though it was too cloudy for a view. The air was cold (0 C or 32 degrees F), but it was nothing for a sturdy Minnesotan. "This is March weather," said B. We did take photos of him with the snow-- he's never been in the snow on his August birthday before!

Another cable car down the mountain, then the slow trains and lots of waiting for each one before we got back to our car. Now we had the supposedly 3 hour drive home, but it took more like 5 when we ran into rain and hail as we passed by Munich. The autobahn may be very fast when it is clear, but when the weather is bad, it is a parking lot. That was no fun, but it was good to finally get back to our home base here. Our home away from home! Now a few days to relax and do laundry before next week's adventures.

Bits and Pieces

It's a rainy Sunday morning here. I've been waking up earlier than the rest of the bunch and getting some computer time in. The G's have a very fancy espresso machine (which I'm sure they are sorely missing, as our coffee maker is a plain little 4-cupper automatic, which has worked well for us since DH is now on decaf and I still do regular coffee), so I am able to make myself a very quick cup of cappuccino with perfect frothed milk. Yum. BTW, DH is having a hard time finding any decaf coffee in Germany. So he is a bit buzzed and trying not to drink too much. Which is hard when you're a coffee lover and there's a fancy espresso machine in your home!

FOOD

Food here has been interesting. Bread and sausage seem to be the most important food groups. There is a butcher and baker in our little neighborhood of Polling, in walking distance, where they speak no English so we point and use our numbers. Yummy giant salt pretzels are everywhere-- crunchy on th e outside and soft on the inside, nothing like the rubbery ones you get at concession stands in the States. All the bread is fresh and needs to be bought every few days-- no preservatives, so the loaf becomes like a rock in about 3 days. I am going to have to go find a good bakery when I get home.

The grocery stores we have seen are pretty small. Especially when compared to a Cub or Rainbow at home. There are about 3 or 4 long aisles, and it is easy to find coffee, juices, milk, cookies, liquor and wine. The cheese all seems to be pale slices of swiss or swiss-.like cheese, with some camembert (sp). There is an amazing lack of American junk food, which is a good thing! At home there are whole aisles of various kinds of chips and crunchy snacks, and here you can find one or two different kinds of potato chips. Of course my kids have sampled them all!

I've managed to throw together some suppers at home, which is tricky because I don't have my usual pantry and fridge available. I've made spaghetti with tomato sauce, kind of throwing a sauce together from cans of tomatoes and tomato paste, an onion and some random spices I found in the cupboard. I used leftover cooked noodles the next night and stirred them into a little stir-fry I made from cooking onion, mushrooms, zucchini (all left behind by the G's) and some chopped up salami in olive oil. Served with cukes from the garden and bread and butter. It was pretty good! B. got the grill going last night and we had hamburgers on little rolls.

When we've been eating on our excursions, we mainly find lilttle stands to get food from, since it's cheaper than a sit down restaurant for 5 people. We've had middle eastern lamb pitas from the doner kebab stands which are everywhere, we've had brats or weiners and these sandwiches called Nurnburgers (several little sausages on a bun). We had chinese food at a mall (just blah), we've had little pastries at cafes, very good slices of pizza, ice cream cones (very cheap here), and I can't think of what else right now. The one fancy place we went last week, we had schnitzels (a kind of thin pounded meat cutlet with a breaded coating) and steak and currywurst (a brat smothered in a curried ketchup). That meal ran us $45 euros for food and drinks and tip. About $60 in US dollars, and that is about what we pay for a modest restaurant meal at home. It can get kind of expensive if done too often!

VISITORS

Yesterday the doorbell rang (which sounds like a kitchen timer going off, so it confuses us at first). Some girls from the neighborhood stopped by for a chat-- it was C, 15, who had exchanged a few emails with G a few months ago, and her little 9 yr old sister F. C speaks pretty good English (they all learn it in school here as a matter of course) and F hardly any. They stayed for about 45 minutes and we had a lovely chat, talking about the differences between our two countries, asking lots of questions back and forth. I stayed to facilitate the conversation between the teens (and because I was interested, too). My teens are not really shy, but with new kids their age, they often are (they can talk to adults easily, though). We talked about what things are like in Germany and the US-- houses, schools, what kids do for fun, sports, holidays, etc. Fun!

