Atherton Family Notes

(The following is an excerpt from an IM conversation between Sandi and Papaw Atherton)

Sandi says:
i posted the whole story on the family site. it is long. i will cut and paste for your reading enjoyment

Sandi says:
I have been having pains in my right rib cage for months now and never knew what it was. The problem is that they are sporatic and I do not know what brings them on. I did not know what to tell the doctor so I refused to call. Finnally 2 weeks ago I had an attack that was crippling (these are far worse than labour pains in my opinion). I researched again on the net and finnally discovered I had the symtoms for gall stones. As if I was not feeling old enough as it is, I now have this??? correct me if I am wrong ,but this is an old person disease! Anyway, I call the doc, get an appointment, and go to see him. He agrees that it sounds like gall stones but then starts checking my ears. He could not think of the word but tells me my neck is bigger than normal. WHAT???? later we discover he was talking about my thyroid gland. He sends me to have an ulrtasound on the gall bladder.

This is where things get horrible! I went this morning and was pushed from room to room, floor to floor, doing all kinds of things I didn’t know anything about. I finnally had a man who spoke english (as I know just a little german and most of which is not medical lingo). He did the x-rays on me. I was given this cup of white thick goo and told to take half in my mouth but not to swallow untill he tells me to. I thought I was going to gag! It was basically the equivalent of liquid chalk and that is describing it nicely! I was then handed two pills and told to chew them just slightly (enough to swallow them), gulp the rest of the white goo,

Sandi says:
and swallow both at the same time. Now understand, I already know how HORRIBLE the drink is, they are gonna add something else to it? What I was not prepaired for was that they would fizz. so now in my mouth I have liquid chalk and what is like pop rocks and I have to swallow this???? You have to be kidding!

Sandi says:
I think if I had food in my stomach I would have tossed my cookies just to have something better to taste than this stuff! I can only imagine the look on my face and how funny that man thought it was.

Sandi says:
I was shuffled around some more, poked again with needles for more blood, and then told I could go home. The kicker to this tale is that after all is said and done…they did not find gall stones! I have no clue what is causing the pain and where to go from here.

Hope I brightened your day! Mine can only get better(even if my nose hairs were plucked one by one all day)!

Sandi says:
there is the whole long story!

Wayne’s World says:
Do you have any results from the blood samples?

Sandi says:
no not yet. they checked my thyroid for some reason

Sandi says:
i looked on the net and NOTHING pointed in that direction. not the symptoms or causes

Sandi says:
don’t know what is going on now

Wayne’s World says:
Are you still having the pain?

Sandi says:
no. i had an attack last sunday that lasted all day and that was the last one. maybe the stones all came out then.

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On the actual day called Fasnet here in southern Germany (Tuesday, March 4th), we went to Rottweil to see the Narrenumsprung. This word translates roughly as “the fool’s wild jumping around.” It is the big fool’s parade in Rottweil, and they had a lot of fools around to prove it!

The temperature was much lower at this parade than it was at the one in Villingen earlier. The parade itself was also much longer. There weren’t any floats either–this parade really was about the march of the fools through the town, harassing the spectators, making the children sing for candy, and generally being silly.

I almost hate to admit it, but I took 255 pictures during the parade (this is one of the benefits of a digital camera). I still had more than 200 pictures after I weeded out the ones that were blurry, or where I just completely missed the shot because the people kept moving while I was trying to line it up.

Anyway, here is a sample of some of the interesting photos I took.

This is the standard bearer at the beginning of the parade. His flag is the coat of arms of Rottweil, and behind him comes the flood of fools.

There was only one band actually in the parade. We were near the end of the parade route, so we didn’t know until later that in this parade, that most of the bands are actually stationed on platforms along the parade route. The spectators in these areas get to hear many songs by the same people.

As I mentioned in my message about Villingen’s parade, each town has its own particular masks that are used. Here is one of the Rottweiler fools giving candy to CeCe.

Carissa’s turn to get candy from a fool.

Another of the traditional Rottweiler masks. Incidentally, Rottweil is the town for which the Rottweiler dog breed is named. Maybe this mask gives you a hint why those dogs have a reputation for fierceness.

Also, on this particular mask, you can see the ribbons that are given to the participants each year. This fool has been in the parade since at least 1994. I saw some fools that had robbins from the early 80’s, and I am sure that some of these people have been participating for much longer.

Here’s a better picture of the same type of fool that was shown giving candy to CeCe above. Notice the intricate print on the costume and the bells he is wearing. These are standard parts of the Rottweiler costume. I think the specific outfits used in the parade are related to the traditional 12 guilds of Rottweil (the butchers, the bakers, etc.)

