The place we are staying in right now is pretty nice. It is usually used by people vacationing in the area. It’s located in a village called Unterkirnach, about 7km west of Villingen, and practically a straight line from the Thomson facility.

We managed to buy some groceries and also made a trip to Wal-mart. We’ve discovered that frozen pizza in Germany is actually very good and also very cheap! It cost about 2 euros for a pizza that would cost 4 or 5 dollars in the states. There are an amazing variety of choices too. We had a Hawaiian pizza and a pasta pizza for dinner last night.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get much sleep last night. We put the girls down about 9PM, which is 2PM in Indianapolis. So, they slept like it was their afternoon nap. They were both awake and cranky by midnight. After about an hour and a half trying to get them to sleep (with Sandi trying to rock Cece, who was screaming like you wouldn’t believe and me trying to get Carissa to just stay still for 5 seconds), I got up with them, fed them hot rolls (German bread is amazing) and played with them until 3AM. At that point Cece went to get her pacifier and her blanket all by herself to let me know she was ready to go back to bed. We still had to hold Carissa down for a while.

Sandi woke the girls up at 9:30 this morning so hopefully we’ll start getting adjusted.

We didn’t get out of bed until noon yesterday, as the kids are still having trouble adjusting to the time change, and were up very late. Last night wasn’t much better. CeCe did better, but Carissa was up a lot last night.

We spent yesterday afternoon touring the countryside, including a drive along several roads that looked like scenery for cars commercials. You know the ones I’m talking about– twisty roads that double back on themselves, hairpin turns, the works.

We found the only store in Germany that was open yesterday. It was (not surprisingly) McDonald’s. Carissa and Cece were happy to have a meal that seemed like home. However, the toy that came with the happy meal is about the scariest thing I’ve seen in a while. It’s a doll, based on the “DivaStarz” which are popular toys in the US and Europe. It has a wind-up motor in it that causes the doll to turn it’s head and wink. The only problem is, it’s easy to get the head out of alignment, so it looks like the little girl from the Exorcist with her head spinning around. Plus, the motor always winds down with the doll half-winking, so it looks like she has some weird, lazy eye. Add to that a really terrible haircut, and you’ve got a truly scary toy.

Last night, we went to a going away party thrown by our landlady, Sabine. She lives in the place we are renting, but she will be going to Austrailia for 2 years. It’s a German tradition to throw your own parties for special events. Besides throwing their own going away parties, people throw their own birthday parties, for example.

We met several of her friends, as well as her parents and her brother, sister-in-law, and nephew, who live downstairs. Many of the attendees spoke at least some English, and we tried out bits of our limited German vocabulary. Several people offered us their phone numbers so that we could call to ask for help.

All in all, it was an interesting day, even if they did practically shut down the whole country. This practice of EVERYBODY actually taking time off for the holidays will take a little adjustment. Especially when you come from a country where you can shop at K-Mart on Thanksgiving!

We became legal residents of Germany yesterday. In spite of the rumors about German bureaucracy, it went pretty well. First we went to the Rathaus in Niederescach (where our apartment is), and registered as residents of the town.  The clerk was very helpful, spoke a little English, and even called ahead to the next person we needed to visit to confirm that we had everything we needed.

Since that took less time than we expected, we decided to visit the local Backerei, where we managed to order bread and pastries mostly in German– much to the baker’s surprise. I think she was worried that we were going to be difficult to work with when she heard us discussing what to order in English.  

Afterward, we had to go to the Landratsamt (literally State Administrative Office) in Villingen to apply for a residency permit. This is different than the what we received in the first office– registering in the town you live in is required of everybody in Germany. The residency permit is only required of Auslanders (out-landers) such as ourselves.

The permit work was handled by a stem looking German woman, but it was relatively painless. She made copies of a lot of documents, then stamped a bunch of stuff in our passports as a temporary permit. We were missing one item — it is required to have a photo to use in the permanent permits, which will be ready in 2 months, but she allowed us to slip by on that account. We have to bring the photos with us when we return for the permanent permits.

i am in germany

i get my toys tommorrowwwwwwwwww

lovvvvvvvvvvvvvvvve yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

(this message was really typed by carissa…)

We went to the Bakery in Unterkirnach yesterday morning for breakfast, then drove into Villingen to look at the old city.  On Saturdays, there is a farmers market around the Münster which has all sorts of meats, vegetables, and other fresh foods, as well as fresh flowers.  It is an interesting, bustling place.

Sandi was impressed by the quaintness of the old city.  It is certainly charming, even if the stores are very expensive.

By late evening the showers had stopped, and we took the opportunity to walk through Unterkirnach.  During part of the trip, we stopped in a graveyard up the hill from our apartment.

Graveyards in Germany are fascinating, because the Germans do a lot of complex landscaping over the top of their loved ones’ graves.  There area lot of beautiful flowers planted in these locations, as well as other objects left on the sites.  For example, some of the graves had personal messages to the deceased written on long, wide white ribbons.

People clearly invest a lot of time in these endeavors.

About 20km out of town, we saw a road sign pointing to a village called Triberg.  I had seen an advertisement in Unterkirnach for a shop called “Haus Der 1000 Uhren” (House of a Thousand Clocks), so I thought we would go window shop at least.  Germany is pretty serious about stores being closed on Sunday, so we weren’t expecting to be able to do much more than that.

When we arrived in Triberg (down a very steep slope, I might add), we discovered that it was very definitely a tourist town.  As such, many of the shops were actually open, including the clock shop.  We decided to get out and look around despite the cold spell we continue to have here.  It was between 2 and 6 degrees here yesterday (that’s 36 and 43 in Fahrenheit).  It least it wasn’t raining (much).

The clock shop is really composed of about 5 buildings plus other shops run by the same group but carrying other souvenirs, and so forth.  As you can imagine, there are a lot of clocks to see.  This is definitely the place to go if you come to Europe and want to bring home a clock.

Of course, this clock shop exists because it is near the heart of the Black Forest, which is the place of origin of the cuckoo clock.  There are available in hundreds of different styles and movements, plus varying levels of animation.  Sandi found several that she liked, but an important decision like this clearly can’t be made in one day.  I’m sure there are many trips to Triberg in out future.

In addition to cuckoo clocks, the store also carries many other stypes, from tiny desk clocks to full size grandfather clocks, and many sty;es from traditional to ultra-modern.

The only item we actually bought in at the store was a sampler of three different local fruit wines.  There is one bottle each of blackberry, blueberry and cherry wine.  All of which are delicious as we found from the store samples.

The falls are a beautiful place. We got some good pictures of the girls with the falls in the background, which we will post as soon as we get a decent internet connection at home.

The falls are one of the more untouched areas in the Schwarzwald, except for the trails. Since the slope is so steep, no one ever tried to harvest the trees in the area. Because of this, the location serves as a de facto wilderness preserve.

The girls loved the trip. As a matter of fact, it was hard to keep Carissa moving since she kept stopping to stare at the cascades. Plus, there were lots of squirrels in the area that clearly have no fear of humans. The sell peanuts at a little stand near the falls, and people were feeding the squirrels right out of their hands.

Also, since we’ve had so much rain the last few days, there were lots of little waterfalls that had formed from the drainage. These were CeCe’s favorite parts, as they were small enough that she could get to them.

For lunch, we stopped at the little café at the bottom of the falls. We ordered some German foods, including something called Schnisselbrot, which is bread topped with some sort of creme and shredded dried ham (which has the texture of beef jerky). We also had a cheeseburger, which as best we could tell, appeared to be made with ground pork and was topped with mozerella cheese, curry ketchup, pickles and peppers (sehr gut — minus the peppers, at least). For dessert, we had some Schwarzwald chocolates, and Carissa had something that can only be described as a foot long Gummi snake.

All in all, it was a good trip, and probably makes our list of places to take visitors. Not bad for an unplanned trip!

UPDATE (with pics):

The lower cascade of Triberger Wasserfälle

Carissa and Celia at the Waterfall

The girls on the lower bridge; as seen from the upper bridge

One of the many friendly squirrels

A view of Triberg from near the falls

A sign on a local restaurant

A view in Triberg

When we went to the old city in Villingen on Saturday, we bought pretzels (the big, soft German kind) from a bakery as we were leaving. When we arrived home, we gave one of the pretzels to Carissa. Carissa came up to Sandi and said, “Mommy, do you know how to say “pretzel” in German?”

“How?” said Sandi.

“Delicious!”

Update, May 2009:  It seems that this post attracts several hits a month from people actually trying to find out how to say “pretzel” in German.  The answer is “Breztel” and the plural is “Bretzeln”.  The German pronunciation is very close to the way you would pronounce those words in English.

On our walk through Unterkirnach on Saturday evening, we accidentally discovered the place she was referring to. It’s called a Spielscheune (play barn), essentially an indoor park for children. It’s open everyday from 10:30 to 19:00, and judging from the parking lot, a very popular place.

After the kids took their naps on Sunday, we took them to the Spielscheune. We were amazed by the place for several reasons:

The good: There are a lot of things to do. There is a ball pit (a zillion little plastic balls to roll around in), which Carissa thought was as much fun as a swimming pool. There is a rock pit, where kids could dig, pile, throw, and whatever else you can think of doing with a pile of pebbles. There is a giant air trampoline. There is a long slide made of rollers that the kids can ride down in a bucket. There is a disc-shaped swing that can hold 4 or 5 kids and a hammock. There are dozens of little cubbyholes along the walls painted to look like various playhouses. There are various contraptions designed for climbing. There are rope ladders leading to a web of netting across the entire ceiling on top of which kids can crawl.

The bad: Many of these activities are dangerous, and the parents were arranged in little groups talking to each other and paying little attention to what the kids were doing. The ball pit is relatively safe, except when the kids climb on top of the entrance and dive into the balls. The rock pit has a device in the center that is like a manually operated backhoe. One boy I saw would spin around and whack other children in the head with the shovel, then yell at them for not getting out of the way. Many of the climbing places were surrounded by hard flooring which could serious injure a child that falls.

The ugly: The rock pit kicks up enough dust to choke a… well, something that’s hard to choke anyway. I don’t know whose bright idea that was. Even worse, it’s hard to be in a room full of four-year-olds that assume you can speak German!

I don’t want to sound like we didn’t like the place, because we did, and the kids loved it. One just has to be careful.

On the lower level, there is a game room with pool, darts, foosball, and video games. More importantly, there are computers where you can pay for Internet access. Sandi thought this was a great idea, since she would be able to get to her Hotmail account. It worked– until Celia flipped the switch that turned off the computer! When the computer restarted, we couldn’t get back to Internet explorer, because we didn’t know how to log back in!

At the very bottom, there is a skate park, full of half pipes and other places to perform dangerous stunts on a skateboard. Looking out from the overlook where the computers were, Carissa enjoyed watching the kids skating down in this area. She now wants to buy skates so she can practice too. Oh boy.

We finished the day off in the park outside the Spielscheune, where Carissa and I pulled ourselves across a shallow lake on a raft attached to a rope. It was a fun ride, we saw fish splashing, and altogether had a wonderful time.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Let me give you some background:

Thomson Multimedia and I signed a contract for the apartment on March 14th with Sabine. The contract is effective as of April 15th, 2002. The apartment, which is the upstairs of a two family home, is owned by Ms. Weis, and has been her place of residence. She has planned to go to Austrailia for two years, which corresponds almost exactly with the time we plan to be in Germany. So far so good.

It turns out that Sabine is a bit of a free spirit, however, and has not done a very good job planning for her departure. In the first week of April, she called Thomson and requested that the turnover be delayed until April 29th. We agreed to this, because I had been in the hospital, and we knew we weren’t going to be in Germany on the 15th.

On April 22nd, she calls Thomson again, asking to move the turnover date to May 6th, because her plane didn’t depart until that morning. Again, we agreed, because Sandra, our HR representative, told me she could find good temporary housing.

On May 1st. we attended Sabine’s going away party, and it became pretty clear to us, looking at the amount of crap left in the apartment was going to be impossible to finish cleaning/moving/storing/burning by the 6th. And I say that with apologies to crap everywhere for sullying its good name by associating it with the clutter in the apartment.

Joking aside, Sabine’s real problem is that she is a collector (and making fun of her for this is kind of like me, the pot, and calling her, the kettle, black). German society probably encourages this behavior with all of its complex recycling rules—it’s easier just to keep something than try to figure out how to throw it away. I think she probably has every piece of paper that’s been mailed to her in the last 10 years. It’s all arranged in piles, but the piles are all over the house.

The other element of this is that we are supposed to make a deposit of three months rent into something the Germans call a Mietkautionkonto. It’s a special account held by the landlord that is used specifically for a rent deposit, has special rules about when the landlord can make a claim against it, and the renter gets to keep all of the interest earned on the account at the end of the contract. I was told that I needed to set up such an account and then give the passbook to Sabine. When I went to the bank to do so, the bank told me that the landlord is supposed to create the account, and showed me the place in my rental contract that says this.

So I called Sabine on Saturday afternoon to ask how she wanted to handle this, and she acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. She told me she would talk to her parents to find out and that I should call her back Sunday evening. It’s pretty obvious to me that if her parents weren’t around, Sabine would have difficulty functioning. I wonder how she is going to survive in Austrailia by herself. (Actually, I think I know– she is going to be living with a friend in Austrailia. I hope her friend knows what she has signed up for!)

I called back Sunday evening, both to talk to her about the deposit, and to ask her if we could bring over some of our suitcases since we had discovered that there was no way we could take all of our stuff in one trip using the tiny amount of trunk space we have.

When Sabine answered the phone, it was clear to me that she had been crying, and she indicated she had just had a fight with her parents. They had apparently just stormed out.

However, she did say that she would go to the bank with me on the 6th to set up the account, and that we could bring our stuff over and store it.

When we arrived at the apartment, it was, if anything, even more cluttered than it had been before. Sabine explained to us that her parents had fought over a set of double doors separating the dining room from the family room that Sabine had taken down some time ago and her father was now insisting be put back up. She also explained that she would not be leaving this week as planned, but she was not going to stay with her parents, which was her original back-up plan. Instead, she would stay with a friend, and we would still be able to move in on Monday because she was going to work through the night if she had to in order to get ready.

When I arrived at work Monday morning, I had received an email from Sabine that she had sent to everyone on her mailing list at midnight the night before. Clearly, she had spent some time not cleaning the apartment! I’ll attach a copy of the email, because it indicates that Sabine may not leave Germany until the end of the month!

So yesterday, we arrived at the apartment to find that our stuff had already arrived (good news), but as we suspected, Sabine was still a long way from being finished (bad news). She had gotten the bedrooms mostly finished (good news), but she hadn’t even started on the kitchen really, so there was nowhere yet that we could store groceries (bad news, especially with hungry toddlers).

So we cancelled the appointment at the bank to make the deposit, and Sandi, the kids and I left for a long drive to give Sabine some time to work.

Fortunately by late last evening, we had enough done that we could live in the apartment, although somewhat tenuously. The apartment is far from childproof at the moment, but there’s nothing we can really do until Sabine is finished with her tasks.

Sabine will be back today to continue cleaning and packing, and maybe for several more days to come.

If you would like to chat with us, the best time to find us will be between 7-9PM local time, which is 12-2PM CDT.

We did manage to have a voice converstion with Papaw Atherton yesterday after some effort, but I think we have the problem solved.

The good news is that the voice conversation was no worse between Indianapolis and Germany than it was when we were only a block away! Video conferencing will have to wait until the DSL line gets turned on.

UPDATE:  Whoo hoo!  I got home from work today, and our DSL line was turned on.  I’m using it right now.  You can barely tell that I’m 4000+ miles away from most of the sites I use.

Expect to see a lot more of Sandi on this site in the coming days.

I’ve discovered that I have a phobia. I didn’t know this until I got here, because it had never been an issue before. Here it is: I’m afraid of running out of food while the stores are closed.

This is an actual problem here in Germany because stores close sometimes. As far as I can tell, this never happens in the US. You can always find someone who will sell you a meal or some canned goods or even a lawn chair at 3AM.

Since tomorrow is a holiday here, I had an uncontrollable urge to go to the grocery store when I left work this afternoon. This was even after we had gone to the grocery the night before for THE EXACT SAME REASON– we wanted to stock up before the holiday. When I passed by the local Lidl store and saw how packed the parking lot was, I panicked and had to go in.

After I got into the store, I realized there was nothing we really needed. Our freezer was already full (it’s approximately the size of a beer huggie, though, so that’s not hard to do), and we had all of the milk that we could use in 2 days (approximately 2 beer huggies full). So I ended up buying 3 types of bread spread, 2 types of cheese, some bagel chips, 12 rolls, and a 2 liter of Pepsi Light.

And a beer huggie (because we need another frig).

It’s a good thing the stores reopen on Friday. I don’t know how I’d survive.