COMIC STORE

Yesterday we went to Nurnburg, where L. had found a comic store that also had lots of gaming/sci fi stuff. A haven for nerds, just like at home. They have a whole room of gaming tables set up, and L plays MechWarrior battles with his friends in such a place back home.l He'd found out they have MechWarrior battles here on Saturday mornings. So, for a kid who often hesitates in new situations, afraid to look stupid or do the wrong thing, he opened up and took a leap of faith. He joined in and played his game for 3 hours with two german guys, one of whom hardly spoke English and the other spoke some. He lost the games but I think he gained a whole lot more in confidence.

Meanwhile, the rest of us took it easy, walked around Nurnburg where a whole farmer's market had sprung up on the streets. We sat at a cafe outside the comic store, which served coffee and tea but when you went to order, they just presented you with a coin-slotted box for a donation. It seemed to be a reading room or social service center for a church, we never could figure it out. But they served drinks and didn't mind if you sat inside or outside all day. So I got to spend a long time writing in my journal, which I've meant to do for awhile. Hey to my writing groups back home, I have the pictures to prove it too!

That's enough for now...

Rothenburg and Regensburg

TRAVELING WITH KIDS

Our twins, G and L, turned 15 yesterday, and our younger son D is 11. So we don't really have little kids to deal with, but I'm still figuring out the rhythm and methods that work best in traveling to a foreign country with kids. Since we are here for more than a month, we have the luxury of time on our side-- after a day of going out to sight-see, we can come back to home-base and have a low-key day.

This is so different from when B. and I were on our honeymoon in Paris 17 years ago. We had 11 days and we crammed everything into every minute we could. Ah, we were young then too, so we could walk all day and take the Metro here and there, tape our blisters at night and do it again the next day. Now that we're, ahem, older and we have the kids, we can go to a town and walk most of the day, but we are all very tired and foot-sore. Kids get crabby and over-tired if you try to do too much. Or if you don't consider their interest level.

And D, at 11, is having a few meltdowns, which is totally expected. When I think that he is having a big trip like this and being in a foreign country for a month at such a young age, well, I don't have any frame of reference! We never really traveled in my family growing up. By age 11, the big trip I'd had was a day trip to Taylor's Falls, Minnesota, in which we crossed over the border into Wisconsin, and to me that was a big deal! D's meltdowns are coming mainly at night when he is tired and he whines about being away from his favorite things back home-- his home routine, his computer, his video games, his friends. Why did we have to go on this dumb trip anyway? I try to be sympathetic and give him some extra loving. What seems to help soothe him is reading to him from the book series we've been reading through together at home-- A Series of Unfortunate Events. We are on The Slippery Slope.

The teens are actually much easier on this trip!

ROTHENBURG

On Tuesday we took the Autobahn to Rothenburg ob de Tauber, about an hour's drive away. B has done all the driving here so far (he's the one with a good sense of direction and I am still kind of lost on these windy little streets), and although he was intimidated by it at first, he really did enjoy the Autobahn. There are no speed limits, so traffic is very fast-- he got up to 180k (about 100 mph) a few times, gulp! I didn't like it, but to drive the A., you do have to keep up with traffic. The trick is to keep the left lane going fast and to pass, while the right lane is for the slightly slower traffic.

The city of Rothenburg has an old part of town that is a walled city dating back to medieval times. We parked outside the walls and walked in-- what you see is windy narrow cobblestone roads with tall pointy buildings and houses in a gingerbread style (if the gingerbread had more white to it than brown). The walls circling the city have wooden enclosures at the top, so you can climb steps and walk all along the wall-- the roofed enclosures are open on the inner-city side, so you can look down on the buildings as you walk along, and the outer-city side is walled off with little lookout holes every few yards. I know I am totally botching the old-millitary-fort vocabulary here-!

