2009 has come and gone

Ok, I was planning on a "year in review" type blog here today, but realize that is what this blog has been all about from its inception - following our life here in Bonn on a regular basis. So, I will just give a short synopsis of our last few months since I left off in November. A blogging slacker is what I have become, but I now aim to remedy that.

On the 28th of November (what would have been my dad's 75 birthday) we had an American style Thanksgiving celebration at our house, complete with Turkey, mashed potatoes, homemade stuffing and cranberry sauce. We shared our meal with new friends, and topped it off with a homemade walnut pie (no pecans to be found so far). It was so nice to celebrate my favorite holiday far from home.

I have always loved Thanksgiving because I get to see the entire clan of relatives on my dad's side whom I adore, and whom I see far too infrequently. I missed them a lot this year. Thanksgiving is also dear to me because it really is a time to reflect on all that we have to be grateful for, big and small, and celebrate, without material gifts, with those we love. And I have a lot to be thankful for.

Throughout the months of November and December I continued to diligently keep up with my German lessons 3 times a week. Though progress is slow, I am determined to broaden my world here and understand what is going on around me. I had to miss several lessons as both my kids came down with what we suspected to be the H1N1 virus, and I was grateful that I did not even have to think twice about staying home with them or how to manage that. I know that we are very fortunate for that.

The kids both continued to attend their Scout meetings; Noah is very proud of his Boy Bcout achievements and looks great in his uniform! Louise has some very nice friends in her troop, and we ended the year with caroling at a retirement home. It was very sweet to see the girls to do their best to sing carols both in English and German.

We wound up the year with an almost white Christmas. It snowed just before and after so the kids said it could count. We celebrated Christmas with Olof's sister Sara and her family who made the long drive from Sweden. We thoroughly enjoyed their visit and are so thankful we found a house that could house visitors so well.

Noah turned 10 on the 29th and we had an engineering sort of birthday here with a few of his friends. Building catapults to send candy flying and shooting rockets in the freezing backyard were a hit.

Finally we ended the year in Sweden. We drove the 900 or so kilometers (yes I think in kilometers now, but am not too quick on calculating to miles so bear with me) to ring in the new year in Halmstad. It was a great time for all of us, though I think the highlight was when Uncle Martin, who "has great ideas but not so smart" (according to Noah) set the snowman on fire and it burned for hours (thats how cold it was folks)!

We headed back to Bonn only to hit a snowstorm of proportions even Olof was amazed at, and it took us almost 15 hours to get home. Louise questioned what I meant when I said we were going home, so it is still growing on us that we live here.

We have been in Bonn for 6 months now and I think we are feeling pretty settled. There are things we miss for sure, mostly friends and mexican food, but we have gained a huge cultural windfall and closeness to Olof's family instead.

I am not sure if I can promise to be a better blogger in 2010. I have been corrupted by Facebook and think often in one-line status updates, but every once in a while I might be able to fill in with some more substance on our life here.

If you really want to know what is going on with the Byströms in Bonn however, I suggest that you come visit!

Seeing is believing

We believe in Santa Claus in our house.

Who doesn't love the idea of a magical man flying through the night bringing gifts? I think there is something wonderful about keeping magic alive for as long as possible. The world can be so grey without it. Even my nine year old, who can spew facts on a variety of random subjects and is so reality based that non-fiction books are better than candy, loves the magic of Santa. But our magical world was threatened this weekend when Sinterklaas came to town.

We happened to be in Amsterdam the weekend that Sinterklaas, the Dutch St. Nicholas, rode into town on his white horse. According to my daughter, this Sinterklaas must be the father of Santa. And in fact he is. The origins of the American Santa Claus can be traced back to the Dutch settlers, who brought stories of Sinterklaas and his magic.

I was worried that the similarity of the two men, the long white beard, the red clothes, the gift bringing, would cause my children to wonder about the validity of our own Santa Claus. But I had not need to fear, the love of magic is much stronger than that.

The event itself was pretty magical. A long parade of costumed characters with blackened faces, wearing curly black wigs and colorful clothes filled the streets. These Zwarte Piets or Black Peters danced around the streets handing out candy and spiced cookies. Everywhere kids were calling out to Piet to give them candy and to take their wishes to Sinterklaas.

Our plans of going to Amsterdam luckily coincided with this event. Otherwise, our goal with the trip was to show this beautiful city to the kids, see a few Rembrants at the National museum, go to the Anne Frank house, and visit a very dear friend and her family.

We amazingly did it all, and more, and the kids enthusiastically walked for miles and miles in this most beautiful city that is so very easy to lose oneself in.

I love Amsterdam every time I visit it. I could probably walk around the same block five or six times and not really realize it, since I am never looking in the same place. The houses are narrow and crooked and seem to be about to fall into a canal any moment. It is cozy and dynamic at the same time. And seems to be the most tolerant place on earth.

It was a good weekend for our family, and magical at that.

Halloween without trick-or-treating, really?

Halloween without candy is like sausage without sauerkraut, or something like that. In other words, according to most children, essential. Well this year we did it. We had no trick-or-treating, no begging for candy, no screaming children at our door demanding more, more, MORE.