Yesterday was a good day for me:

• I got a new car, a brand new 2002 Opel Astra Caravan. I know, it’s just a station wagon, but it’s got that new car smell, an impossible-to-read German manual, and enough space in the back to pack up for the weekend and tour Europe! Plus, I don’t have to pay for gas!
• I got a new TV. It’s based on Thomson’s current state-of-the-art ICC21 chassis, and it makes a gorgeous picture– even better than the MM101 that Sandi and I have been using in Indy.
• I got a new DVD player. It isn’t particularly special, except for one feature. It is capable of playing DVDs from anywhere in the world. DVDs are assigned region codes based on the markets they are intended for. For example, the US is region 1, Europe is region 2. In principal, a DVD intended for region 1 shouldn’t play on a player sold in region 2. The DVD player we got doesn’t care, and will play discs from all regions. It is theoretically illegal to sell this type of DVD player in the US because it violates copyright law, but in Germany, this is not a problem. This works out great for us, because Carissa is able to watch the DVDs we brought from home, and we will be able to watch German DVDs. This should help us with our language skills, since many discs have both English audio and German audio. Many discs also have subtitle tracks in German and English, so you can listen in German and see the translation in English.
• As I mentioned earlier, our DSL line got turned on yesterday (about a week earlier than scheduled). This was a pleasent surprise, and a big surprise to Sabine, who says that Deutsche Telekom never does anything ahead of schedule. We managed to have a voice chat with Papaw Atherton last night, and it was amazing how much the quality improved from the chat we had while using the dial-up connection. The lag time was nearly gone, so it was like making a telephone call.

Now all I need is a stereo, and this place will feel like home! Sandi has a different story though…

Also, if you stay where she is, she wants to talk to you and not work.

So, in order to keep my sanity I decided to go for a walk to the local bakery. The 6/10 of a mile down a 14% grade was not bad and it took a little less than 15 minutes. The girls picked out their “treat” and I grabbed a slice of chocolate covered lemon bread ( It was very good but I thought I was ordering a sugar cookie) and a large bottle of Coke. We explored the town a little more and found the butcher/cheese shop, 2 small grocery stores, the post office,a drug store, and a little playground. Since we pretty much made it over the entire town I decided to trek back up the hill. Let me tell you…3 minutes into it, I thought I had to be climbing a mountain. I made several stops to rest and pretended to be interested in the landscaping so as not to look like the idiot I was for attempting this. I even entertained the idea of sitting on the curb for the next 2 hours untill Ken made his way home from work and could drive us back up. In the end, I kicked Carissa out of the stroller to walk on her own and forced myself to go on. It only took about 25 minutes to get back up but it felt like the longest time of my life. (although watching Sabine pack up her crap is a close second to that.) I had envisioned my days here as including an almost daily walk to the bakery and butcher through a quaint, cobblestone road for dinner but I am rethinking that idea at this moment.

Germany has not lost it’s charm for me though. I love the old feel of the buildings and the amazing landscapes everywhere you turn. Hill after hill is covered in eveergreen trees with groups of terracotta roofed houses popping out every so often. I can not wait to expore the rest of Europe and to see the differences from home.

Speaking of which, some things are quite different here. The windows have multiple opening functions. They can either swing all the way open from one side or they can slant into the house from the top. They do not have screens but I am told that Germany does not have bug problems. We shall see about that. I guess I will have to live with it since we do not have AC in the apartment. (it usually does not get over 70 degrees).

However, the music is 90% American, which surprised me.

The selection of bread, butter,and cheese that they have here is enough to keep me busy everyday and growing larger by the minute.

The tour was to an area known as the Bodensee, or Lake Konstanz (depending on whether you talk to the Germans or the Swiss), which is the largest lake in Germany. See is German for lake, and Boden in this case, roughly translates to peaceful. If you look the word up in the dictionary, it literally means bottom, or floor, but someone here told me the connotation in this case means flat. It is a very beautiful area, and there is a lot to do. However, we didn’t see any castles.

Here’s what we did do:

First we stopped on Reichenau island, which is off to the southwest of Konstanz, and is in a separate body of water from the Bodensee called the Zellersee. I don’t think it’s rally an island, because a thin strip of land connects it to the mainland– there’s no bridge. It’s possible that the strip is man-made though. You can see this in the photo below:

Just in case you were wondering, we didn’t take this picture, we swiped it from a tourism website.

We drove around the island a bit (actually a bit more than we intended since the map they gave us wasn’t very accurate), then visited one of the churches on the island. Construction of the church, called the Marienmünster, was started in 888. There were several beautiful examples of medival artwork painted on the walls.

One odd thing happened while we were on the island… When we arrived, school kids have were stopping every car and asking questions about where we were from and why we were visitng the island… Plus at nearly every intersection on the islands, there were kids logging all of the cars that passed by. We have no idea what they were trying to accomplish– it was probably a research project– but it gave me this weird feeling that we were in a police state.

After leaving Reichenau, we stopped in Konstanz briefly to eat lunch. We found the other big fast food restaurant chain in Germany… Burger King! Their most interesting menu item is something called the “American Menu”, which consists of a Whopper, large fries and a Miller Genuine Draft beer.

In the afternoon, we drove to the other side of the lake on a road that offers a nice overlooking view and it was a gorgeous day to be there. The Bodensee area is a major agricultural area for products such as apples and grapes and the drive passes through many orchards and vinyards.

We drove through Meersberg, where one of the castles was supposed to be located, but we couldn’t find any directions– and the guide book we had was no help. It said, “When you are in Meersberg, make sure to see the castle”, but didn’t say where it was. A lot of good that does.

We think the castle was probably in the old city, which was off limits to traffic. We might go back there sometime to try again, though, because you can take a ferry from Meersberg across to Konstanz, which in itself seems interesting.

A view to the Bodensee

Our final stop was in Ravensberg, one of the other alleged castle locations on our tour. Again we encountered the same problem. There is supposed to be a castle, but no clear directions were available. The city also has a viewing tower that looks out over the city and accross to the Alps. We found this, but it didn’t appear to be open for business.

So we ended up walking through the streets of Ravenberg, which has a wonderful feel to it and is somewhat larger than Villingen so there is more to see. Most of the restaurants were open on the holiday, and there were lots of people eating outside at these restaurants under the late afternoon sun.

We stopped at an ice cream store (.50 € per scoop!) and called it a day. All in all, it was a fun trip and a beautiful drive, but overall the Bodensee seems to be a better tourist destination for recreation than sightseeing.

The girls playing in a fountain in Ravensberg

A view of Ravensberg

The Grüen Turm in Ravensberg– this is the closest thing we saw to a castle, and according to the little bit of German I could read off the sign, may have once been part of a castle.

Carissa attempts to call Grandma and/or Nana from Ravensberg.

Castle Heidelberg is actually a ruins. It was severely damaged during one of the many European sectarian wars when the French Catholics who captured the castle from the German Protestants in 1688 decided to remove its defensive capabilities before they retreated in 1689. Combined with two fires that destroyed the castle interior in the late 1700s, the castle was a mess by the 1800s.

In the early 1900s, some efforts to restore the interiors of the undamaged buildings was undertaken, but the ruined parts of the castle have been left undisturbed except to shore them up from further damage.

View of the castle from the city (photo borrowed from Historic Sights of Germany)

We took the guided tour of the castle, which allows access to the otherwise restricted interiors. The tour was quite interesting, but it was hard to keep two small children occupied for the one hour duration.

View of the rear of the castle.

Inside the castle walls.

Model of the castle as it looked shortly before its destruction in 1689.  Most of what is seen in the foreground is badly damaged or destroyed. The front left tower has split in two and the top sits on the ground infront of the bottom now. You can see this tower in the picture of the girls and me above.

A view of one of the restored ceilings in the Wirtschaftsgebäude (living quarters). This is the the classical style building visible directly ahead in the courtyard photo above.

Carissa and Celia try out the steps on one of the stoves used in the castle for heating. These steps are designed to give children a place to warm up on cold days.

The girls are standing under Elizabeth gate, so named because it was a birthday gift from Frederich V to his wife, Elizabeth. Alledgedly, the gate was assembled in a single night on this site. Yeah, that’s me peeking through the hole.

Another view of the girls on the gate.

Sandi and the girls beside the dry moat, where deer were once kept to insure fresh meat was available for banquets.

A view from the castle to the city.

One more thing:   Ok, this definitely goes in the category of stupid things you can do with a computer.

I bought a mapping program that uses satellite photos of Germany. It has photographs of the entire country at a 3 meter resolution, and for the 176 largest cities in Germany, it also has photos with a 1 meter resolution. Basically, that means any object that is at least 3 feet wide and deep can be seen. Of course, the larger the object is, the more detail can be seen.

The program is delivered on 3 DVDs– the program and data are almost 15 Gigabytes in size.

The picture below is a sample from the disc. It’s a 30 meter view of the castle in Heidelberg.

I’ve annotated the photo to help you get your bearings. The angles shown are the views seen in the pictures in the message we wrote about the castle.

1. This angle is the picture titled “view of the rear of the castle”.
2. This is the view of the picture titled “inside the castle walls”.
3. This is where the Elizabeth gate pictures were taken. The gate itself can’t really be seen because it is hidden under the trees.

A personalized botle of Riesling. The grapes used in the wine were grown nearby. The area around Heidelberg is a major wine producing region.

A shotglass to add to my collection. This one will be fairly unique, as most of the ones I have already are glass (and in English, and from America, and…)

Much to our complete surprise, we are going to add another contestant to Survivor Germany sometime around January 8th, 2003.

Sandi is pregnant!

We have the positive test to prove it.

This turn of events is going to require some quick thinking and flexibility.  We’ll have a entire element of experience in Germany that we would not have had otherwise.

As they say on TV:  “Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!!!”

…In theory.

Reality is somewhat different. One of my German colleagues described it as a very French meeting. Of course, because of the way our organization is set up with only one senior manager in Germany (my manager) and the rest in France, it would almost have to be a “French” meeting.

Here’s what my colleague meant by the term: Much time is spent hammering individual points into the ground, but in the end few actual decisions are made, and the status quo is kept. There is a tendency to allow people to continue speaking well after they have made their point and are really just embarassing themselves.

Here’s a typical conversation with the really boring details (at least to most mortals) removed:

VP: OK, let’s talk about project X.
French manager 1: It is very clear that point 1. Hammer hammer hammer hammer…
German manager 1: I say point 2. Hammer hammer hammer hammer…
French Manager 2: But surely point 3. Hammer hammer hammer hammer…
German manager 2: Point 3 is scheisse. Rather, point 4! Hammer hammer hammer hammer…
Asian Manager: Point 1 is very important, indeed. Hammer hammer hammer hammer…
All (at once): Hammer hammer hammer hammer…
VP: Let me summarize: Point 1, point 2, point 4…
French Manager 2: But I insist point 3. Hammer hammer hammer hammer…
All (at once): Hammer hammer hammer hammer…
VP: OK, so point 1, point 2, maybe point 3, maybe point 4… Clearly we don’t have enough information to make a decision at this time. We will follow the issue and discuss again at the next meeting.

(for greater effect, start at the top of the script again to discuss the next project, continue for 9 hours with only one break, during which smaller groups are formed to hammer each point individually. The meeting ends abruptly when it’s time for the French managers to catch their plane.)

This is not to say that the meeting wasn’t useful– A lot of very valuable information was shared and I am learning a lot about the business. But the 9 hour meeting could have easily been a 4 hour meeting instead!

It makes American potty-mouths seem quaint.

Realistically, it appears that scheiß has become merely a synonym for “schlecht” (bad) in informal German. Besides using it it as a noun or an exclamation, they prepend the word to virtually any noun as an adjective.

Here are some common examples:

scheißwetter (bad weather– we heard this a lot the first week we were here)
scheißauto (bad car)
scheißstaat (bad government — literally “state”)

My electronic translation dictionary translates the phrase “to make a complete mess” as “scheiß machen”.

Our landlady actually uses the phrase “shitweather” when speaking in English, as does at least one person I’ve met at work.

By the way, “drauf” means “on it”, in case you were wondering.

It makes my ears burn..

We also spent some time in downtown Villingen, where we stopped for frozen yogurt.

(Side note: Frozen yogurt in Germany is exactly that. It’s not a substitute for ice cream–it’s cold,
sour, and not nearly as sweet as ice cream.)

Carissa ordered a Mickey Mouse sundae, which made her day.

All of the white things are puffballs; all of the yellow things are flowering dandelions.

The toilet room in our house has a skylight which can be opened. We left it opened the other night and by morning, the floor had been covered by seeds everywhere.

Even Carissa is a magnet.

• The windows generally open both all the way from the side or slant in from the top. You choose which way it opens by turning the handle to the proper position. The slanted opening allows you to keep the windows open during rain because it runs down and out. Also, the blinds are on the outside of the house and have controls on the inside. Some are powered and some are cranks.
• The color of Fruit Loops cereal here are very washed out and dull. I was told that Germans do not believe in adding unnecessary color to food so you are left with colors that look like they have sat around in the box for centuries.
• There are some models where the washer and dryer are built into one machine allowing you to do a complete load without even being home. The down side to this is of course, is that you can only do one load at a time. For people with kids who have piles of dirty laundry that seem to magically appear every time you blink, this creates havoc.
• The beds here are very low to the ground and often do not have box springs to them. They also do not sleep with a top sheet, only a down comforter in the size of a twin. This means that if you have a king size bed as we do, there are two on the bed. (no more fighting over covers in the middle of the night. Maybe these people have figured some things out!). The pillows are very large, square, and down filled. Some days you can drive along and see the pillows and comforters hanging out the windows to “air out”.
• One of the differences on the roads is that the stop lights are on the same side on the intersection as you are. This means that you can not pull out past the white line. In fact, it is best to stay several feet back otherwise you get what Ken describes as “German neck”. This is where you must bend your neck down and to the side into a cramped position in order to see when the light changes. On the brighter side, you are given a clue the light is about to change by the red and yellow flashing at the same time just before a green. Because a majority of the cars here are stick shift, it seems they have done this so that one can put the car in gear. Now that you have the warning you had better be prepared to go instantly when the light turns green or you will have horns blaring behind you.
• The meat cuts here are very different. They are big on turkey and pork. I wish I could elaborate more on this subject but I have not yet figured any of them out. I stand in the front of the large selection and my world begins to spin! Where are my “chicken breast, pork chop, pork loin, and rump roast” that I have come to love? I did venture out and purchased something called “frische truthahn brust schnitzel”. The night I fix that may end with a trip to McDonald’s.
• Clocks here run on 24 hour time. This takes a lot of getting used to when you have to calculate the time in the evenings. The 22:00 hour should become easily remembered for this is the kids’ bed time. Thank goodness in the wee hours of the morning when your brain is not functioning well, the clock shows regular American-like hours.
• And now, the one item that has taken the most willpower to get used to is that milk comes in cartons which sit out on the shelf. They are not refrigerated until you open them. We keep approximately 4 cartons of each kind in a drawer in the kitchen. In order to drink the milk I had to keep telling myself that the Germans would not do this if it were harmful to their health. Then again, it seems 90% of the people smoke around here, including young kids. Maybe I should rethink this theory.

1. Get some Swiss Francs, so that we’d have some for spending money. Switzerland is not part of the EU, so the Euros is not the national currency. Some businesses will accept them, however, and on reasonably favorable terms.

2. Take the train from Winterthur to Zurich for a day of sightseeing. there are multiple reasons we wanted to do this. One is that parking is very difficult in Zurich, and assuming you can find a place, it is expensive — about $3 an hour. The other was that we wanted to try the train system in Switzerland, which are among the best organized and most efficient in the world.

We actually accomplished a third thing that we hadn’t planned to do yet. In Switzerland, there is a highway tax which you pay and then attach a sticker to your windshield showing that you’ve paid. Driving on any of the country’s highways without this vignette is illegal and can be punished by a stiff fine.

I thought we had this all figured out when we left yesterday morning– from the mapping program I was using, it looked like you could get to Winterthur without using any highways. Only highways are subject to the tax, and both Switzerland guide books we have mention avoid the the highway system as a way to save money on a trip to Switzerland.

However, as best as I can tell, the Swiss define a highway as “any road not in a city that is paved.” This made our trip to Winterthur a little more complicated, as it included the road we entered Switzerland on. Since we didn’t yet have any Francs, we drove (illegally) to the nearest bank, got some money, then returned to the border to pay the tax. Fortunately, we didn’t see any highway police, or more importantly, they didn’t see us.

After this diversion, we continued on to Winterthur, found an acceptable parking garage and then took the train into the Zurich hauptbahnof (main train station). The short, 25 minute ride was interesting in itself, because even though it was advertised as a surface train, the vast majority of the trip was underground.

Zurich is an fascinating city. It is among the wealthiest cities in a very wealthy country. It has a definitely cosmopolitan, European atmosphere. Depending on your political leanings, it is also either very progressive or way too liberal. Not quite as much as Amsterdam, but close.

The train station lies at the north end of the major shopping district wchich the local tourist literature refers to as “the Rodeo Drive of Europe”. Having never been to Rodeo Drive, I can only assume this means “a shopping district filled with stores that carry little actual merchandise, but at the prices that they want for each item, they don’t need many items”.

Interesting sidenote: A large part of the train station was filled with farm animals. This was apparently an advertising stunt for a farm expo that takes place in June. While the girls enjoyed petting the animals, an old, possibly drunk Swiss man attempted to carry on a conversation with me about one of the young goats sitting on top of a bale of straw and tearing it up with his hooves. I can only guess at the significance of the goat’s actions, as the only thing I could understand from the man was “Das ist sehr interesant,” which he said repeatedly. I kept smiling and saying “ja, ja” which seemed to make the man happy, and unfortunately, more talkative.

We spent the afternoon walking through the shopping district and several of the old city’s major sites. At the south end, just across from Lake Zurich, we found an outdoor flea market housing a large collection of European junk, which means that it was entirely different from the junk you see in the US at flea markets, but no more useful.

It’s hard to look down any street and not see something that looks like a movie set.

We visited the Fraumünster church, which is part of a larger cloister and abbey. Originally built, according to legend, as a home for the relics of the town saints Felix and Regula, the most famous feature of the church now is the stained glass windows painted by Marc Chagall in the early 1970s depicting events from the old and new testament.