We stayed up on the wall for awhile, then went down to cross the town. We could hear outdoor music and applause, and we found the open Marktplatz where an orchestra was playing gorgeous symphonies before the crowd gathered. We stopped and listened, and it was one of those moments when you have to marvel at how perfect everything is---- heartbreakingly beautiful music, a sunny day, and all around the most picturesque old city, one building more pretty than the next.

We went to Jakobskirche next, the church of St. James, parts of which were first built back in 1311. As an American, this is always just so amazing (and perhaps to Europeans just shrug it off as no big deal)-- that people who lived 700 years ago were building this church, with all its amazing arches and artistry! I like to stand in a place like this and try to imagine who those people were, what their lives were like, what was it like to attend a service here back then.

One of the attractions of this Gothic masterpiece is the Heilige Blut altar (Holy Blood altar), upstairs away from the main portion of the church. This altar has impressive and elaborate woodcarvings of Jesus and the Last Supper, and it is said that a drop of his blood is stored in a round crystal on the cross that is above the Last Supper scene.

Our wanderings around the town led us to some shopping, the kids enjoying a teddy bear museum and a shop full of knives and swords. We went into the Weihnackten (Christmas) shop that people had told us to visit. It's just like visiting a musem with every inch filled with Christmas--it goes on and on, and is quite a sight to see! Every few feet there is a smiling store clerk trying to hand you a basket so you'll shop til you drop. We bought a few little things. Personally, I've seen shops like this at home, in Tennessee and a few other states, and my eyes start to glaze over. We bought a few little things.

We next saw the Mittelaterliches Kriminalmuseum, which was a museum filled with instruments of torture and punishment-- four floors of brutal implements, chastity belts, masks of shame, cages, iron maidens, neck braces, executioners swords. DD had been into torture previously (she claims not so much anymore) and she'd done school reports on it, so we thought this would be a hit. Really, it was fascinating, and it helped that all the signs giving info about each item were in English as well. It really made me wonder about what was happening in our collective psyche back in the Middle Ages, that so many means of shaming or hurting people seemed necessary to the order of the day.

Our feet were very weary by this time, so before we left town, we stopped for schneeballn, a treat they were selling all over Rothenburg. One guidebook I'd read said they were kind of bland, but we had to try them for ourselves. And they were! My husband described them as wiffleballs made of pie crust, some covered in chocolate or cinnamon-sugar, and that was pretty accurate.

We hobbled our way back to the car. Cobblestone streets are killers on the feet!

REGENSBURG

Yesterday (Thursday, Aug 3) we got up early to go to take the train to Regensburg, another town about an hour away. We'd been told by our hosts to purchase the tickets to this town in the trainstation bakery-- all other tickets are purchased at the machines in the station, but these are special. We were a bit intimidated to approach the bakery since our previous times there we'd found out that their English is about as good as our German (nicht gut!). But we muddled our way through buying tickets and breakfast foods, and then we got on the train. You could sit upstairs or downstairs and we went up--- no wonder if was so comfortable, we were mistakenly sitting in first class! But no one checked our ticket, so we just rode there, oblivious!

There is a big shopping mall attached to the train station in Regensburg, and the kids really liked being in such a familiar environment, so we stayed and shopped a bit. Found bathrooms that we had to pay 30 cents to use (you often have to pay for a toilet here in Germany). After awhile, we went outside to the street to begin sight-seeing.

I am very lucky to be married to a man who really does have a map in his head, along with a compass and I think a GPS thingy. He always knows what direction he is facing, he can go a place once and then it is in his head forever, he can get lost but still figure out the direction he needs to go to get unlost. This all comes in very handy, especially in a foreign town. My head, meanwhile, has big holes where the maps-and-directions parts should be, and they are instead filled with, I think, the organizational skills, daily schedules and remembering sensory details about every place we've ever been--- all the things that are lacking in DH's head! So you see, we complement each other (and sometimes actually compliment eachother!)