The bells themselves are pretty interesting because all of the fools jingle when they walk. They also do a little dance which causes even more jingling while trying to get the kids in the crowd to sing a traditional song.

The tune of the song that the kids sing is from a traditional German children’s song but with special words for Fastnet.

As I mentioned before, the fools spend much of their time harassing the crowd. People with cameras are favorite targets. Here is a fool offering to clean my lens with a furry tail attached to a long stick. Traditionally, the fools use these devices to “dust away the fool dust” from the spectators. Generally, the fools seem to find most of the “fool dust” that needs cleaning in people’s faces, especially kids.

The sticks are useful for other harrassments, too. Here, a fool has managed to steal the hat off someone’s head. The fools always give items they take back after a short time, but often not to the person he took it from!

A fool throwing candy to the crowd.

One of the other major variations of the fool’s costume in Rotweil.

After the parade was over, we walked to the main downtown area to look around. The Germans are generally very clean, and you rarely see litter, but on this day, following several days of round-the-clock partying, it was a different story. Candy wrappers and small bottles formerly containing various flavors of schnapps were everywhere.

Clearly, the people of Rottweil take this party seriously.

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I have always considered 30 to be one of those birthdays that you make a big deal about. However, because we are living in Germany, I was faced with the fact that I would be spending my 30th birthday without family and friends celebrating. So I decided to at least have it in a great place.

Originally, we had planned to go to Bern, Switzerland but we had a little snag: We took the paperwork for Sadie’s residence permit to the local government office, and they decided to keep Sadie’s passport while they worked on the the residence permit. Since we cannot leave the country without Sadie’s passport (because they might not let us back in), our plans had to change. After doing a little research, we decided to head north to Rothenburg, Germany. Several different sources recommended Rothenburg as the prettiest, most well kept medieval town in all of Germany.

Friday night before we left, we had a wonderful dinner without any kids (for only the second time since arriving in Germany), then we woke early Saturday and hit the road. We arrived in Rothenburg around lunch time after the 2-and-a-half hour trip from Niedereschach. We hadn’t made a hotel reservation, so we needed to go to the visitor’s bureau first. We picked out a hotel we had seen on the web that had a room big enough for 5, and fortunately they had a room. The tourist season doesn’t officially start until April, so the city was not as crowded as it could have been.

Of course, during our walk from there to our hotel, one of the first sights we saw was a McDonald’s and the kids immediately made their lunch request known. So we sat down to a less-than-wonderful meal of French fries and chicken nuggets.

All fueled up, we hit the town. We walked up and down the main street several times, doing a bit of shopping and looking for our hotel. Upon arrival at our hotel, I was completely in love with its charm. In fact, true to the tales we had heard, the whole town oozed with charm. What a wonderful choice we had made!

The picturesque street near our hotel

The Rathhaus (government building).

The other reason we chose Rothenburg was that I know someone who lives there. I belong to an expat message board I had become acquainted with one of the other women on the board. Karen has lived in Rothenburg with her husband Eric and 21-month-old daughter Greta since the end of October. We arranged to meet with them on Saturday afternoon. I thought it would be fun to finally meet her, speak in English, and let the kids play.

You see, our kids have not played with other English-speaking kids in almost a year. What a thrill I thought this would be for them. As it turns out, Greta did not do much talking, but the kids enjoyed themselves anyway.

The full name of the town is actually Rothenburg ob der Tauber (“Rothenburg above the Tauber river”). The city is located on a plateau that overlooks the river valley. We spent most of the afternoon at a park at the edge of this dramatic view letting the kids play while the adults talked.

At one point, something very strange happened to us: an older woman came up to us and spoke to us in English. She said, “your language and your presence here is an insult to us all.” We were totally taken aback by this, but she made the comment and walked away. Eric, who speaks better German than any of the rest of us, yelled some impolite comment in German to her. She responded to us by saying, “Shame on you… This will all come back on you in ten years, mark my words!”

Our best guess is that she was trying to vent some anti-American anger about the war in Iraq, but she wasn’t very clear about it.

We have never come across someone so rude. She approached us without warning, said these awful words to us without any provocation (and without knowing anything about us), and then proceeded to walk away before we could respond. Her anger was clearly misplaced, and she only proved how cowardly she really is.

Our evening was saved, however, with a wonderful dinner at the Markusturm restaurant and hotel. Karen and Eric recommended the restaurant and joined us for dinner. They knew the owner well and were able to get us a table off by ourselves (to preserve both out sanity and the sanity of the other guests— we had four girls under four at the table!).