This is a reproduction (which I swiped from another site) of a postcard sold at the church that depict the five windows painted by Chagall. The picture doesn’t do justice to the artwork. The windows are actually positioned farther apart than the postcard shows. The center three panels are spread out, and the far left and right panels are on different walls.

We stopped at the lake, but by this time it had become fairly cloudy, so most of the pictures we took didn’t turn out.

We did get this one of the girls admiring the local pigeon and swan population.

Our final stop in Zürich was at the Grossmünster. This church was alledgedly donated by Charlemagne and built on the spot where the above mentioned Felix and Regula are buried. The two saints apparently indicated this as the spot they wanted to be buried by carrying their heads (which had recently been removed) to the site.

I swiped this picture, too, because it was way too cloudy to get a good one yesterday.

The church was probably built by Charlemagne’s great-grandson Charlegrosse (Charles the Fat).

On our return to Winterthur, we took a different train which ran above ground, but also visited every other train station in the country before arriving in Winterthur. Fortunately, Carissa and Celia met a little boy, so they managed to pass the time.

The boy spoke only Italian (this is common in Switzerland), so they had only one word in common between them– “baby”. All other communication was conducted in the universal language of the raspberry. All three children thought this was enormously funny. I suspect the boy’s mother was less fond of this because she was sitting in the primary shower zone.

At first I was very afraid to get on the autobahn and told him that it would take forever to get there because I was not going to drive fast. Halfway through the first leg I noticed I was going about 140 km/hour and didn’t think to much of it. On the way home I had people behind me and I did not want to get over because the cars in the right lane were going slow. (They have a rule on the autobahn that you can only pass on the left) so I had to either speed up or get behind slow pokes. So I sped up!

Ken noticed my speed (170 km/hour) and told me that I was doing over 100 miles per hour!!!!! What a rush!! Needless to say we made a deal that when we get back home, there will be no comments about speeding tickets until after the 2nd one each! When you get down to 65 miles/hour, it feels like you are crawling! we are so in trouble!

Keep in mind that almost all of Germany is further north than the US, so we are getting some of the north pole effect. In the very far north, they will soon have sunlight 24 hours a day.

I checked on the sunrise and sunset times in this area, and for today, the sun rose at 5:35AM and set at 9:05 PM. In contrast, in Indianapolis, the sun rose at 5:26AM, but will set by 7:59PM.

On June 21st, we will have sunrise at 5:20AM and sunset at 9:30PM… that’s 16 hours and 10 minutes of daylight! That’s not even the whole story– civil twilight (the time during which you can see well enough to make out shapes without the moon or artificial light) starts at 4:38AM and ends at 10:12PM that’s 17 hours and 34 minutes of light!

In Indianapolis on the same day, civil twilight will start at 4:45AM and last until 8:50PM. That’s 16 hours and 5 minutes.

On the other hand we are going to pay for it this winter… On the shortest day of the year, sunrise will be at 8:13AM and sunset will be at 4:29PM!

Here’s a table of times for comparison:

Stuttgart       CTS     SR      SS      CTE
May 21st        4:56    5:35    21:05   21:44
June 21st       4:38    5:20    21:30   22:12
December 21st   7:36    8:13    16:29   17:06
Indy            CTS     SR      SS      CTE
May 21st        4:55    5:26    19:59   20:30
June 21st       4:45    5:17    20:17   20:50
December 21st   7:33    8:03    17:24   17:54

We went to the southeastern side of the falls, which allows for a higher view of the falls.

(This isn’t one of those views; it’s swiped from http://www.rheinfall.ch/ and shows the path we took to the falls.)

The path that leads to the falls is accessed through a small castle called Schloss Laufen.

There is an inscription near the entry gate of the castle that talks about the Rheinfall’s importance in allowing Switzerland to stay of of two world wars, presumably because it is impassable. Even the Nazis weren’t foolhardy enough to try.

A view of the Rheinfall. In the center, you can see the observation deck accessible from the bottom if you take one of the boats out to the falls. If you look really close, you can see that there is nothing but a solid wall of people even on the less interesting side of the falls. It was VERY crowded, and we spent a lot of time jostling with other tourists for position.

Carissa did manage to clear some space for us by stomping the puddles in the observation decks.

The advantage of the side from which we went to the falls is that you can get very close to them. I thought this was a really neat picture when I took it, but in retrospect, it looks like we are trying to get rid of CeCe. I swear we weren’t. Really.

“What tidal wave?”

These pictures don’t do justice to the falls. It is incredibly noisy and wet at the place we are standing. You have to be there to appreciate it. Everybody has to yell to be heard.

The girls really enjoyed this trip, and Carissa was upset when we left. She did manage to walk all of the way back up by herself, which was pretty impressive. It is roughly the equivalent of 10 flights of stairs from the bottom to the top.

We ate lunch out at someplace other than McDonald’s or Burger King for the first time since arriving (it’s a miracle!) The little stand where we ate served French Fries prepared in the Swiss style, which apprently involves either dipping the fries in butter prior to cooking, or perhaps actually cooking them in butter. Either way, I won’t say that we ate a heathier meal than McDonald’s, but at least there was some variety.

One other side note: below is a picture of a street musician who was entertaining at the castle gate.

Yeah, that’s right. The instrument he is playing is a handsaw. He’s actually very good, and played several traditional Swiss melodies, accompanied by his boombox. He controls the pitch with his left hand, bows with his right hand, and adds vibrato by moving his right knee.

Later, when we passed by him again, he had been joined by an organ grinder (playing an organ dated 1924), whose accompaniment replaced the boombox.

This same store has an multi-page flyer for a new PC they will be selling as of the 29th. It’s an Athlon XP 2000+ with a 64Meg GeForce4 card, 256Meg DDR RAM, 40x12xx48x CD-RW, 16x DVD-ROM, 80Gig HD, 5.1 analog audio outputs, DD/DTS digital outs, 2 1394 ports, 4 USB 2.0 ports, 10/100 Ethernet, slots for CF/SD/MMC/SM/Memory Stick, and all of the other standard ports etc., for just over $1000 (1177 €). In addition, it comes with WinXP home, Nero 5.5, PowerDVD 4.0, MS Works Suite and Pinnacle Studio 7 Suite.

I’m very impressed by this because the best I could do on a similar system on-line for delivery in the US was about $1200, including WinXP but no other software, and also not including the memory card slots. If you include the software and the memory card slots, the price goes up to about $1400.

It’s not strictly a high end system (especially the graphics card, which is essentially a fast GeForce 2 despite the misleading name), but it’s no slouch. It’s clearly enough computer to do almost anything you would ask of it.

The interesting part is that most of the other grocery stores offer similar systems at similar prices. Computers from Aldi (yes, the same deep-discounting, no-name-brand, my-Dad’s-favorite-place-to-shop Aldi that’s in all of the poor neighborhoods in Indy) are consistently among the highest rated by the biggest computer magazine in Germany, Computer Bild.

This particular computer was rated by the same magazine as a very good buy. In fact, the worst things the review had to say is that the PC is noisy and uses a lot of electricity. That seems like a fairly standard criticism of almost any current PC that’s not a Macintosh.

Or maybe not. Specifically, the review says that when they copied the contents of a CD to the hard drive, the computer was “fast so laut wie ein Föhn” (almost as loud as a hairdryer).

I do not have any good idea why the computers are so much cheaper here than in the US. It’s especially difficult to imagine when you consider that 1177 € price tag includes a 16% VAT tax. That means the amount you would expect see on the price tag in the US is really about $850 plus sales tax.

PCs are almost universally built with power supplies that will work in both Europe and the US. I think I may buy my next PC before returning to the US.

The girls are doing great. They enjoy the traveling more than we had thought they would. I can’t wait to start rissa in school so that she can find some kids to play with. We have a little boy downstairs that is 2 but he is MEAN. All he seems to do is hit and push. His mother says he is not around other kids to much and I know why! I am now worried about my kid’s safety with him.

The new baby is doing well. We had an ultrasound the other day and saw the heart beating. They measured me at 7 weeks and the due date at January 15. Ken believes we will have a Christmas baby. I think I will be hoping for that around that time of the pregnancy. I have been checking out German names on the web and have found a couple I like (don’t worry ….nothing like Hans or Geisla) Maybe I will take a vote from you all when i have finished the searching.

Take care,
Sandi

The idea of a road without speed limits seems like a driver’s utopia, but the reality is a little more complicated.

My observations are based mostly on a stretch of the autobahn (part of the A81) that stretches between Stuttgart and Singen and is about 180km in length. I understand that the autobahn experience can be different in different areas of the country, especially in terms of traffic jams, which are uncommon in this area, but quite common in certain metropolitan areas of the country. Here is what I’ve seen so far, though:

While it is true that huge stretches of the autobahn have no regulated speed, the government recommends speeds around 130kph (80mph). In addition, near major cities, there are real speed limits, usually either 120kph (75mph) or 100kph (62mph). Certain types of road hazards, such as tunnels or steep grades (up or down) are also regulated at lower speeds. In all, about 50% of the autobahn has speed limits in effect, and one can find oneself hitting the brake pretty hard to comply sometimes.

In Stuttgart, the 100kph limit seems more common than the 120kph limit, and the regulated zone starts 30km or so outside of the city in all directions.

Besides the permanently speed-regulated zones, there are places where automated signs can put a limit into effect. In the stretch of road we have travelled such signs appear near bridges across wide valleys where wind shear might be a problem. I don’t know if these systems are fully automated, or if someone flips a switch to make the signs turn on, but I have seen them activated during one trip. The rest of the time they have been off.

I’ve been very surprised to find that not everyone in Germany drives full throttle on the autobahn, but their driving habits can vary quite widely.

German drivers on the autobahn seem to fall into four major categories with regard to speed. There are the drivers who will drive as fast as possible and often don’t slow down even in the regulated zones. These are often, but not always the sports car and high end luxury car drivers. There are the drivers who never exceed the 130kph recommendation of the government. These are usually drivers of cars that probably won’t go much faster than that anyway or drivers who would actually like their cars to last for a while. There are the drivers who obey the limits, but push their accelerators as soon as the limits are removed. Then there are the semis.

Semis are a special case, because there are separate rules for them. The truck itself will have a rated maximum speed, plus, in speed controlled zones, the limits for semis are often lower than for passenger cars. On much of the autobahn, semis are not allowed to pass passenger cars, or are forbidden to pass at certain times of the day. Add to that the very hilly terrain of Germany and it is obvious that semis travel MUCH more slowly than everyone else.

So what does all of this mean? Qutie simply, it means that a driver has to pay more attention to his driving than in most places in the US. This applies no matter which kind of driver he is, because it is the speed differentials that make driving challenging. If you drive fast, you have to pay very close attention to traffic ahead. If you drive slow, you have to pay close attention to the traffic behind you. If you are in the middle of the pack, you have to do both.

Fortunately, Germany has two simple traffic rules that make this much easier to do: 1. It is illegal to pass another vehicle on its right side. If one can’t pass on the left, one must slow down and wait, even if the other driver is violating rule number 2. 2. All vehicles are required to drive as far to the right as possible, except when passing slower traffic. Germans actually obey these rules and it is unbelievable how much easier it is to drive when everybody does this.

So which kind of driver am I? I’m the kind that obeys speed limits when in effect, then slams on the accelerator once removed. I’ve managed to get our car up to about 215kph (133mph) on occasion, but generally I drive between 180 and 200 when my way is unobstructed.

Here’s why: while it is rare to see the traffic Polizei while driving, the Germans have implemented traffic cameras in a big way. Drive too fast, or run a red light or whatever, and one may open up the mailbox one day to find a ticket. The use of these devices has been controversial (and therefore remain unommon) in the US, partly due to the way they are sold. The companies that make them charge very low prices in exchange for a comission on every ticket issued. In Germany, however, the machines are either sold differently or the German government doesn’t see this as a conflict of interest. Presumably, it is possible to learn where these cameras are and slow down only when approaching them. For now, though, I’m taking no chances.

Yesterday, for example, I exited the autobahn into Stuttgart on a road that very quickly began a 60kph limit. Just past the sign, and slightly around a curve, a traffic camera was mounted. I’m not entirely sure that I slowed down quickly enough by the time I got to the sign, and as far as I know, there’s no immediate feedback that you’ve been caught. I guess I’ll know in a few weeks.

That’s probably the hardest thing to get used to about the autobahn. Most Americans don’t realize that on city streets, German speed limits are actually quite low. On main roads they vary between 50kph (31mph) and 80kph (49mph), with 50kph being much more common, even on roads that would have posted limits of 45mph or 50mph in the US.

When I try to drive 50kph after I have just been driving 180kph, it seems like I may as well just get out and walk. I suspect that’s how those traffic cameras make money.

We stopped at Stein-Am-Rhein on our way home from the Rheinfall, not because we knew much about it, but because our guidebook said it was a good idea to visit during the off season– during the summer, the village receives almost a million visitors.

When we arrived, it was clear why so many people visit.

Stein-Am-Rhein is a small village that spans the Rhein just a few kilometers from the Swiss-German border. Its primary attraction is the old city, which has been preserved to look much the way it did in the 16th century.

1642 map of Stein-am-Rhein (also swiped)

The buildings in the Burgerplatz were painted to describe the families who built and owned them. The building facades form murals on each floor. These paintings have been preserved on the buildings.

Because of this, the town has a definite atmosphere that makes it feel older than many of the nearby contemporary towns.

A view of the street in Stein-Am-Rhein leading to the Burgerplatz

One of the buildings on the square

A close up of one of the murals

A sundial near the square. It’s hard to read, but the date in the upper right hand corner is 1542.

The other reason that people visit the town is that it offers some spectacular views of the Rhein. There are boats that run regular passenger service up and down the river and Stein-Am-Rhein is one of the major stops in the local area.

Sandi got some good pictures from the bridge visible in the map above.

This view is to the southeast.

This is the view to the southwest.

This is the view to the almost directly to the south of the bridge.

Carissa really loves The Sound Of Music. After we told her we were going to the place where the movie was made, she became very excited about seeing Maria. It was very hard to convince her that Maria wasn’t going to be there. Once we were there, she was vary happy to see some of the locations where the movie was made.

In one scene of the movie, during the song “I Have Confidence”, Maria puts her hand into the
Residenzbrenner, a famous fountain located in the old city.

Carissa was very happy to be able to do the same thing as Maria…

Of course, CeCe was just happy to be there . Who needs a fountain when you can play with wet rocks?

As it turns out, the route (the A81) between Stutgart and München is one of the oldest in the country, and was commissioned by Hitler himself. As a result it provides a much different driving experience than the relatively modern portion of road we have driven on before.

Since the road is quite old, there are a lot on-going construction projects. Some of these are quite extensive. Each of the zones has a sign at the start showing the estimated completion date. We saw one area that wasn’t due to be completed until December 2006.

In addition, the road is very heavily travelled, which means that traffic jams are possible, even out in the middle of nowhere. This is especially true at the end of a long holiday weekend, as we discovered.

There are several things that the government has done on this stretch of road to try to make travel safer, if not faster. For one, about half the route has a daytime speed limit of 120kph. In another section there are periodic overhead electronic signs which change the speed limit based on the traffic flow. This can be bewildering the first time you see it– especially since the signs can change while you are approaching them. It’s also not clear what you are supposed to do when you come to one of these signs and it is completely blank. Most of the drivers around us took this as an opportunity to floor it. I didn’t try this tactic, since I don’t know what the rules are, and there are a lot of those speed monitoring cameras I mentioned before used in these zones.

(Picture stolen from the  Texas Highwayman’s Driving In Germany Site) Incidentally, the two unlit signs in the picture above can be used to add other traffic rules, such as no passing zones for trailers, construction zones, etc.

Our speed on this road rarely even approached the posted limits on Sunday. No matter what the sign said, we almost always were travelling 20kph below the limit.

At one point during our return we sat through nearly 10km of road where our average speed was less than 20kph. Our trip to Salzburg, which we started on Friday (thereby missing most of the traffic at the beginning of the holiday weekend), took about 4 1/2 hours from the time we left home including a lunch break. Our return trip on Sunday afternoon took almost 6, and we didn’t stop for dinner.

Afterwards, we saw a Stau (traffic jam) on the other side of the road. From our odometer, I estimated that the backup was about 12km in length.

This is not to say that the travel was all bad. Near both Stuttgart and München, there are bypass roads that have between 4 and 6 lanes each direction. These portions could be travelled very quickly. In general, the trip got easier then nearer we were to Stuttgart.

Clearly though, the Autobahn is not always the driving paradise we Americans sometimes imagine it to be!

I still managed to average 180kph between Stuttgart and our exit, though.

During the off-season, it pays to just show up in the city you want to stay without a reservation. You can save quite a bit of money by booking at the last minute, and you may be able to get upgraded rooms for not much additional cost. At least one of the guidebooks we have recommends this strategy (as long as you are sure there are no major conventions going on!) It’s pretty scary to try this in real life, though, especially when you are arriving from thousands of miles away.

We decided to try this advice on our trip to Salzburg last weekend. Of course, we have the advantage of living only 5 hours from Salzburg, so in the worst case, we could have driven back home. We did check on-line shortly before we left and found that several hotels still had lots of rooms available for the weekend.

Here’s how to make this plan work: Nearly all of the major tourist cities, and even many smaller cities in Europe have tourist information bureaus that are conveniently located near the major tourist areas. One of the services that these offices offer is hotel booking. In some areas, there is a small charge for this (in Salzburg it was 2.30 €), but in exchange, you get access to all of the local hotels. The office can help you find hotels based on location, price or features.