But for some reason, when we first left the mall in Regensburg, DH was sure we were going the right direction to see the center of the town. As we waited at the traffic light to cross the street, we had a guy next to us say outloud to us that German drivers are crazy (as we watched someone doing some weird move). As we crossed the street, we talked with him and he was delighted that we were from Minnesota, since he was from Wisconsin! He appeared to be in his late 20's, introduced himself to us as Dave, and told us he'd been stationed here in the millitary 6 years ago and had loved it and stayed. We chatted a bit and he was very friendly. And I asked him if we were going in the right direction and he informed us we needed to go in the total opposite direction. So DH's map-in-head re-oriiented itself and we were fine for the rest of the day.

First we got on a bus-- we're just starting to figure out that riding the bus in a town can be a real foot-saver and it seems to be real cheap. We went to Dom St. Peter, which the guidebook says is "one of Bavaria's most important Gothic cathedrals." This was another church from the 13th century, with so many sculptures and altars and stained-glass windows to look at.

Next we went back on the bus to the Histosches Museum, a 4-story museum with exhibits from the stone ages to the middle ages. DD loves studying Latin in school and since we won't be able to go to Rome on this trip, we thought she could at least see some of the Roman artifacts from when Germany was a part of the Roman Empire. There were coins and pottery and weapons and stone slabs. There were pieces of crypts, statues taken from the church, elaborate altars from the middle ages. There was enough there, and enough variety, to interest everyone in the family, yay!

We stopped at a grocery store and picked up some snacks to eat before we hit our last stop. It was starting to sprinkle, but we found a short wall underneat some trees where we could sit and eat. It was also pretty cool outside that day, and most of us were underdressed. I think this cold rainy-nes is not typical of August here, but we still weren't minding the reprieve from the heat wave back home.

We had to walk aways to get to the Schloss Turn and Taxis estate. This is one of the largest aristocratic homes in Europe, and from what I gathered on the tour, the building was a monastery for 1,000 years first. The Taxis family was responsible for establishing the European postal system in the 1500s, and so the family was upgraded to nobility status and given this building for their palace in the 1700s. First we saw, on a self-tour, the carriage museum of the family, which had about 20 different carriages and sleighs that were used by the family around the turn of the century. Very elaborate, some lined with fur, some small, some large. No pictures allowed, unfortunately.

Then we signed up for the tour of the palace, not realizing that it was going to be 90 minutes long wth no stops for rest, and our feet were already tired. The tour was in German but we were given cassettes and headsets to listen to an English version of the tour (but the tour guide seemed to go on much longer and give more details than were on our pre-recorded tour. The palace was amazing, every room more splendid than the next. My favorite was the sliver room, which instead of the gold that guilded most of the other rooms, this one was in silver with light blue walls and furnishings. I also liked the rooms of Princess Theresa (of course!), who was an important figure of her time in the dealings with other countries and the postal system. She had a special mirror room to get dressed in, and her bedroom next door had a bed that was ornate with gold swans above and around it. There was also a mirrored ballroom with electric lights (very innovative for the time), a large chapel which the family still uses, and you can walk downstairs to see the original walls of the monastery, and we peered through grates in the floor of the church to see the crypts of the family.

It was a long tour but even teenager were impressed by the oppulence. And after that, we were back to the mall (hobbling on very tired feet), where we grabbed a quick dinner and took the train home. Not first class this time!

Our First Few Days

Saturday was our first full day in Germany. For the record, we are staying in a small town called Neumarkt (pronounced noy-marct) outside of the bigger city Nurnberg, about 25 miles away, in the region of Bavaria. In the morning, I went out with T. to the baker and butcher-- she was making for us a traditional Bavarian breakfast. There's a special saussage called Weisswurst that is only eaten before noon, a white sausage with a mild flavor. When everyone was up, we had weisswurst, other sausages and salamis, giant pretzels (fresh baked, so much better than the States) and other rolls and breads, yogurt, jam, mustard, Nutella. A very satisfying breakfast! And quick for the cook to make too... after the time spent running to the butcher and baker!