We were first served a wine soup that was completely divine and the dinner that followed was was equally fitting. I had a slice of pot roast in an onion gravy. Ken had grilled lamb and vegetables in a mushroom sauce– the specialty of the house. He said it was worth coming off his diet to eat. (This was after he took the hamburgers of his Big Mac at lunch.)

There was no birthday cake but we finished the meal with a very good piece of apple strudel with vanilla sauce and ice cream.

The dinner turned out to be a bit expensive but it was so worth every penny. The Markusturm is a famous building and appears in many pictures of the town. We purchased one of these great paintings and we can say “we were there”.

While on the subject of famous buildings, it turns out that Karen and Eric live in one as well. During World War 2 their house served as a safe house for escaped war prisoners. The current owner’s grandmother fed and hid soldiers in the cellar. Two of those prisoners went on to become French diplomats. They recently visited the house and honored the lady with a plaque which now hangs by the front door. It was amazing to set foot inside a part of history.

Karen and I in front of her famous house.

We spent Sunday doing much the same things as we did on Saturday. Talking, eating, and letting the kids playing in the park.

We started the morning with a wonderful breakfast at the hotel. While I was off loading my plate, the lovely owner came by and took Sadie off Ken’s hands so he could eat. The owner of the Markusturm had done this as well during our dinner the night before. This town LOVES kids.

In the afternoon, Ken and I got a chance to get away for an hour by ourselves. Karen so generously offered to watch the kids while they napped (in fact, she refused to take no for an answer).

So Ken and I headed out to see the major church of the town, St. Jacob’s. The church has an amazing wood alter called the Heilige Blut Alter (the Holy Blood Alter) designed to hold the church’s most important artifact: a drop of Jesus’s blood. The alter was carved by Riemenschneider who was considered the “Michelangelo” of wood. The details and carvings were very impressive and detailed.

We also visited the year-round Christmas shop called Kaethe Wohlfahrt. It was an amazing and beautiful sight but not any place that kids (at least our kids anyway) should venture into. The displays of Christmas decorations, porcelain dolls, and nutcrackers were huge and a boon for any Christmas lover. They also had smaller displays for Easter and other holidays, but Christmas is clearly the star attraction. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the store. That’s too bad, because there were some beautiful displays.

Eric is an ex-Navy guy and therefore they are able to shop at the US military base nearby. I can only imagine how far my eyes popped out of their sockets at the sight of all of those brands from back home in their cabinets! As a gift from Karen, I was loaded up with Zesta saltine crackers, Jiffy corn muffin mix, and Crisco butter sticks. I am hoarding these goodies as if they were gold.

The weekend turned out better than I could have ever expected (aside from one crazy old lady) and made turning 30 a bit more bearable.

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I did not ask for the Ritz and I did not even expect them to leave the light on at Motel 6, but when I had to check into the hospital here in Schwenningen, I had one rude awakening.

We came to the emergency room on Friday afternoon due to unbearable pain that started Thursday and would not stop. I will not bore you with the details of my medical roller coaster , the bottom line is that I had gall stones and they needed to be removed immediately. When I explained that I was nursing Sadie and she refuses to drink from a bottle, they were kind enough to set me up in my own room so that she could stay with me. Ken ran home with the kids to get her travel bed and other supplies for us. The doctors took out the stones and I was back in my room before Ken could even return. It was very quick and painless. I was sure I would be going home the next morning.

As I sat in my hospital room, on the second full day and looking at 1-2 more, I began to wonder. I wondered: where is the T.V., where are the towels, where is my lovely hospital gown, where are the Kleenex, and where are the rest of my so called radio stations (I have one and it seems to only play German songs from the 20’s)? I did receive a phone after I signed a paper saying I would pay for all calls. How do they expect you to stay here if they do not even provide the basic necessities? I now understand why we have stayed clear of the hospitals on our travels around Europe. I have been looking at plain white walls, reading every magazine I own, and trying to entertain a baby far longer than I had planned.

Of coarse, I am not the only one having fun. Ken has been left alone with Carissa and Celia for the past two days. He has shuffled them back and forth from the hospital to home more times than I can count. He has been on his own with feeding, bathing, grooming, and tucking them in. He has also mentioned to me that the house is a complete disaster. I know from experience that when Ken takes note to a mess, what it really means is that you may as well take a torch to it.

They say they need to keep me around for another sonogram to make sure all the stones are out. If they are not, then I will be blessed with one more round of stone retrieving and two more days of this fun.

Now, I begin to wonder…. will I ever get out of here?

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