We chose to look for features. The specific feature we wanted was an indoor swimming pool for the kids (it’s still pretty cold to swim outside here). The tourist office knew of several options for this, and found us an inexpensive (for Salzburg) room at a hotel on a hill just outside Salzburg.

The Hotel Kobenzl turns out to be located on something we Indiana folk would more likely term a mountain, and the view of Salzburg is striking. Upon arrival, we paid a small premium (15€/day) to stay in a room with a balcony and a view of the city (and, as we found out later, of the topless sunbathing deck– sorry, we didn’t take any pictures!)

The hotel is described by the proprietors as a spa. It offers a wide array of beauty treatments and massages, as well as a host of “restorative” treatments. Sandi used the opportunity to get away from the kids and me for a massage.

The hotel is a family-run operation, and the owner, Frau von Buseck spends much of her time talking to the guests. It’s an interesting experience, especially for someone like me who is used to staying at chain hotels. She spent time talking to us both after our arrival and each morning at breakfast.

The family is quite proud of the hotel’s history. It was originally built in the early 1800s and has served as a vacation resort for many of the region’s dignitaries and nobles. In more recent times, it has been a popular destination for celebrities, who presumably stay in the royal suite which lists for $1200+ dollars a night, depending on the season. Sandi enjoyed leafing through the photo album in the hotel showing some of the people who stayed there, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Hasselhof and Richard Nixon, amongst others. That’s a scary combination if there ever was one!

The hotel was an enjoyable place to be in the evenings and mornings when we were not out exploring the city.

This is a view of old Salzburg, the city center, from Gaisbergspitze, where Hotel Kobenzl is located. The castle on the hill is Hochensalzburg, one of the most famous sights of the city.

The view from the north side of Gaisbergspitze. At its peak, the mountain is about 3300 feet above sea level. The hotel is located at 2/3 of that height. It’s not the highest in the Salzburg area, but it is one of the best located.

Carissa sitting amongst the wildflowers at the peak.

Yesterday, it happened to CeCe. Carissa asked for ponytails yesterday, and Mommy obliged. CeCe saw this, and decided that if Carissa could have them, she could too.

CeCe brought Mommy the brush and CeCe got her hair in ponytails, just like her big sister.

(Swiped from Autstria Landmarks — I highly recommend a visit to this site. It has some nice 360 degree views of the castle.)

One of the most famous sites in Salzburg is the fortress which was built to protect the city from invasion in 1077 during one of the many disputes between the local kingdom and the Catholic church.

Over the course of 700 years, many additions were made to the fortress, and its main function became to maintain the power of the Prince/Archbishops of the city, who mostly ruled with iron fists, against the decidely (and understandably) rebellious population of the city.

During at least one era, the cannons of the castle were pointed at the city, rather than at locations where invaders might approach.

Today, that history is long forgotten, and the castle has taken on the mythic air that the other great fortresses of Europe have acquired. The realities of their existance have been supplanted by romantic notions of their grandeur.

(I wrote that all by myself. )

Hohensalzburg is located on a high hill in the old city, and connects to the Mönchsburg monastery. The castle exhibits a much more religious character than a place like Heidelberg.

One of the ways to access the grounds is through a railway that runs through the castle’s old supply route. It’s a short but interesting ride, since it runs at about a 45 degree angle.

In the earlier message about our hotel in Salzburg, I posted a picture that shows the castle being dwarfed by my decided higher view. The view from the castle is very impressive in its own right, though.

CeCe and Mommy high above Salzburg.

A view of Mönchsburg.

A view of Altsalzburg and the river.

The tournament is played in two stages that are designed to allow all of the teams to play several games before any elimination occurs.

The first round is the “league play” round, where the 32 teams that enter the tournament are divided into 8 groups of 4. Each team in a group plays every other team and get points for winning or tying. The top 2 teams from each group advance to the second round.

The tournament has now entered the second (and final) stage which is comprised of a single elimination tournament of the 16 top teams from the first round.

Here’s the good news: the USA made the cut and is playing in the second round. They beat Portugal, which was considered an early favorite to win the tournament, tied with South Korea (one of the host countries — it’s always hard to beat the home team), but lost to Poland after giving up 2 goals in the first 5 minutes of play. They still had the second highest point total, so they advanced.

Even better, they won their first game in the second round today, defeating Mexico 2-0. This is great news for a US team that barely made the tournament to begin with.

Our adoptive country is doing pretty well too. Germany also only barely made the finals, but started the first round with a convincing 8-0 victory against Saudi Arabia. Germany easily advanced to the second round.

On Sunday, Germany held off Paraguay to win their first second round game 1-0.

Here’s where it gets complicated: on Friday, Germany and the USA play each other in the round of 8.

Since Korea and Japan are 6 time zones ahead of Germany, the game will be played in the early afternoon German time. In the two previous games that have been held on a weekday, Thomson’s facility here has come to a stand still. The game has been shown on a big screen in the cafeteria, and every employee is invited to come watch.

The same will be offered on Friday. I will have the opportunity to go watch a soccer match between Germany and the USA sitting among hundreds of increasingly rabid German soccer fans.

This should be fun!!!

We have been miserable.

The Germans at work have stopped even trying to pretend that the aren’t about to die from heat stroke. Even my boss wore shorts to work today.

CeCe has been wandering around without a diaper because she has developed a heat rash so bad it is developing scabs.

We bought a fan, but all it does is circulate hot air. Yuck.

Fortunately, the humidity isn’t very high. If it was, I think I would start sleeping in our car, which does have an air-conditioner.

I did discover one store in downtown Villingen that does have air-conditioning. I think I will spend part of my lunch hour tomorrow there too!

According to the weather report, the first possibility of a reprieve will be Friday afternoon or Saturday. I guess we’ll have to tough it out.

(Message on the wall behind the tomb of the ashes of the unknown prisoner)

It is plain, non-descript, even somewhat boring. Time has rendered the place inert, and were it not for a deliberate attempt to remember, the Dachau concentration camp would have surely disappeared.

Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” in reference to Adolf Eichmann, whom she described as a man capable of great evil without thought, whose only passion was to please his masters. There has been much debate about the description of Eichmann this way, but the phrase clearly describes the Dachau camp.

The camp is now a memorial site, with some portions of the camp restored so that one can see the mechanisms of the Nazi “protective custody” program, which allegedly protected political dissenters from physical harm while also protecting the populace of the Reich from subversive ideas.

The approach to the camp is disconcerting. I’m not sure exactly what I expected to see, but it wasn’t this: Dachau is a thriving town, full of manufacturing and commerce, lush and green with nature, alive and modern. I suppose I had always thought that a concentration camp would be established out in the middle of nowhere– somewhere dead, as befitting the place’s purpose.

But the camp is not in the middle of nowhere, it is part of the town. You don’t see it until you are there. Suddenly there are walls and barbed wire and guard towers.
Inside, it is simple, straight-forward, and business-like.

Dachau was not a death camp. Those were all to the east, in Poland. But Dachau was the first concentration camp, built in 1933 at the dawn of the Reich to house political prisoners, then expanded to include Jews and other “undesirables”. Eventually, this would include criminals and the insane who were housed there primarily to make the lives of the other prisoners even worse.

Late in the war, a new building that included a gas chamber was built, but there is no evidence it was ever used for its intended purpose. (The room is still a little unnerving to walk through, however.)

Regardless, about 20% of all of the prisoners that set foot inside Dachau did not leave alive. There were fatal beatings delivered by guards whose only requirement was to maintain order. There were horrific “scientific” experiments carried out on the population. Prisoners were shot to death during real or drummed up escape attempts; Other prisoners committed “suicide”. There were summary executions carried out in the pistol shooting range (target practice!) There was disease and malnutrition and conditions that worsened as the state of the Reich worsened.

And this doesn’t include the atrocities committed against those who somehow managed to survive.

But looking at Dachau now, all of this seems strange and distant. Even the ghosts seem to have abandoned this forsaken place. I am haunted, though, by the realization that this place could have been anywhere. Standing at Dachau, I suddenly saw how easy it was to build such a place– not just physically, but to also build an atmosphere in which such a place could exist.

Dachau is just gravel and stone and wood and steel. Perhaps that is its true message as a memorial. Once men give in to hatred, the road to Dachau is short.

Today, Dauchau is a memorial, and people of many faiths have built places of remembrance. Even these places seem to exist in fear of what Dachau represents and try to blend in as much as possible. A Protestant group has built a stark concrete church which descends beneath the earth to focus on a modern Pieta of Mary holding the lifeless body of Jesus. Catholics have installed a cloister at the edge of the camp, filled with nuns who live in penitent buildings that mimic the style of the camp. A Jewish community has built a highly symbolic structure which descends underground between rails that simulate barbed wire and passes through a heavy iron gate. When you reach the lowest point, you can look up and see light streaming in from a hole beside a stone menorah. In retrospect, I notice that the light of the menorah is not the light at the end of the tunnel– there is no way to reach the light from the bottom. It remains distant, out of touch.

Ultimately, Dachau can only be about remembrance. There is no way to explain what happened there; there is no way to reconcile it; there is no closure for those whose lives it claimed. It is a scar that can only tell us:

Never again.

The Pieta at the Church of Reconciliation

The Cloister at Dachau

The view from the bottom of the Jewish Memorial.

I don’t know when I gave birth to a curly headed blonde!!!  She will hate this later in life so I need to know where these genes came from – I don’t want her blaming me!!! It had to have come from Ken’s side of the family!!!! :)

What happened to the dark straight haired child I gave birth to?

the strawberries are very inexpensive this way. We paid a little less than $0.85 a pound and bought about 3 pounds, plus about $0.40 for the container.

The girls loved it. Carissa got to hold the container, and CeCe kept picking the green berries.

The strawberries themselves are beautiful and sweet. There’s no comparison to fresh fruit. These are much better than the ones you buy at the store.

I’ve been trying to think of ways to make it a little easier and here’s one I tried yesterday:

The advent of the Internet has brought “Internet radio.” A lot of radio broadcasts in the US are available on the Internet. This includes one of Sandi’s favorite stations from Indianapolis, WFMS, “The Country Station.”

As popular as American music is here in Germany, Country music is mostly a niche genre, limited to (ironically enough) big cities.

I connected to the WFMS broadcast last night during dinner and for a few moments, it seemed almost like we were back in Indy. We heard about local events, the local weather, and songs from artists we recognized.

Interestingly, the web broadcast of WFMS does not include local commercials, though. The channel just goes silent during the commercial breaks, and then returns when the WFMS bumper music plays.

Maybe hearing noise from back home helps a little. It certainly makes the world feel like a small world for a few moments.

We have had many disscusions about it and I have begged and pleaded but even my “delicate condition” does not change his mind. He says the he will never be able to live with the wise cracks he will get from everyone he works with both here in Germany and  in Indiana.

The problem, you see, is…it is his boss’s name. Dietmar (pronounced Deetmar).  Ken says he will be forever labled a “suck-up”. I told him in all fairness then… let’s name him (if it is a boy) Dietmar Bruce Atherton. Bruce is Ken’s boss in Indy and we would not want to hurt anyones feelings. What better way to make it to the top of the corperate ladder?

Carissa sat for one artist…

…and Celia sat for another…

…and here are the results…

I think they both turned out good, but it is easy to tell that the girls were sitting for two different artists at the same time. The styles are very different.

We decided to go see the circus on Sunday, just to see what it was like. The girls enjoyed it, as there was a wide selection of animals that paraded through the small ring.

A circus in Germany is usually a family owned and operated business, and these businesses seem to be plentiful. Circus Aldoni tours between March and October, and hits a different town every weekend during that time. They were actually just a few kilometers down the road to the east the previous weekend. This weekend, Circus Bingo is a few kilometers to our south, and next weekend a circus whose name I didn’t catch will be a few kilometers tro the north.

All of this activity makes the circus business difficult. Circus Aldoni had three shows in Niedereschach. At the show we attended on Sunday, I counted approximately 30 paid admissions. At an average admission price of about 7 euros each, that means the gate was about 210 euros. As best as we can tell, the other shows had about the same attendance. If you add in a small amount of revenue generated by concession and the “side shows” (consisting of a petting zoo of the circus animals and horse rides), the total take was about 300 euros, or about 900 total for the 3 shows.

From that amount of money, the whole troupe, plus donkeys, goats, dogs, camels, horses and a elephant have to be taken care of for a week, not to mention paying to transport the equipment to the next site, and paying rent for the place where the circus was set up.

The troupe consisted of 8 people, all of whom were probably related in some way. There was the father of the family, who was the ringmaster and a clown; there was his wife, who ran the ticket booth and played ringmaster while the father was clowning around; the son, who also played a clown and did all of the physical feats; the daughter, who was probably only about 14, seemed to work mostly behind the scenes; two other men who were responsible for set up; and finally, the sound man and the concession operator.

The son appeared to also be in training to take over the circus some day.

The show was enjoyable, in a rustic way. There was no polish to any of the acts; the animals often didn’t perform as expected, the sound man cut off songs at odd times, the concession operator walked around in a dirty undershirt, and the other costumes weren’t much better. On the other hand, the son did perform several feats of strength and balance, there was knife throwing, and the girls loved to see the animals, regardless of what they were doing.

It is a way of life that is fading out, though. Much as it has already faded out in the US, with only one major operator remaining and occasional visits by Cirque d’Soliel. It’s hard for these small acts to keep up with better financed (and plentiful) forms of entertainment. The golden age of the circus has passed.

Still, it was fun to visit, even if the circus is past its prime.

Carissa is still a little sensitive to noise, so she spent the entire first half of the show with her fingers in her ears. By
the way, can you tell who has been playing with the markers?

By the second half, she had gotten over the noise, and was ready to ride the horse by the end of the show.

• How do the get dressed with out arms?
• How do they walk without feet?
• How do they eat without teeth?
• How do the lift things without arms?
• How do they drive?

Funny but the one question I expected to hear from her never comes up. “How can veggies talk?”

Since you both are such big supporters of the show, we would like it if you would address these questions for her. Remember, she thinks everything on TV is for real!

Earlier this week, I was in Paris for a meeting. It was really strange to drive for an hour to an airport, get on a plane for an hour, and then arrive in Paris. Paris is one of those places that is supposed to be far away.

It was a good trip, though. I met up with several people from Indianapolis, including my once and (probably) future manager, and we had a nice dinner and stroll through Paris.

Today I found out that I will be going to Seattle in two weeks. It seems really bizarre to visit the US as a foreign country!!! I haven’t yet finagled a trip to Indianapolis out of the deal yet, but I’m trying.

Sandi and I are working on a plan to bring back a suitcase filled with cooking supplies from the US. I’m a little worried about what will happen if the customs officers open up my suitcase, and the bag of powdered sugar has exploded!

This should be a good opportunity to get some of those things we’ve been missing, though.

This picture is really funny, if you can imagine CeCe saying the words in the title.

This is one of the pictures we took on our trip to Legoland Deutschland. It is also one of those pictures the girls are going to wish someday that we hadn ‘t taken. We plan to use it on CeCe’s high school graduation display that we put up at her open house.

We knew this day would come…CeCe has started watching Disney movies.

Carissa has been watching Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs almost every day now for a month, but until recently, CeCe had shown little interest in it. Carissa runs around the neighborhood, acting out scenes from the movie. But CeCe just played with other toys while the movie was on.

Now, as you can see, she has started to pay attention to the songs and dances. That’s how it starts. The next thing you know, CeCe will be pretending to run through the woods, pausing to put her hands on her cheeks and scream bloody murder, just like Snow White.

Just like big sister.

Oh well, at least Pipsqueak Theater is entertaining.

Yesterday was the day that we had planned to go to the grocery store to stock our new toy. I was not feeling well and so I sent Ken and Carissa by themselves. It seems we still have not quite adjusted to life with small spaces. They came home with so much meat, bread, and ice cream that we again had trouble fitting it all in.

My parents are excited about our new purchase because it means we will now have ice to serve in their drinks. That is of course, if I can locate where I stashed the ice cube trays. (Sorry, David, you are supposed to drink the beer warm! — Ken)

The girls are excited about the freezer because it came with a new toy just for them….a huge box to play in. I made a play house for them out of it and I must say that I can give Martha Stewart a run for her money on penniless crafts. You may not think it is much but it gives me hours of quiet time and my children now think I am a goddess!

As you can see, it has many features for discerning young homedwellers and their many babydolls.

Wayne, are you proud of me?

On the weekend after the fourth of July, after most of you people were done watching fireworks and eating hamburgers grilled in the backyard, we decided to go somewhere that the kids would enjoy.

Legoland Deutschland is actually the fourth Legoland park. There are also parks in Finland, England and California. The one in Germany is brand new and opened at the beginning of March. It was relatively inexpensive also. We spent the whole day there for less than 100 euro, including meals and snacks.

Carissa and CeCe are a little young for most amusement parks, but Legoland is just about right. There were several rides that Carissa could ride, and there were other places that CeCe could enjoy.

Carissa and I did get thrown off of one ride because she was about 1.5 centimeters too short. Carissa was heartbroken, but we found other things to take her mind off of it.

We were a little afraid right after we arrived and Carissa wouldn’t take her fingers out of her ears.

This is the story of our lives right now. CeCe is fearless. Carissa is a little nervous about everything. And yes, those are jackets they are wearing on the 6th of July in Germany. It was raining, too, but that went away later in the day.

Big Lego toys are cool. Big Lego toys causing pile ups are even cooler.

Here’s the ride they wouldn’t let us ride:

At the Kid Power Towers, everyone can show how strong they are. Simply pull yourself up by hauling on the rope, and come down again when you have had enough of the view over the Park.