In the afternoon our hosts were packing for their trip and we tried our first solo excursion in their van, which we would be using throughout the month ( as they will be using ours). Driving is a bit confusing and stressful, probably no more so than any other foreign country where you can't read the signs and aren't used to the traffic customs. For instance, if you come to an intersection where there are no stop signs, the car on the right will always have the right-of-way. But you might not realize a car is coming on your right if you are driving around one of the many curvy streets in the neighborhood areas. And there are no right-turns at all at a red light. And you see intersections that have a green light AND a stop sign. If the light is green, you go-- the stop sign is for if the traffic lights go out.

In our first excursion, we found a cash machine and used it, drove around Neumarkt (thank goodness DH has an excellent sense of direction-- he learns new areas very quickly, unlike me!). We parked and got out and walked around the central area of the town-- saw some churches, walked down an outdoor mall area, stumbled through our first transaction in German as we bought ice cream cones (eis) from a stand on the street. The streets were full of people even though all the stores were closed by the afternoon-- in this area, no shopping is done on Saturday afternoons or on Sundays at all.

After more walking, we went back to the car and drove to the local castle ruins-- of the Wolfstein family, about 1200 A.D. The castle is on a hill and there are two houses right next to it-- I mean, within a few feet of it actually. The ruins are just sitting there, no attendants, and tourists come and go. There are several walls standing, a great view, and lots of construction equipment so I guess someone is trying to repair it. Our host T said that when she was a kid, she and her friends used to play at the castle all the time, before they put up signs telling you not to climb. Our kids liked it a lot, too.

On Sunday, our hosts went off visiting relatives and we got going late but we managed to figure out where the train station is in Neumarkt and we took the train to Nurnberg (poor B., figuring out how to buy a ticket from the machine, very confusing). There we managed to stumble our way into some big music festival weekend in the streets of the city. Again, stores were closed but cafes and restaurants open, and we walked around for a few hours-- the streets were crowded and around every corner was live music-- we must've seen about 20 different acts. It was very diverse-- Irish music, big band, American rock, whatever. Some of it was in large plazas with crowds of people listening and the band on a stage with sound equipment; some of it was one or more people standing in front of a building, just singing or playing with a hat out. We heard a high-school-age group of kids singing and dancing to a Beatles medley and then songs from Grease. We also heard 2 girls and a guy on guitar performing-- the guy sat on the sidewalk playing Simon and Garfunkel and REM while the girls, dressed in boxes made to look like jukeboxes, sang along without knowing the songs very well, looking at books of lyrics and fumbling along. Any one can perform!

The one place we did see that was open was the church of St. Lorenz (Lorenzkirche) of the 15th century. It was our first really big impressive church (of which there are many across Europe, of course). You could spend all day in a place like this, examining all the exquisite details, sculptures, paintings, etc.

When we got back, DH and I stayed up late sitting outside on their patio, talking to our hosts and a few of their neighbors until late. Luckily, T and K speak excellent English, and one of their neighbors also did, and the other neighbor spoke some English (still much more than we speak German!). So the conversation would go back and forth between English and German, with someone filling us in if the German went on too long. That has been one of the great things about this trip, really getting to talk to our hosts and their neighbors, talking about the differences between Germany and the US, asking questions about customs, discussing politics, families, traveling, weather, you name it. We have been lucky we all get along so well!

Yesterday was Monday, and our host family left for America around noon, for our house, which is a strange idea indeed! They will arrive on Tuesday. We left behind a booklet for them all about our house and how everything works-- not an easy task to put it together, all those things that you just know how to do or where to find everything, having to think of what other people will need to know. We hope our house hasn't melted in the 101 degree weather on Monday in Minnesota. We were sooooo glad to leave the heat and humidity we'd been experiencing our last week before we left. We were working hard to get our house ready before we left and the heat would just wear us down-- we have fans and window a/c units that are usually quite satisfactory, but when the heat is relentless for day after day, the house just never cools off. We hope it will be better for the G. family!

After they left, we had a low-key daz. We left the house to find a grocery store, a bank that would exchange the kids dollars for Euros, the butcher and baker. We came back and just had down time. Everyone had time on the computer and watched TV and read and lazed about. A much needed rest!