Minimum size: 120 cm (100 cm if accompanied by an adult)

Minimum age: none

Carissa was about 98.5 centimeters on the day we went to Legoland, and the mean old ride operators wouldn’t let her slip by. They looked to other way on some of the other rides, though.

Carissa got to drive a car. In her words: “I didn’t drive very well, did I!” It’s hard to coordinate a pedal and a steering wheel when you are three. I just hope we’re not going to have similar performance when she’s 16!

Carissa also got to drive a boat. It’s a good thing Daddy was there, because she would still be going in circles otherwise.

CeCe thought the fountains that shot up from the ground were great fun. And the crowd watching her did too. The water would shoot up and she would gasp and laugh.

Of course, the unique attraction of Legoland is the sculptures made from Legos.

In the center of the park is Miniland, which has displays of famous sites throughout central Europe. This is the Berlin Cathedral, heavily damaged during WWII bombing and left mostly unrestored, surrounded by a memorial. The brochure for Legoland says that 25,000 kilograms of Lego bricks were used to build the displays.

Clearly, no trip to Legoland would be complete without a ride on a plastic pig.

We finished the day with a tour through a replica of a Leog manufacturing plant. There were lots of displays showing how the bricks were made, and you get a souvenir brick at the end.

At the end of the tour you can see into the workshop where new displays are being created. That has to be an interesting job– you get paid to do stuff that usually is done by nuts with too much time on their hands! Of course, I guess some people would say that about my job, too, so I’ll shut up now.

Here is where we began to sink….

While at Wal-mart the other day, I actually found Kraft Macaroni and Cheese complete with English packaging. I grabbed a couple of boxes and only slightly glanced at the price. In my excitement to show Ken my wonderful discovery, it failed to register what I was about to do. That night, we knowingly paid $2.44 per box of mac and cheese!! Had I done my homework before our move, I would have had cases shipped with our belongings. Along with those boxes, I would have also shipped Crisco Sticks, vanilla extract, baking powder and soda, campbell’s soup products, and Rice-A-Roni.

I have now changed the rules. Anyone hoping to visit us MUST bring with them some items from that list and anyone who sends boxes of those items to us here, will forever be called “my hero”!!

Here’s a video of CeCe on the slide at the park in Kappel, a small villiage about 4km from our house. There is a petting zoo there, which is why we went, but the kids had more fun in the park.

You shouldn’t need much of a computer to watch it since it’s in very low resolution, but the file is roughly 3Mb in size.

The backgound music is “Es Tanzt Ein Bi-Ba-Butzemann”, a popular German children’s song.

Once upon a time in America, a man hired a struggling brewery to make beer from a recipe that he had learned in Europe. He began to sell the beer in the US, naming the drink after the town from which he had learned the recipe — Budweiser.

At the same time, beer being brewed in that town in Czechloslovakia was also called Budweiser, but this being the late 1800s (when the world was much larger) nobody in either place really knew about the other.

In 1939, after the two firms did discover each other, an agreement was signed that allowed the American company to use the name, partly due to fear on the part of the Czechs — Hitler’s army arrived just days after the agreement was signed.

Then, the Czech republic proceeded to become a backwater of Europe and so did most of it’s businesses…while the American firm proceeded to become very large indeed.

Today, Budweiser and Bud are famous American brands (regardless of what you may think of the taste), but the story behind has gotten more complicated.

The Czech government eventually inherited the local Budweiser name, and has been using it to grow a successful brewing business.

Anheuser-Busch has been less than enthusiastic about this because they have invested a lot of resources into the Budweiser brand and have turned it into a nearly universally recognizable name.

On the other hand, somebody in Czechloslovakia probably used the name first.

It’s not clear that they registered it first, though.

However, since the name refers to a place, the Czechs have been successfully using a defence that the French have used to protect the name “Champagne.” In short, products named after a place that are recognizeably from that place can be protected as “regional” appelations. That is, the Czech Budweiser company can use the name — and legally protect the name — as long as the product was acutally produced in the region. Several international agreements support thisx position– if you accept that Budweiser is only recognizable because of the region from which it originated. That’s not clear either. Personally, I had never heard of the region until I started researching the content of this message.

For Anheuser-Busch, this means that in many European countries, they cannot use the name Budweiser or Bud. Germany is one of those places.

I was only vaguely aware of any of this the other night when I was walking through our local Wal-Mart. I had heard that the Budweiser recipe came from eastern Europe, but that was about all I knew.

So I was a little surprised when I saw a recognizable bottle of “good ole American” Budweiser on one of the endcaps. As I got closer, I noticed the name was different, though. The beer was called “Anheuser Busch B” beer.

But hey, what is a life in Germany without drinking lots of different beers, right? So I picked up a bottle to add to my collection– although the beer was not actually brewed in Germany– it was made in the UK.

After we finished our trip inside the main Wal-Mart store, I took a moment to go into their drink market to see what other beers I could find. I was a little surprised to see a bottle of “Original Budweiser Budvar” on the shelf.

Anheuser-Busch apparently isn’t allowed to use the phrase “Original Budweiser”, although they do use the word “original” when tlaking about their brewing process on the label.

So tonight, I had a comparison taste test.

Here’s a picture of the competitors:

First, I tried the “Original”, then I tried the “copy”. And you know what? I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart except for the color of the bottles. They are very clearly brewed from the same recipe.

The only difference I noted was that the “Original” had a slightly stronger smell.

Oh, and the “Original” only cost 65 cents, versus the 1.05 euro of the “Copy”.

CeCe seemed to prefer to hold and attempt to drink form the brown bottle, but I wouldn’t take that as proving anything. Keep in mind that we’re talking about someone who willingly will try to drink the algae-green, scum-covered water of a stagnant fountain.

Well, OK, maybe that does explain why she likes Budweiser.

In any case, if you have time, you should check out the respective websites. Budweiser Budvar is here[click on EN at the top to read in English], and Anheuser-Busch Budweiser is here. The Budvar site has a highly detailed section called “trademark dispute” in the “about us” section, while the Anheuser-Busch group essentially ignores the whole issue. Even if you go to the main Anheuser-Busch site, the history completely ignores any mention of the other company. If you follow the link to the UK site, there is a FAQ page that says Anheuser-Busch coined the name “Budweiser”, and again no mention of its namesake.

If you know where to look though, there is some interesting information on the web. Here’s an article that outlines Anheuser-Busch’s position– bascially, they used the name first, and the Czech company that uses the name now inherited it from a company that post-dates the creation of Budweiser in the US. Essentially, their claim is that even though the name was used on regional beers, the current Czech company doesn’t hold a legal trademark.

And finally, here’s [sorry, link is dead] a story from the Seattle Times that outlines the overall dispute. It’s short and worth a read.

I finally found some energy to take a new picture of the girls.  Ken said he needed a new one for his desk because CeCe has changed so much.  I think it turned out cute, but boy, was it difficult to take!  Cece did not like to sit there while Rissa messed with her head.

We are all doing well and we hope everyone on that side of the ocean is also.

Sandi

It was even signed at the bottom “mit freundlich grüßen [with friendly greetings], Herr Zipfel”.

“Great,” I said to the gentlemen bearing the letter. “I was expecting this.”

Ok, so that quote doesn’t convey the note of sarcasm that I expressed when I actually said the words. For those of you who didn’t get the gist of the above letter, here’s a simple translation: “You were speeding, and we caught you on camera.”

It’s true. I was, and they did. Here’s what happened:

One evening the previous week, we drove down to the local Wal-mart to do our weekly shopping. The stretch of highway that leads there from Villingen intersects with the Autobahn. When a secondary highway such as this one intersects with the Autobahn, there is often a part of the secondary road that is treated as part of the Autobahn. The Autobahn rules go into effect, and the speeds go up.

On the return trip from Wal-mart, just after the Autobahn section ends, there is a stop light. In the space of about 1 km, the speed limit goes from unlimited to 120km/h to 100km/h to 80km/h to 60km/h to dead stop (if the light is red).

Unbeknownst to us, the local government has recently installed a speed camera next to an overpass, just after the speed limit is reduced to 80. If you pay very close attention, they have added a little warning underneath the speed limit sign that says there may be radar in use in the area. Apparently that’s the compromise that happens in Germany. The government is free to use the cameras, as long as they warn you that they might be in use nearby.

So we were driving merrily along when– FLASH! At first I didn’t know what had happened. The sun was low in the sky, and I thought I had just been surprised by the sun coming out from behind the overpass. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I knew exactly what had happened: The machine was just making sure there was enough light to see my license plate. What I didn’t know was how fast I was going…that was a little worrisome.

I am required to get a German driver’s license since I am a resident now. The last thing I need is to get into trouble over speeding. Plus, it’s a little embarrassing. I haven’t gotten a speeding ticket since about two and a half months after I first got my driver’s license. Even then, I was over the limit in an area where I had missed the speed limit sign. Oddly enough, that’s basically what happened this time– also about two and a half months after we got here!

Here’s the good news, if there is any. 1. The car isn’t registered in my name. Thomson holds the lease. 2. Unless the speeding violation is severe, the government doesn’t even care who got the ticket, as long as it’s paid. 3. It turns out that I wasn’t going that much over the limit.

If you look at the ticket carefully, here’s what it says: we think you were going 88 in an 80 (whew– it could have been much worse). Since our equipment may not be that accurate, we will subtract an assumed amount of error from your speed (5km/h). Thus, we can say with confidence that you were going 3 (!!!) kilometers an hour over the limit.

Effectively, I got busted for doing (in American terms) 52 in a 50.

Once a week or so, someone comes to change the film in the camera. The film is processed, and they send a bill for each of the violations to the owner of the vehicle. That’s how Thomson got the ticket, and how it found its way to me.

So how much did it cost me? Well, here’s the amount that shows on the remittance form on my bill:

Yeah, that’s right, a whopping 10 euro. For that price, it’s a souvenir of our stay in Germany. Hopefully, it will be the only one!

We checked into the hotel at 10:30 PM, having just arrived in Paestum.

Before I start talking about what went wrong, I’d like to point out that the trip was not that bad, it was just long. We deliberately set up our vacation so that we would have our longest driving day on the first day, so the good news is that it is behind us now. Also, the kids were surprisingly good, even though we kept them in the car for 17 hours. We didn’t even have to resort to letting them watch DVDs on the laptop either. We were very impressed.

Our planned route from Germany to Paestum, Italy. The map was in German because our mapping program is in German. Strangely enough, when you buy computer programs in Germany, they are not in English!

[Update: but Google maps is in english, though!]
View Larger Map

Here’s the play-by-play of our trip:

4:45AM: The alarm goes off, just as scheduled. Sandi says she heard the alarm in her dreams before she realized it was really going off. I got up to turn it off, forced myself not to get back into bed, and thus our day started.

5:15AM: We bring the kids down to the car, both of whom wake up. Carissa takes an interest in watching the sunrise, after I point out the light spot in the sky where dawn is starting to happen.

5:30AM: We’re on the road, the adventure begins. Knowing that we would probably face a lot of heavy traffic and uncertain road conditions, it seemed to make sense to go as far as possible before everyone else woke up.

6:10AM: We exit Germany in record time. It helps to be able to put the pedal to the floor when there’s no one blocking your way.

7:00AM: We make our first wrong turn. Both of the kids have gone back to sleep.

7:10AM: We are back on track, but we gave up the time we made up on the Autobahn in Germany.

7:20AM: The road we are supposed to take suddenly ends. We are routed off the road onto a side road with no obvious instructions about how to get back on.

8:30AM: We rejoin the Autobahn 60km south. The side trip was beautiful, but we covered the distance in about twice the time the highway would have taken. We are now 30 minutes behind schedule.

9:30AM: We drive through the 17km long Gotthard Tunnel. Unfortunately, the going is slow through this entire region, and by the time we make it to the border, we are more than an hour behind.

10:15AM: We arrive at the border between Switzerland and Italy. Actually, this is when we arrived at the end of the line waiting to cross the border. When we first came to a complete stop, I could see a sign in the distance that said the border crossing was 7000 meters ahead.

In a scenario that would repeat itself all day, we found that “lines” or “queues” or “basic civility” are somewhat a foreign concept to the Italians. Even worse, Italian civil service personnel don’t seem to have any particular interest in doing their jobs at all, much less in an efficient manner.

Keep in mind that the border crossing between Switzerland and Italy is more or less a formality these days. Both sides keep the operation going because Switzerland has refused so far to join the European Union. Between Germany and Switzerland, for example, there are customs and immigration officials posted at the border, but their job is usually just to wave you through as fast as possible. Between Switzerland and Italy, the procedure is roughly the same—if the Italian border patrol personnel can be bothered to wave their hands.

The person operating the station at the front of the line we were in was reading something that looked like a newspaper, and we had to wait for him to look up before we could proceed, which took about 20 seconds. When you multiply that time by the approximately 40 billion cars that were also trying to cross at that time, you can see that we are lucky that we weren’t still sitting there on the morning I need to return to work.

10:40AM: We (finally) enter Italy. Our mapping program had estimated our arrival at about 9:00. We are already 1 hour and 40 minutes behind schedule.

11:45AM: After passing through Milan unscathed, we hit the first of several major traffic jams outside of Bologne.

1:45PM: We finally pass through Bolonge. We’re now more than 3 hours off schedule.

3:00PM: We stop for lunch at one of the little “Autogrill” rest stops that are common on Italian toll roads. This was actually the second stop we made after the traffic jam, but the first rest stop was so packed with people (who also just survived the traffic jam) that Unfortunately, we can’t figure out how to order lunch from the grill, the cafeteria will take too long, and the native Italians have already developed a knack for pushing around anyone who takes too long. So we give up, buy some snacks, and return to the road, now even further behind.

4:00PM: We stop at an Autogrill rest stop that contains a Burger King. One Whopper meal and 2 orders of Popcorn Chicken later, we are on the road, happier than before. We have an expression in this family whenever we see a McDonald’s or Burger King in Europe: “We’re saved!”

5:30PM: We drive through Rome. This is when we are supposed to be arriving at our destination, but we are still 5 hours away now. We’ve been slowly falling behind at this point, but not due to any particular problems. Traffic is just heavy, and sometimes slow. On the northbound route on the other side of the median, we have seen multiple traffic jams stretching several kilometers each, especially around Florence. I’m not looking forward to driving that route home.

8:45PM: We finally exit the A1 toll road in Napoli. We first entered the road in Milan, received a ticket showing that was our entry point, and then paid a toll of € 38.75 to exit at the other end.

9:15PM: Somewhere near Salerno, it starts to rain. It is dark now, the road we are on seems to be permanently under construction, and Italian drivers are insane. We’ve got the GPS on, though, and we can tell we are making progress in the right direction.

10:00PM: We finally arrive in Paestum, the town where our hotel is located. The GPS is no longer useful since we don’t have an exact location for the hotel. We follow the signs to the hotel, but one of the turns isn’t clear. There are several possible choices for the turn, and all of them seem to lead into, um, bad neighborhoods.

10:30PM: We finally guess the right set of turns and arrive at the Hotel Le Palme.

The major difference between driving on the A1 in northern Italy and on I-65 in southern Indiana was that the dilapidated farmhouses along the road in Italy looked like they might have been commissioned by Emperor Nero—or perhaps one of his predecessors. Beyond that, both locations are flat and full of cornfields.

Of course, as we progressed further south, the landscape changed significantly, and at times reminded us of other places we have been to, but the change to corn fields was the most striking.

The similarity is really eerie. If it wasn’t for the occasional road sign written in Italian, I could have almost convinced myself that I had driven to the United States. I’m pretty sure I even saw a billboard that said the Italian equivalent of “Eat Here, Get Gas.”

[The photos that accompanied this post have been lost. Don't worry, though, we swiped them from a couple of websites.]

On the plus side, the computer is still covered under a warranty, and the warranty is valid internationally. Besides making sure that the laptop could run on 220 volts, the warranty was one of my major criteria for selecting that particular computer in the first place.

The downside is how to get service. Toshiba alledgedly has a number that you can call to coordinate an international warranty issue, including pick-up and delivery of the computer. The number seems to be missing a digit– the area code only has 2 numbers and the main US help line is clueless about what the real number is. Instead, they tell me that I should call the local service center, which is located about 4.5 hours away. And of course, the people who answer the line on the other end when I call only speak German.

Clearly, this is going to be a lot of fun to fix. We were really counting on having the laptop with us when we left for vacation two weeks from now. We were going to use it to entertain the kids and provide emergency map assistance. That’s going to be hard to do now.

We will have internet access while the laptop is down, though. I have set up my work laptop to connect to our DSL modem (it’s how I’m writing this message). So we haven’t gone back to the stone age yet. I don’t know how we would survive!

I’m going to try to keep my voice down so Sandi won’t hear us.

Here’s the story: We took a trip to Munich last Saturday. If you aren’t already aware, Munich is German for “Beer Mecca”. I talked Sandi into going with me to check out one of the many beer gardens. The place we stopped at is called Chinesischer Turm (The Chinese Tower). It’s one of the largest beer gardens in Munich, and it is located in the Englischer Garten area, a large park near the city center. I picked this particular one due to its high rating in The Beer Drinker’s Guide To Munich.

It was rainy and overcast while we were there, but you could clearly see the potential of the place. A German band provides the atmosphere, and on a warm day, this place is packed.

Here’s a picture:

The beer is served in giant mugs that hold an entire liter, and the cost is only between 3-5 euro depending on the beer. Of course, you have to pay a deposit for each of the mugs, but that is quickly refunded at the collection points.

I tried both a Pilsner and a half-liter Hefe-Weizen, and they were both excellent. There’s nothing like a really fresh beer from Munich.

If you are planning a trip to Germany, and you are going to go anywhere near Munich, you have to make a trip to one of these places. If you come to see us, we’ll have to work out a plan to ditch the girls (there’s a lot of other things to see in Munich too, or at least that’s what we can tell them), and then spend the afternoon enjoying this beer garden or one of the other fine establishments in the area.

Of course, I wouldn’t mind going back to this one. After a good afternoon enjoying the garden, we could always make a side trip to the nude sunbathing area only a few hundred meters away. Or so I hear…

Anyway, it seems odd to be taking this vacation. Sandi noticed that we have never been on a vacation that long anywhere. We’re planning to make the most of it, though. Not to rub it in or anything, but after I take these two weeks, I will still have 4 weeks of vacation left this year.

(OK, maybe I am rubbing it in a little!   )

Here’s our plan:

First we will be spending a week in the Napoli region. We have reservations at a hotel on the beach, and the region is home to many other interesting sites. I am in particular interested in visiting Pompeii, the ruins of a village that was destroyed by a volcanic eruption which has fascinated me since I was in first grade. We will probably alternate each day between staying at the beach and seeing the sights.

After that, we will spend three days in Rome. We are staying at a bed-and-breakfast style pension in a district near the heart of Rome. We will let you know how it works out– Rome is a very expensive place to stay, but most pensions cost about half as much as the hotels. We have heard that this is a good way to tour Europe on the cheap, but this will be our first time to try it out.

We will follow that with a few days in Florence (with a side trip to Pisa to see the famous tower) and then we will finish our Italian tour in Venice. Hopefully, it won’t have sunk into the sea completely by then!

Wish us luck– we will be driving the whole trip, and that means riding in the car for a lot of hours with the girls. We have arranged the trip so that the longest trip is on the first day– from here to Napoli. According to our mapping program it will take between 12 and 13 hours to reach our destination. That, of course, assumes that we don’t run into any major traffic delays, and that is not a given when driving in Italy.

Oh well, one way or another it will be quite an adventure!

I’ve been thinking: when we got here in May and it rained for 2 weeks, they told us that was “unusual weather”. When we almost roasted to a crisp at the end of June, they told us that was “unusual weather”. The first two weeks of August, it was almost too cold to go outside with the girls, and they told us that was “unusual weather”. Now there is flooding all over the place, and that is “unusual weather”.

I’m beginning to wonder if the Germans know what the word “unusual” means!!!

BTW, that’s it for now.  We’ll write again in two weeks.  If we’re really lucky, we’ll have enough good material to make a video!

Like any vacation where a lot of touring is done, this one had its ups and downs. We spent a lot of time being lost, some sights were better than others, and sometimes the kids were cranky. Overall, though, it was a good vacation.

It’s strange, but after 2 weeks in Italy, it feels good to be back home in Germany.

We stopped in 4 major locations during our trip: Paestum (near Napoli), Rome (including the Vatican), Florence and Venice, plus we made some side trips to other locations like Capri, Pisa, and Milan.

While we were on the trip, I kept a journal. It’s not finished– we were too busy seeing too many things for me to have much time to write. Over the next several days, I will post the parts of the journal that are finished and try to finish the rest. So far, it amounts to 10 typewritten pages.

We also got some nice pictures, particularly of the girls. I will start cleaning them up so that we can post those along with the journal pages.

More later!

I think it still gives a pretty good idea of the spaciousness of the basilica. The picture is almost a complete 360 degree view.

Our experience so far largely confirms this, especially as we progressed further south towards our destination. In fact, driving in this area of Italy reminds me a lot of driving in certain areas of Mexico. Here are our observations so far:

Italians use their turn signals, but not necessarily to indicate anything in particular. In fact, a lot of Italians seem to use them as a history indicator, as in, “at some point in the past, I made a left turn.” I have never seen so many people forget to turn off their turn signals after executing a turn or lane change. At one point, we were at the bottom of a hill after dark, and looking up at the highway, there appeared to be tens of small yellow fireflies mixed in with the red tail lights.

The white lines that divide between lanes are only suggestions. Not only do they sometimes straddle two lanes deliberately, but sometimes Italian drivers also seem to have a drift problem. They randomly drift into adjacent lanes and back repeatedly. We saw this happen so many times we were beginning to wonder if Italy has laws requiring drunk driving.

Speed limits are only suggestions. This seems directly related to the lack of police presence on the roads. I can’t say that I blame the police—it’s dangerous out there on the roads!

An Italian driver will always pass using the minimum possible clearance. On the highways, this is really mysterious because there is plenty of room to pass, but once we traveled on a side road for a while we understood why, especially when combined with the assumption that lanes are only a suggestion. It’s really an adjustment to the way people have to drive here. The town roads tend to have a lot of traffic jams, so if an Italian is only a few hundred meters from his turn, he will essentially create a third lane in the middle or side of the road, pass people with mere millimeters to spare, and then execute the desired turn—at least in that case it is somewhat understandable if not particularly safe. In other cases, however, the people who are doing are just rude—they are really just driving around the traffic jam in the hopes of butting in somewhere further ahead.

Consider the following situation. You are trying to turn left out of a parking lot into fast moving but heavy traffic in both directions. What do you do? Well, if you are an Italian, you slowly move out into traffic until the near lane can no longer go around you and must stop, then repeat the procedure for the other lane. Actually, in many cases, as soon as you cut off the first lane, you can immediately pull into the far lane, and people will route around you until you get up to speed and merge. We see this happen in groups of three or four, because once one person blocks the lane, other people behind him pull out also. We have even participated in a few, letting the Italians run interference for us.

Headlights are a major form of communication for Italian drivers, especially in the Napoli area. Flashing your headlights is a major way to make your desires known, even if the person you are communicating cannot act on the request. It’s interesting that the headlights are often used for the same messages that people from other countries use the horn for. Here are some example messages:

1.“Get out of my way.” This message is often used on the highway to request that slower moving traffic get out of the high speed lane. The request is usually delivered even if the car involved is passing even slower traffic, and can’t immediately react.
2.“No, I mean it. Get out of my way.” This is a high speed repetition of number 1.
3.“If you don’t get out of my way, I am going to run over you.” By the time this message is delivered, the sender is usually driving so close behind that you can’t see his actual headlights, just the reflections.
4.“Here I come, so don’t even think about pulling into the high speed lane to pass that slow truck.”
5.On a two-lane road: “Hey, I’m going to drive in your lane for a while.”
6.“What did you do that for? Didn’t you see me there? I have the right-of-way.” This message is often delivered to people who turn across a lane on a two-lane road, even if the sender is stuck in a traffic jam.
7.“F#$k you!” Ahh, the classics are always the best.

UPDATE:

After we got back from the trip, I told Martin Kuner, one of the engineers in my department, about our experience and he shared some information that explains some of what the Italians were doing, although it’s still not clear why they think it’s a good idea.

Martin says that unlike most of the rest of the world, the rule in Italy is that drivers never look back.

When you want to execute a turn, you turn on your turn signal, pause a moment, and then go… everyone behind you is responsible for getting out of your way.

Remarkably, the per capita death toll on the roads in Italy is about the same as the US and Germany. I am very surprised to hear this after driving there.

The other thing that Martin told me has to do with parking your car, and probably explains why our bumper got marred up while the car was parked: In Italy, drivers are expected not to set their parking brakes when they park and cars should be left out of gear. The reason for this is that Italy has many more cars than places to park them, so parallel-parked cars are positioned with almost no room between. If one’s parking brake is not set and the car is in neutral, then if the person next to him wants to leave his space, he can wiggle out by(relatively) gently nudging the cars in front and back out of the way. If someone’s parking brake is set, his bumper is likely to get dented.

That’s a “when in Rome” fact that we needed to learn before the trip, because I think that’s what happened to our bumper. Our car developed some nice little dents on the rear bumper one night in that very city while we were parked near the Spanish Steps.

Yes, it’s true. I have to get a German driver’s license (and so will Sandi). It’s been a real pain so far, and I’m not done yet.

Here’s the situation: Germany only allows residents who are not EU citizens to use a foreign driver’s license for 6 month after establishing residency. At the end of that period, you are no longer legally allowed to drive in Germany without a German license.

In addition, Germany issues driver’s licenses on a nation basis, but the US does so at the state level. Germany has a reciprocal license program that allows it to negotiate simple license transfers with other governments, but it requires the other government’s desire and effort to happen. In the case of the US, there are 50 different governments to deal with. A few US states have worked out reciprocal agreements with Germany, including Illinois and Kentucky, but most states have not, including, as you can imagine, Indiana.

If my driver’s license was from Kentucky, essentially all I would have to do is turn in my current license to the German government, and they would issue a German license in its place. Since my license is from Indiana, though, I have to go through almost as much as a new driver would.

We decided that I would be the first one to get a new license for a few reasons. Sandi doesn’t drive much, but I have to get to work 5 days a week. Also, through a loophole in the German laws, Sandi may have up to a year to convert her license. The 6 month limit on using your foreign license only applies if you are going to live in Germany more than a year. Because Sandi doesn’t have a job, the foreign office here only issued her a 1 year residence permit, whereas my permit is for 2 years. So Sandi can file a form that will allow her to continue driving on her Indiana license for another 6 months, if necessary.

In any case, my six month period is over at the end of October, so we have been trying to get all of the pieces in place.

Here’s what it has taken so far:

1. We filed paperwork with a driving school to start the process.
2. We took a first aid course. You have to be certified in first aid by the Red Cross in order to get a driver’s license in Germany. We actually did this before leaving the US, because we already knew about this requirement and wanted to take the course in English!
3. We got eye exams. This is more than an eye chart–it’s a full eye exam by a doctor, including a colorblindness test.
4. We filed paperwork with the local Burgermeister and paid a small fee.
5. We went to the Landratsamt to give them copies of our current licenses.
6. We waited for the Landratsamt to notify our driving school that the paperwork was ready.

Here’s where the real fun begins.

We have to take both a written and a driving test to get our licenses. Since I am going first, Sandi scheduled my written exam for today.

Studying for the test has been difficult because the driver’s manual is only available in German. It’s possible to actually take the test in English, though, and Thomson supplied me with a set of 60 test papers that (supposedly) represent all of the possible exams that are given. It’s a very backwards way to learn driving rules, but it’s all I have.

Over the past week, I have been working through all the tests. Many of the questions are just common sense, on the order of “A ball just rolled out in the street. What do you do? a. Speed up, or b. Slow down and prepare to stop.”

On the other hand, many of them are German common sense, meaning that the rules make sense to people who have been in Germany their whole lives, but maybe not to everyone else.

Then there are some that are just off-the-wall. One of the question is: “An employer can transport up to how many people to work in certain types of trucks?” The answer is 8, but it’s hard to see what value that bit of knowledge is going to have when I’m hurtling down the autobahn at 200kph on a dark and stormy night.

I didn’t feel very well prepared for the test, but a student is allowed to take the exam once a week until he passes. Since I’m on a time limit, it seemed like a good idea to start trying now.

The exams are held at 8AM every Monday at the local TÜV office (the German organization that is responsible for just about everything to do with safety or transportation). I went this morning to take the test.

Each test has 110 points on it, and each question is worth 2 to 5 points. Losing more than nine total points for incorrect answers is a failure. And even though I had been very careful to study all 60 of the tests I was given, there were questions on my actual exam paper that I didn’t remember seeing at all while I was studying–at least 30 points worth of questions.

Although we were told to expect to spend an hour on the test, I finished in 20 minutes, even having checked my answers twice. I think I was probably the first person finished, but I didn’t really understand the test proctor’s instructions, so I wasn’t sure what to do. About 10 minutes later, people started going up to the front to give the proctor the exams. He was grading them on the spot.

I was the 4th person in line, and all three of the people in front of me failed the exam. I was feeling pretty nervous by the time he got to me. When he marked a 3-point answer incorrect on my paper within the first 10 questions (out of 40) I was getting panicky. I had blown one of the common sense questions, so I knew I was in trouble on the technical and memorization questions on the last page. That’s where most of the questions I hadn’t see before were.

As he continued to grade, I was happy to see that I had answered all of the questions about right-of-ways correctly. Those rules are much different than in the US, so it takes some time to adjust and learn them.

Then he started grading the last page… I had spent most of my time during the test looking at these questions. There were a lot of questions I didn’t recognize, and I didn’t have a good frame of reference to answer some of them, either. As I watched nervously, he put the key down next to the answers, and none of them matched. I thought that was it. I would have to come bakc next week to try again. Then he realized the key wasn’t lined up right, and suddenly I had many more right answers.

As it turns out, I didn’t miss a single answer on the last page. I got 107 out of 110 possible points, so I passed the test. Now I can start concentrating on the driving test, which I probably dread even more. I have a meeting with my driving instructor on Wednesday to discuss what is on the test, and whether I should take any driver’s lessons before attempting the test. If parallel parking is on the test, this may take a while. At least I have a month and a half to work with.

By the way, the question about how many people can ride on the truck floor was on my test. So I guess I do know what practical value that bit of knowledge has: it’s worth 3 points!

Here’s a picture of her on her first day wearing the dress that Nana made for her:

Oh, and Cece wants her picture posted too:

She said, “Daddy, I talked to some other kids on the slide and in the green house. The kids call me Wieheissdu, but I told them my name was Carissa.”

For the German-impaired, “Wie heiss du?” means literally, “How are you called?” or “what is your name?”

We opted for the half-board plan at the hotel, meaning that breakfast and dinner are included. We expect to eat out most days for lunch. Breakfast is typical European fare–the so-called continental breakfast-consisting of breads, meat, cheese, cereal, coffee and juice served in a buffet style.

For dinner, we select from a set of limited options. The meal is served in two courses, with an appetizer (usually a pasta dish) followed by a main course. One of the options for the main course is a buffet consisting of (cold) dishes from the local cuisine. There are a lot of interesting choices on the buffet, and we (at least the kids and I) have taken the opportunity to sample many of them.

For example, we have tried dishes like:

Mozzorelle di Bufala. This is a local delicacy that is advertised on nearly every restaurant sign in the area. It is made from buffalo milk and not “low-moisture” like most mozzarella served in the US.  It is very light and fluffy cheese with a very light taste. It is very good with balsamic vinegar.

Pizza rolls. Imagine Jeno’s Pizza Rolls, which are available in almost every frozen food aisle in the US, but made by someone who cares how food tastes.

Cold meat trays, containing proscuitto, pepperoni, salami, and all those other good, fattening, Italian-style meats.

Spiced Glazed Carrots with Parmesan Cheese. This is a really interesting dish that seems like it would be relatively easy to fix.

Random Rice dishes. There are several different rice dishes, each containing a distinct set of vegetables and sometimes meat. All of which have been very tasty, although I can’t really identify what the ingredients in all of them are.

Even more random vegetable dishes. There are all kinds of odd looking vegetable dishes that, with enough Italian spices and cheese, actually taste pretty good.

Garden salad. The buffet includes a salad bar, and some of the toppings are fairly unusual by American standards but very tasty. We have discovered, for example, that CeCe will eat her weight in the vinegar-soaked carrot, onion and bell pepper topping.

Meals are ended with a cappuccino or gelato dish. The kids are really enjoying the ice cream, so much that “eisss-cweem” is CeCe’s favorite new word of the week.

Let’s put it this way: one of our guidebooks says that crime is so well organized that the criminals have formed unions. No joke.

From my impression so far, the word I would use to describe Italy is “chaotic,” and that goes double for the Campania region.

Much of what we know about Europe so far has come from living in Germany. Italy, however, seems like another world entirely. Germans love rules and, in general, follow them. In Italy, it seems like the only rules are whatever you can get away with.

One of the most obvious areas where this difference appears is in terms of the environment. Germany has many laws designed to protect the environment, and everyone lives by them. German cars are inspected each year for compliance with smog laws. Germans live by strict trash and recycling laws. By contrast, in Italy, it seems like every other cars you see is pouring black smoke into the air, and in this region especially, trash seems to stay wherever it falls. Napoli seems to be trapped in a permanent smoggy haze. Mount Vesuvius, the volcano, is barely visible until you are almost at the base. And, no, it’s not because the volcano is spewing ash–Vesuvius has been completely inactive since the 1940s.

What does this mean for Paestum? Well, Paestum seems to suffer from the same problems as many other tropical regions around the world. If you have ever been to the Bahamas or to Cancun, Mexico or even to certain areas of Florida, you have seen Paestum. Every vacant lot is filled with trash. There are construction projects that seem to have been abandoned in the middle. Semi-paved dusty roads lead through dilapidated neighborhoods. Everything has been sun-baked.

And then there are tiny oases such as our hotel where order and beauty have been forced on the background environment, paid for with the travel dollars of tourists from elsewhere, like us.

(Zoom in for a closer look at the site)

We ate at a pretty, little, outdoor restaurant with a pizzeria and then proceeded to the archeological area. We visited the various souvenir shops and then paid the Italian government a princely sum to visit the ruins (€ 12 each)

The ruins are of a city named Poseidonia established in the 6th century BCE by Greeks that were expanding their realm into southern Italy at that time. The city may have had as many as 10,000 residents at various times in its history before falling into disuse in the 4th or5th century CE.  The ruins are home to some of the best preserved examples of Greek architecture anywhere, including Greece. There are several interesting structures to be seen in the archaeological zone: A basilica, a Neptunian temple (for whom the town is named), an amphitheater, and an Athenian temple. There is also a forum, dating from the 1st century BCE when the Roman occupation of the city began and it was renamed “PAESTVM”.

The Neptunian temple is the most fascinating site, built from huge limestone pillars to a formidable size. Built during the 5th century BCE, it easily qualifies as the oldest structure we have seen in Europe, and will likely remain so (actually, the basilica next to the temple may be slightly older, but not by much). There is a considerable amount of restorative work going on at the site, as evidenced by the generous amounts of scaffolding, but it isn’t clear tome what is actually being done.

I was somewhat taken aback to read that the zone represents only a third of the city, although when we followed the still-extant city wall, it was easy to see that much land enclosed by the wall was not part of what we had seen. It turns out that much of the land is privately owned, and this area is virtually unexplored and uncatalogued. It seems odd that the Italian government hasn’t forced the sale of the land, but perhaps there is no “eminent domain” in Italian law.
To make matters worse, some very questionable choices have been made with regard to access to the site. One of the gates through the city walls was destroyed to make room for the road that runs through the center of the ruins, and down the east side of the archaeological zone. In addition, the archaeological museum sits on top of part of the city. No one is certain about what might be buried underneath.

Regardless, the work in the zone continues to make new discoveries. In recent years, relics from even earlier occupations of the land have been discovered, and evidence of humans dating back to the Stone Age has been uncovered. There is still much to be learned at this site. Surprisingly, this turned out to be a good family vacation spot. Carissa and Celia had a great time climbing the rocks and exploring nooks. Carissa was very interested in the idea of an amphitheatre where people would gather to hear and see stories. Sandi and I enjoyed the spectacular view of the ruins, even if it was hot out in the afternoon Italian sun.

We even met a few Americans at the site. A pair of teachers from the Armed Forces School Service was escorting four new student teachers (1 from Detroit, 1 from St. Louis, and 2 from Philadelphia) on atour of the area. Student-teaching in Europe seems like agreat way to start your experience as a teacher.

The Neptunian Temple. Despite the name, no one really knows which god was worshipped in this temple.  Hera and Zeus seem tobe the most likely candidates, but it almost certainly wasn’t Neptune. The temple has been given this name because of the city’s name. Note the scaffolding being used for the restoration effort.

Carissa enjoying her visit by sitting and playing on the stones.   The Neptunian Temple is visible in the background.

The Basilica.

The Athenian Temple.

Cece, also enjoying her day at the ruins.

The one they both like the most is “Die Vogel Hochziet” (on the linked page, click on the melodie link to hear the song). It’s a simple little song called “The Bird Wedding” that has many verses, each about a different flying creature’s contribution to the wedding followed by a chorus that is easy to sing no matter what language you speak– “Fi di ra la la, fi di ra la la, fi di ra la la la la.”

The girls also like songs such as “Summ, Summ, Summ” (pronounced Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, but meaning “Hum, Hum, Hum”) about flying bees, “Hopp, Hopp, Hopp”, about galloping horses, and ”Die Blumelien, Sie Schlaffen” about baby flowers going to sleep at night.

Another favorite is “Es Tanzt Ein Butzemann” which is actually used in a game similar to other circle games like “Duck, Duck, Goose”, where a “boogeyman” in the center wiggles around while the song is sung then throws a small sack over his shoulder at the end. Whomever is hit by the sack becomes the new boogeyman.

We don’t understand the lyrics of the songs at first, but after hearing the song for a while, I usually look up the lyrics and translate them. Last night I did this with one of the girl’s new favorites (and one which I admit is very catchy also) called “Zehn Kleine Negerlein.” It is obviously acounting song, as the chorus counts the ten little Negerlein, and in each of the verses, something happens to one and then there is one less Negerlein to count.

At first I thought the kids on the CD were singing “Egelein”. The suffix “-lein” means “little” in German, so I looked up “Egel” in the dictionary. “Egel” means “leech”, and I had a feeling we were not singing about “ten little leeches”. So I retrieved the CD cover, and saw that the word was actually “Negerlein”.

I was absolutely flabbergasted when I looked up this word: “Negerlein” means “little negro”. It gets worse, too. Here is verse six, as an example:

Here’s a translation:

Clearly, the world of German children’s songs has some unresolved issues. American children’s songs often have pollitically incorrect subjects, too: “Ten Little Indians” comes immediately to mind. I think “Zehn Kleine Negerlein” crosses the line, though.

We won’t be singing this song much anymore. We haven’t broken the bad news to Carissa and CeCe yet and I’m tempted to use our computer to create edited versions of the CDs. Believe me, I will be paying more attention to the songs we sing in the future!

Hopefully, Carissa hasn’t asked to sing this song in Kindergarten yet!

UPDATE:

After I wrote the original message, someone mentioned to me the old story that “Ring Around The Rosie” was about the plague. In fact, I was going to include it in my list of disturbing English children’s songs. When I was researching the other songs in the article, I found a pretty convincing case that “Ring Around The Rosie” is not about the plague, and that it’s current most famous words are only coincidentally associated with the plague.

“Rock-a-bye-baby”, though, is a pretty good example of a nursery rhyme that is used to soothe young children, although it words are anything but soothing.

Still, though, I haven’t thought of any nursery rhymes that have the connotations of the “Zehn Kleine Negerlein”, although I have found references that indicatethis rhyme does exist in an English version. Agatha Cristie’s novel “…And Then There Were None” was apparently originallly titled with the English name of this rhyme (which I won’t repeat here, but you can probably guess), but later reprintings were altered due to complaints.

Even if the rhyme does exist in English, I don’t know it, my kids don’t know it, and I don’t think that you can go to Target or Wal-Mart and buy a kid’s album containing the song. That’s why the existence of the song on two different CDs we have bought here seems even more baffling.

You would think that Germany of all places would have developed a little sensitivity to this issue.

Last Friday, Celia and I had to pick Carissa up from school. We set off walking down the hill, along the brick sidewalks on a beautiful sunny day and took our time getting there. Celia stopped every few minutes to grab a rock, pet a cat, and pick flowers (OK. they were really weeds but I was not going to tell her differently). It was about half way there that I had to stop and pinch myself. Everything seemed so surreal.

This evening it happened again. We went for a walk in downtown Villingen and bought a couple of cups of hot chocolate. There we were, sitting on benches on the cobblestone streets lined with old fashioned street lights, just enjoying the evening. We then headed home and as I watched the girls running along playing “catch” with Daddy, I had to stop, look around, and catch my breath.

I will gladly take the headaches and hard times if it means more moments like these that take my breath away and I have to say……” Oh my gosh, this is my life!”

The other odd policy is that bathing caps are required at the swimming pool. This particular policy is written on one of those signs at the entrance to the pool area that no one ever reads, including us. One of the hotel employees was kind enough to point this out to us, and we have been wearing the stupid little caps since then. One of the shops in town has a box of caps available right next to the cash register. Go figure.

In any case, there are two specific topics I remember from volume ‘P”: One is Pompeii, which is an important archeological site; the other is Pisa, which is home to the famous leaning tower. We have made plans to visit both cities during our Italian vacation.

I’m sure I chose to read the article on Pompeii because of the picture in the World Book. It showed plaster casts of people who died trying to escape the disaster that befell Pompeii one night in 79CE.  The disaster, of course, was an eruption of the nearby volcano Mt. Vesuvius. In my young mind, I had this terrifying vision of people running madly away from lava flows that ran as fast as water before being overtaken and burned to a crisp while they struggled to get away. The lava then encased the entire town, creating a time capsule for future scientists.

That isn’t what happened, but I didn’t know that until a long time later. I don’t know anymore if I misread the article or if the article itself was misleading. The idea of a buried city made a strong impression on me anyway, and when we decided to come to Italy, it was the first place that I wanted to make sure was on the itinerary.

Here’s what modern science really thinks happened at Pompeii:

Sometime during that fateful year, a series of small earthquakes hit the area around Vesuvius. No one in Pompeii really thought much about it because it was a fairly regular occurrence at that time.  On the night of August 24th , 79 CE, Mt. Vesuvius began erupting, spitting fire and smoke into the air. Something very different happened during this eruption, though, that cost the lives of nearly 10,000 people living in Pompeii. The volcano began spewing pumice rocks into the air that were carried by the weather pattern towards Pompeii. Pumice is a very light material, since it is mostly air, but enough of it was falling to cause the collapse of many buildings. It also forced the people of Pompeii to stay inside for fear of being pummeled to death by the stones, and that was the final straw. The air filling the pumice was actually a mixture of toxic gases from the volcano, and most townspeople asphyxiated inside their homes.

Over the next days, wave after wave of ash and pumice pelted the city, eventually burying it under 4 meters of volcanic material.

At the same time, the heat of the volcano met the local water table and caused the sudden formation of a lot of mud on the hills above Herculanium, a nearby city favored by the wealthy as a resort. The resulting mudslide became a tomb that encased that city.

That version of the story is still pretty dramatic, isn’t it?

The Roman Empire took note of the disaster, but eventually decided not to rebuild the town. Near the end of the 17th century, people building a canal in the area noted the presence of buried buildings in the path of their work, but it wasn’t until the end of the 18th century that real work to uncover the city began. For that matter, it was well into the 18th century before the archeologists knew what city they were uncovering. In the course of the following several hundred years, many fascinating discoveries have been made, including the technique that I referred to earlier that allowed researchers to create plaster casts from the remains of the people buried in the city.

Then, on an August day more than 1900 years after the burial of the city, the Atherton family took a trip to visit the ruins of Pompeii.

This was a trip that we made for me, so you can imagine how well the girls liked it: It was hot, and most of what is in Pompeii now looks like piles of rocks near other piles of rocks that may or may not have been put there deliberately. To make matters worse, most of the really interesting relics have been relocated to the National Archeological Museum in Napoli. Oh, and it was hot. Did I say that already? Well, it was. Very.

On the other hand, I found the city fascinating. It’s huge, there are many sites to see, and it is hard to get them all when you are dragging along three hot, reluctant companions.

Finally, I ditched ‘em. I took them to a shady spot in the Great Theater and took off on a whirlwind tour of the city.

Ok, Sandi would like to point out that it was her idea to find the shady spot, because she and the kids were tired of me and my “Let’s-go-look-at-this-pile-of-rubble-over-here” attitude.  Since I’m telling the story, though, I will point out some of the things I was that I thought were fascinating.

First of all, although very few buildings are completely intact, a lot of the artwork and wall paintings have survived. It is absolutely incredible to see homes decorated as they were 2000 years ago.

The same is true for many of the town’s businesses-in many cases, the purpose of the buildings can still be seen. There are bakeries, merchants, cloth makers, taverns, and even bordellos (you should see the paintings on the walls in these places-they are essentially “menus” of services offered!) Many of the larger public spaces are also fairly well preserved. Some of the temples are still beautiful, as are several public gardens.

The Italian preservation efforts are strange and haphazard, though. As I mentioned before, most of the interesting artifacts have been moved to the museum in Napoli, and in some cases, replicas have been put in place. This is completely understandable, considering the number of visitors to Pompeii-the artifacts need to be protected. In other places, access to the painted walls has been closed off, and rooms with floors that are decorated with mosaics are inaccessible. But this protective effort is far from complete: at some locations in the city, visitors are allowed direct access to both of these kinds of treasures.

We only spent about three hours inside the city, and so, I only saw a fraction of the sites. I think I made it to most of the major areas of interest, but it’s clear that a serious explorer could spend more than a day seeing everything the city has to offer.

Oh, and about those plaster casts… we saw only two and only from a distance. Most of them are in areas that are now off-limits to visitors, mainly in storage areas that surround the town. The two we did see were in a storage area used for recent finds at the site. I found a site has some pictures of the plaster casts. I was going to put some of the pictures into this message, but I still found them a little disturbing. Especially the ones of children. If you are so inclined, the pictures are here.

Carissa tries desperately to understand why Daddy cares about these rocks. This picture was taken at the forum.

A statue at the House of the Faun. He’s trying to shield himself from the sweltering heat of the sun, apparently.

Detail of a wall painting in a nobleman’s house.

As you can see, Pompeii is very large. Most of the area we went to is bounded by a triangle at the points I’ve noted here. It would be easy to spend two full days exploring the area.  This picture was captured and editied from the official Pompeii site, run by the archeological organization responsible for it.

Carissa on one of the major town streets.

Over the last week, however, the meeting has taken on renewed urgency. So much so, that today I was told to be on a plane to Seattle this Wednesday morning. Earlier today, I was told to be on the plane, but flights were impossible to get on such short notice.

It’s kind of thrown a wrench into our plans for this week. I was planning to take the driving test on Thursday… My driving instructor (with a little luck) has rescheduled it for tomorrow morning–at 7:30AM. Nothing like a driving test to wake you up in the morning and set the tone for your whole day! He says not to worry– I should pass easily. He’s got a lot more confidence in my parking skills than I do. Plus, he doesn’t have to remember all of the picky little rules under pressure either.

We were also planning to buy a car this week so that we’d have one by the time my parents arrive next week. That’s probably out of the question now, though.

Sandi starts her German class this week and now she has had to find a babysitter. Fortunately, that didn’t prove too difficult.

Even worse, the timing of the trip make it impossible for me to schedule a side trip through Indianapolis, except at great expense.

Oh well, Sandi is still putting together a list of things she wants if I get time to go shopping in Seattle. My plan is to find someplace like a Wal-Mart that is open all night and go there at midnight– just because I can!!!

Tonight, I took Sandi to her German class then the kids and I went to the grocery store. When we came out of the store, the cold drizzling rain we’ve had all day had turned into real, honest-to-goodness snow.

Yeah, that’s right. September 24th is the first snowfall of umm, autumn, which just started 2 days ago– we just missed a summer snow! The leaves on the trees haven’t turned yet.

Fortunately, the ground is still far too warm for the snow to stick, although there will be some accumulation in the nearby mountains.

Originally, I was going to take the test on Thursday, but because of my sudden trip to Seattle, my instructor traded my time slot for one this morning. At 7:30… AM.

We are now late enough in the year that it’s still pretty dark outside here at 7:00. As an added bonus, it was overcast and rainy this morning just to add the right touch to the festivities.

So here’s a piece of advice for anyone who needs to take a driver’s exam: It’s not a good idea to park the wrong way on a one way street at the place where you are supposed to meet the person conducting the driving test.

As you might be able to guess, I did that this morning. In my defense, it was dark, I was the first person there (and no other cars were parked on the street), plus the “do not enter” sign was covered by tree branches.

Fortunately, since the test hadn’t started yet, the tester couldn’t mark points off. It was alo fortunate that since he didn’t speak any English, he didn’t say anything to me about it. My driving instructor told me after the test. If I had known about my mistake before taking the test, I probably would have driven worse than I did.

When it’s dark, this sign is hard to see, especially when you aren’t approaching it straight on.

When you take a driving test in Germany, your driving instructor goes with you and you use his car. This is actually very nice, because you have some familiarity with the car and the instructor acts as your sponsor. He’s not allowed to tell you how to handle situations during the test, but he is useful for other things… My instructor kept the tester occupied with small talk for most of the test!

The start was pretty rough. I must have been more nervous than I thought, because I almost killed the engine pulling out of the parking lot. The tester didn’t seem too concerned. He said, “this is a BMW, not an Opel [like the car I normally drive],” but I could see in the rear view mirror that he was smiling.
The first part of the test wasn’t very hard. I drove on a federal highway (not an autobahn), overtook a few trucks, slowed down at a few interchanges, etc. Nothing too demanding. Part of this route did include the spot where I got cuaght for speeding, though, so I was very careful here… Getting a speeding ticket during your driving exam is probably grounds for failure.

When we returned to town, we drove through an area of mixed city and neighborhood streets. The tester had me back into a parking space between two cars, which I had practiced enough to do perfectly. I have to admit that the German method of teaching students how to park is very effective. I am much better at parking in different situations than I was before I started this.

That’s not to say I am perfect. A few blocks later, I had to parallel park the car. My execution wasn’t quite as good, so my rear right tire hit the curb.

The rules for the parking portion of the test are pretty forgiving, though. You are required to successfully park, but you get a lot of chances. You can make three total attempts starting from the very beginning. During each attempt, you are allowed to make up to three correction manuvers. So you really get nine chances to to it right.

I couldn’t correct my first attempt, but my second one worked without any corrections.

I almost made one fatal error on the test though. One of the cardinal rules in German driving is “right before left”. On many German city streets, and on almost all streets in residential areas, the instersections have no signs indicating who has the right-of-way. In these cases, you are required to yield to traffic approaching from your right. Always. And you must look for that traffic.

The problem is that many of these neighborhoods have small narrow streets and lots of parked cars obscuring your vision. Many times, you can’t see that there is a road on your right until you are crossing it.

The proper behavior for these sorts of areas is to drive slowly and look to the right on a regular basis. When you come to a road on your right hand side, you aren’t required to stop, but you must slow down long enough to look for on-coming traffic.

This method of driving is difficult for an American driver, as we are all used to having every intersection marked. I have had to work very hard at identifying these places and doing the right thing.

During the exam, I almost blew by one of these intersections. If I hadn’t seen my driving instructor tense up, I probably would have. Fortunately, I slowed down in time and looked down the road just before crossing. It is a good thing there wasn’t a car approaching, though–especially one with a driver that was expecting me to follow the rules correctly!

After it was all said and done, though, the driver signed and stamped the paper that said I passed the test. So late this morning, I drove to the Landratsamt and collected my brand new Führerschein.

I feel like I’ve really accomplished something. While it has been a lot of trouble to get the license, in some ways the experience has been worth it. The license means more to me because I had to work for it and I didn’t just trade in my US license.

It’s like being a teenager all over again. I should be hauling a car load of my friends tonight.

You can’t see this in the picture, but the holograms on the license are pretty cool. For example, the little boxes just above the “A” in “Atherton” actually form a little animated car that “drives” across the license as you turn it back and forth.

This was the view that we woke up to this morning! I have to wonder what the heck we are going to do when winter actually rolls around. Carissa however is very excited by this. She says that it is Christmas time and time to get the Christmas music out! Ken even asked me a couple of days ago if it was to early for Christmas music. At first I have to say that I was a bit disappointed that it skipped over fall, but after getting out and taking Rissa to school this morning…..let Christmas begin!! This may be the longest Christmas season we have ever had.

Of course, the alternate routes to the airport were also backed up because they weren’t intended to handle so much traffic–that’s what the Autobahn is for!

Our taxi ride, which should have taken about 40 minutes, actually took about 3 hours. We arrived at the airport shortly after our plane took off and there were no other flights to Seattle today.

After explaining the situation to Microsoft, we have rescheduled the trip for tomorrow. Hopefully, the universe doesn’t have any additional tricks up its sleeve.

We’ll see. I recommended to my colleague who is also making the trip that he should consider driving separately or flying on a different airline if he really wants to go to Seattle.

It has rained and snowed here for several days and today was the first day of nice sunny weather. I expected to find Carissa outside playing but she was not there. I began looking inside for her and she soon emerged from the bathroom. At first I did not recognize her. I thought they had pulled some hideous mud monster out of the swamp. It seems that she HAD been playing outside in the sand pit which was half filled with water from the rains . When the teacher turned her back, Carissa thought it would be fun to jump into the puddle. No amount of protective gear could have saved her clothing. She was covered head to toe in mud and even told me her boots had water in them. I stood starring at her in complete, speechless shock. Part of me was sorry I was witnessing this sight and the other part of me was sorry I did not have a camera to capture it all. As her teacher and I began pulling the pants and boots off of her, 3inches of water and a pound of sand came from her clothing . The teacher bagged up all the gear for me to take home to wash. When we reached the car I had to finish stripping her down and she rode home in the car completely butt naked! I immediately threw her in the shower and washed her. Nothing but brown water came from her hair. Her once white socks are now tan, which, even after washing, is lighter than the chocolate brown color they were. And I just pray her pretty new pink coat with white fur trim comes clean in the wash.

All I can say is that she must have had fun because she smiled the entire time and was so tired that she wanted to go to bed even before eating lunch.

Carissa was happy to see them. We made a little sign like the ones that taxi drivers hold up that said “Atherton” on it. Carissa held it while walking through the airport.

The Munich airport was a lot further away than I thought. Carissa and I left at 6:00, thinking that it would take about two and a half hours to reach the airport. That way, we would arrive about the time Mom and Dad got their bags and made it to customs after their plane arrived at 7:55 in Munich. Unfortunately, it was a little after 9 when we arrived because the ariport was further away than I thought, and then it took us another half-hour to find them.

Carissa and I went to the wrong gate, but it didn’t take too long to realize our mistake.

Mom and Dad were waiting for us, having sailed through customs and retrieved their baggage in record time. It was after 9:30 when we found them.

We aren’t planning to spend any time in Munich during Mom and Dad’s stay, so yesterday was a good time to go to the Dachau concentration camp, which is very near the airport. Dad mad mentioned it as one of the places he wanted to see while he was here.

While we were there, there was a work crew working on the Russian Orthodox memorial, which is a small church of remembrance for the thousands of Russian officers killed by the Nazis at Dachau. The renovation was nearly complete, and the crew was re-installing the cross on top of the building. After they placed the cross, they crew sang a short Russian hymn.

After we left the memorial site, we drove into the old center of Dachau to eat at a small Biergarten I read about in one of our travel guides.

I thought I spoke enough German to at least communicate a food order, but this was a special case. I think the waiter was speaking a Bavarian dialect, or at least had an accent that I didn’t understand very well. In addition, he was the only waiter working at the time, so he was running around like his pants were on fire. Or as Dad said, the waiter was as busy as “a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest.” You get the idea.

When he first approched us for our drink order, we didn’t know what we wanted, so he dropped off a menu and left. When he returned, he took only our drink order, and left again. When he returned with our drinks, we tried to order, but he rushed away too quickly. That wasn’t such a bad deal for us though– we were having a lot of trouble understanding the menu. After that point, everytime he brought someone’s order out of the kitchen, he stopped at our table first, and tried to give it to us. We kept trying to explain that we hadn’t ordered yet, to no avail.

I finally got his attention long enough to give him our order. By that time, we had decided to order something different based on the meal the people at the table next to us. Once we ordered, it didn’t take long for the food to arrive.

We had a dish called “Krustenbrot’n”– at least that’s what the menu board said. It consisted of pork roast in a dark beer sauce and was served with a spiced Knödel, which is somewhat similar to the type of wet dressing that is often served with Thanksgiving dinner. It was really good, and it was a good way to start off Mom and Dad’s trip. Dad and I also had a dark beer brewed in the building right next to the restaurant.

Funny story:

Mom needed to go to the restroom while we were there. She asked how to tell the women’s room from the men’s, and I told her that they would likely be labelled “Herren” for men and “Damen” for women. She left and returned shortly thereafter. By that time, I decided I needed to take my turn in the restroom. So I went into the restaurant, and found the rooms, but they were labelled differently than I expected. It was no big deal, though, because there was a picture of a man on the men’s room, and a picture of a woman on the women’s room. I noticed as I entered that the men’s room consisted of a pissoir (meaning that you pee on the wall and it drains into a trough on thed floor) and a toilet in the back of the pissoir. After I finished, right as I walked to the door, Mom and Carissa (who had decided she needed to go too) came walking in. Mom, after having not seen the words on the door I told her to expect, and having not seen the pictures, had used the men’s room earlier. But hey, there were no urinals, so how was she to know?

On the drive home, the long trip started to catch up with Mom and Dad, plus it was past time for Carissa’s nap. I would hear Carissa and Grandma talking in the back seat, then there would be silence. I would look back and both of them would be asleep. A few minutes later, I hear them talking again. Carissa would say, “I went to sleep just like you, Grandma!” Dad would ask me a question, I would answer, and then he would nod off. We were driving into the sun, and he says that hen you are tired, it’s hard to squint without falling asleep.

I thought it was funny. It was like driving with a carload of talking ground hogs. The groundhogs would pop out of their holes, say something, then disappear again for a while.

Carissa and Papaw at Dachau KZ. As sober as the concentration camp site is, it’s hard not to be happy when your three-year-old grandchild is happy.

Here is the Russian work crew putting the cross back on top of the Russian Orthodox memorial church.

Here comes CeCe to greet us when we arrived in Niedereschach. She was a little unsure of Grandma and Papaw at first, but it didn’t last long.

This is the floor of our house five minutes after my parents arrived. They brought a lot of stuff from the states for us, plus a lot of gifts for the kids from all four of the grandparents. It looked like Christmas morning!

For those of you not used to to such trickery, the sign you see on the side isn’t really there. It sure does represent how we feel when we drive, though.

Our station wagon just will not fit 4 adult and 2 children in car seats. We first thought that we would rent a small car and drive separately to all of the places we planned to visit. After talking to several local car rental places, it just made more sense to rent one big vehicle.

The behemoth you see above is a Ford Transit. It is a 9-passenger van with room for luggage. It has a diesel engine, stands more than 6 feet tall, and drives like a bus.

On American roads, most people would never even notice such a vehicle, but in Europe, this is one BIG vehicle. When we went to Paris, we spent an hour looking for a parking garage that could accept a vehicle more than 2 meters tall. Trust me, it wasn’t easy.

The van slows down badly going up hill, which makes it hard to really make use of the autobahn. It also doesn’t corner very well, so we have to drive most of the smaller roads in this area very slowly, since the roads tend to wind through the valleys.

On the other hand, it is very intimidating to most of the tiny little cars we share the road with. When I turn on the turn signal, the other drivers tend to make way in a hurry.

As I mentioned, we had a lot of fun, and we visited many places during their short visit. I’ll start posting some of the pictures over the next few days.

Yeah, yeah, I know I said the same thing about our trip to Italy. Now that Mom and Dad have gone back home, though, I should have more time to finish up that project too!

Assuming I get done before the baby comes.

One of the many reasons why I haven’t gotten all of the Italian vacation messages posted yet is that we’ve been working on such a video of our vacation. After a lot of work, we finally finished the layout just before my parents arrived for their visit.

We picked out our favorite video clips and pictures from the vacation, set the whole thing to music, and created an 18 minute and 6 second documentary of the trip. Yeah, it’s really that long.

We think it turned out pretty well. The girls like to watch it, especially the parts at the pool and the beach.

[Update, January 9th, 2009]
In order to make the video available on YouTube, I had to split it into 2 pieces. You can watch them embedded here, or you can go directly to youtube to see them. It might be worth your while to go there, since you can choose to view the “high quality” version. The embedded version can only be viewed in youtube’s “standard quality” mode, whereas you can select “high quality” mode if you go to youtube to view it directly.

Imagine a normal two-lane road. Now imagine it without shoulders–one side has a railing, the other is a sheer cliff face. Now imagine that the lane widths are about 30% narrower than you are used to. Furthermore, imagine that the road consists of mostly hairpin turns, sharp inclines, and equally sharp descents. Finally, imagine that the most prominent on-coming traffic is tour buses.

The Amalfi coast is a place filled with amazing visual delights and is a wonderful trip for everyone except the driver, to paraphrase our guidebook.

And that is true. More than once, we were trapped in a comer by one of the tour buses, and working through the difficulties of passing each other made the trip difficult, and even in the best of times with no other traffic the curves were often harrowing . The drive is difficult and hair-raising, but it’s worth it. There are several towns along the coast. Each one developed surrounding one of the many inlets that can be used as safe harbors for fishing boats. These are the towns that you think of when someone says, “Mediterranean-style.” The buildings are beautiful and dangerous as they seem to be one good mudslide away from the water. They are filled with even narrower streets that run in circles. Each town has three or four circular roads that are used to access all of the town. One circle will lead down the hill, past all of the shopping area and the dock. Another will lead up the hill through a residential area. And so on.

Between the towns, tourists are treated to beautiful views of the sea, and equally beautiful views of the local agriculture, which consists largely of groves of lemon trees. The trip takes a long time not because of the distance but because ofthe driving conditions. Needless to say, we had to make a bathroom stop for Carissa. We did so at a restaurant that effectively had valet parking-but there really wasn’t anywhere else to go-so it was hard to go to the restroom without having to eat at the restaurant. After we discovered that we couldn’t just order ice cream, we politely disappeared. We did find some ice cream in the gift shop, so we didn’t feel too bad. Besides, Sandi found a plaque to buy.

There are towns spread throughout the many inlets that can be used as safe harbors for fishing boats. These are the towns that you think of when someone says, “Mediterranean-style.” The buildings are beautiful and dangerous as they seem to be one good mudslide away from the water. They are filled with even narrower streets that run in circles. Each town has three or four circular roads One of the coastal towns. Through the middle of the picture, the road we travelled on is visible. Note that even in town, it takes several exciting twists and turns.

This is a view down the coast from a restaurant we stopped at so that Carissa could take a potty break. At the horizon, just barely visible, is one of the larger islands off the coast. It’s not Capri, but it is close.

An interesting side effect of this (or maybe it’s a consolation prize) is that we have had lots of rainbows during this time. Since a week ago Saturday, I have seen at least 6 different rainbows.

It’s pretty amazing. This morning as I was driving to work, a rainbow appeared over the downtown area of Niedereschach. The rainbow reached right down into the valley and looked like it touched ground right in front of me just down the hill. I almost expected to find a pot of gold in the city center.

Still, a little more time with the sunlight and less with the clouds would be nice.

The tour left at around 7AM. It Was a little difficult to get the girls up at that hour, but we did it anyway. CeCe was a little wild on the bus, but Rissa was pretty quiet.

The bus to the dock at Salerno was pretty slow, and it was complicated by the fact that we stopped at several other hotels to pick up other tourists. The trip back in the evening was worse though, because traffic was really heavy, much worse than it had been in the morning.

Once we arrived in Salerno, we boarded a large passenger boat. Avery crowded passenger boat. The route to Capri from Salerno skims along the south side of the Amalfi coast, where we drove yesterday, and the all of the seats on that side of the boat were already occupied when we boarded.

That didn’t stop us from seeing a lot of the beautiful scenery we saw yesterday from the opposite viewpoint. The trip itself was longer than we expected, and it was almost 11 by the time we disembarked.

The island itself is not very big, but it makes up for its length and width shortcomings by being largely vertical. There are two villages on the island: Capri and Anacapri. When you arrive you can either take a taxi (the only cars on the island) to the villages or you can take the funicular to Capri. We elected to take the funicular.

We bought lunch atone of the many bakeries-it consisted of cold pizza, more or less. We ate while sitting in the middle of one of the “streets”.

Because there are almost no cars on the island, the streets are really just glorified paved walking paths. It makes the walk claustrophobic in some areas, since the buildings are packed so close together, especially near the (very expensive) shopping district.

The really odd thing about Capri though, is that it is hard to actually sight-see. The island is beautiful, but most of the interesting locations are spread far apart. We only saw a fraction of these, partly because we had to drag the girls along, but I don’t think it would have made much difference anyway. We never even made it to Anacapri.

I think to really see Capri, you would need to stay a few days at one of the hotels on the island. It’s very hard to see in one day.

We did manage to see several of the natural wonders on the island and a beautiful garden. And as I mentioned before, there are beautiful views almost any direction you look. We had to return to the boat at5:30PM, which in some ways made the day seem too short, but I don’t think we could have put the girls through much more. It was very hot, and the crowds were often very rude even by Italian standards.

We arrived back at our hotel at9PM, just barely in time to get dinner at the restaurant. Nobody had to be rocked to sleep on this night.

CeCe, enjoying the view.

This is a picture of the Natural Arch. I would have gotten closer to take the picture, but the path I was on sloped down towards the railing. You can’t see it in the picture, but the post near the center of the picture has broken free of the concrete, and another whole section has been replaced by chicken wire. There was a woman here who I thought was going to have a heart attack out of fear that Carissa was going to go through the chicken wire while I was taking the picture.

Carissa is really starting to enjoy colors, and also brings home anew picture for Mommy almost every day.

Here’s today’s picture:

The work shows a strong crosshatch motif, and a wonderful use of color. There is also an underlying emotional thrust with an honesty that only a child can acheive. Jackson Pollock, eat your heart out. Blah, blah, blah, blah….

Of course, there remain some unanswered questions about the authorship of the work. In certain circles, there is a belief that Carissa either did not create the work, or that she had significant help from her classmates. Also, there is something that appears to be a signature in the bottom right corner that doesn’t look like Carissa’s handwriting. (Just kidding.)

In any case, Carissa wanted to make sure that Grandma, Nana, and the Papaws saw it. So here it is.

I then spent the entire day (and I do mean ENTIRE DAY ) chopping, cutting, slicing, and dicing. I chopped carrots, diced celery and onions, cut pumpkins and bread, and even sliced my finger really good. In the end my menu consisted of turkey, sausage stuffing made from fresh bread, carrot salad (carrots, pineapple, raisins, marshmallows, and dressing), oranged cranberries simmered on the stove all day, and corn on the cob (just was not possible to do the favorite T-day veggies here so we made do). I have to admit that the hard work slaving in the kitchen paid off. the dinner turned out very nicely. To top off the wonderful dinner, I even convinced myself to go through the trouble of pumpkin pie made from none other than fresh pumpkin and whipped topping from scratch. (You guessed it…no canned pumpkin or cool whip here!!!) There is however something to be said about pie made completely fresh. “Divine” comes to mind pretty quickly.

I had managed to keep all of this a secret from Ken. I was anticipating the look on his face when he laid eyes on the stuffing and pumpkin pie, and even told Carissa about the excitement of the surprise for daddy. After the cooking was complete we headed out to pick him up from work. Would you believe the first words out of Carissa’s mouth were “daddy we made you a surprise! (whispering now) It is pumpkin pie!!” I could not believe what my ears had just heard! I now know to NEVER trust a 3 year old with secrets.

We sat down to a great meal and worth every labor of pain it took to make. Only sweet potato casserole and family could have made it better. It has been 3 hours since we ate and I am still stuffed beyond imagination.

You know what? SSSHHHH….listen. The pumpkin pie is calling my name. Do you here it calling???? Sorry, gotta go now!

This picture is representative of Carissa’snew semi-realist phase. She’s no longer doing pure abstract art. This is one of a series of portraits of Sadie, Carissa’s soon-expected little sister. Sometimes, these pictures also show Mommy, Daddy, Rissa and CeCe, but for the last week or so, Sadie has been Carissa’s primary muse.

The “naturally curly hair” is always present, because Carissa believes it to be a common feature of babies (such as CeCe). The large eyes with crooked pupils are also ever-present.

Unlike the previous exhibit, the provenance of this work is indisputable, as several witnesses can
vouch for these works being produced by Carissa’s own hand.

Sadie Perkins Atherton was born this morning at 6:50AM local time.

She’s 8 pounds, exactly, and 21 inches.

Here’s here very first, and currently only picture:

We’ll get some more pictures after she’s cleaned up.

She was born at home, without drugs. I’m trying to get Sandi to write about it.

The whole labor, from the first contraction to the birth, was about 2 hours and 15 minutes.