It was quiet, peaceful even. And we still had fun.

Apparently Halloween was quite the controversy in our little international school this year. Traditionally the school was American based. As in, established during the occupation of Germany by the allied forces after WWII.

Being American, all traditions American were observed at the school, including Halloween.

This tradition continued even after the wall came down, the government moved from Bonn in West Germany to Berlin, and the occupied forces were no longer necessary. The American school became "International" and the "American compound" (located just across the street from the school), which housed thousands of American troops and civilians in the 1950s, began to fill with UN employees, other foreigners living in transition in Bonn and a few Germans.

The school however retained its traditions. Halloween stuck. Kids had parties in their classrooms and went trick-or-treating at the American compound.

So how did Halloween become controversial? Why take away the parties? Why ban trick-or-trunking? (a fun idea where parents would decorate their cars and hand out candy from the trunks, so no houses would be disturbed with crazy American kids ringing doorbells dressed as vampires and Hannah Montana). Was this a conspiracy to assert Internationalism over Americanism?

Actually nothing so sinister was in play, though I did hear the rumors. But the powers that be questioned why Halloween was still given precedence over Divali or Eid. Or the Czeck St. Wenceslas day or the Swedish St. Lucia for that matter. The possibilities are endless when there are 60 different countries and their holidays to choose from.

Instead the school came up with the crazy idea of focussing on local holidays instead. The German holiday celebrating St. Martin is a lovely tradition that takes place during the first weeks of November, just after Halloween. Kids may even get some candy, or at least a little man made of bread smoking a pipe called a weckerman.

The St. Martin holiday celebrates Martin, the Roman soldier who shared his coat with a beggar who was freezing in a snow storm thus saving his life. Children carry lanterns and sing songs in a parade around local neighborhoods. The parade is usually led by St. Martin on a horse and ends at a huge bonfire. Kids are given treats, parents are treated to warm spiced wine and the day ends with tired, happy families, sans copious amounts of candy.

Of course being American we did it all. Not only did we participate in the beautiful lantern walk for St. Martin, we also celebrated Halloween with the Girl and Boy Scout troops - costumes and all. We also honored our heritage with pumpkin carving and our very own haunted basement with our Swedish cousins who were visiting.

The kids may not have gone trick-or-treating this year, but they did not miss the candy one bit!

Trash

It is 5:00 in the morning. Dark. Cold. I am deep in sleep. And the doorbell rings. Is it a dream? Is it an emergency? Should we ignore it? It rings again, and again. Urgently. Somebody must be in trouble, we have to get up. ("We" means Olof of course).

He stumbles out of bed, into a bathrobe and down the stairs. I wait. It is quiet. Maybe it was a trick and somebody is trying to rob us. But we are in Germany and people are law abiding here, right? Finally, Olof comes straggling up the stairs, chuckling - or is he grumbling?

There was no one there he tells me. Though he caught a fleeting glimpse of man in a reflective vest wandering down the street, pulling out garbage cans from neighboring houses. This was the garbage fairy - the do-gooder citizen who was ringing on our door at an ungodly hour to let us know that we had forgotten to put our trash out!

Well, Germans are nothing if not rule bound. And when it is trash day, don't you forget it. Trash day is not really as easy to remember as it would seem. We were given the schedule for all trash pick-ups for the year when we moved into our house. The trick is to consult it regularly so we do not miss our window of trash collection again. Here there is nothing so simple as "every Wednesday" or even "every other Wednesday", nor do we just have one type of "trash" to look after.

Of course the Germans are to be commended on their recycling programs. Just about everything is sorted and recycled. Very little is actually considered trash actually goes into a landfill.

Plastic and metal go into the yellow container, paper into the blue. Food scraps and green waste into the green bin, and all the rest of the "garbage" goes into the black container. Drink bottles are generally washed and reused. There are standard sizes for beer and soda bottles, and most of these get returned to the drink stores by the case. They are not melted down as in the States. Miscellaneous bottles must be dropped off at separate recycling bins, usually placed near grocery stores.

My kids have become experts on what goes where. Under the sink we have 4 separate bins to sort things, and a very small bag for "trash". It is amazing that our trash can, half the size of what we had in Davis, is only collected twice a month, and is rarely full.

The schedule is very complicated for our black, yellow, blue and green containers. Some are collected twice a month, while others are collected once a month or every 3 to 6 weeks, and some even just twice a year. Since the schedule is not regular, we must consult our little notebook every evening, lest we incur eager bell ringing by our reflective vested friend, whoever he may be.

(Ironically the day I posted this was a black bin trash day, and even though we discussed it the day before, Olof and I both forgot! Luckily the trash fairy came and took our bin to the street for us, yet again)

must_learn_German

For someone who is not fond of pork (ya'all may remember that from previous posts), I just had a very close encounter with a pig stomach. I must learn the language, and quick, or I am going to ingest something disgusting, or deadly.

I was happily planning on making split pea soup to eat for a cold October meal, and thought I would add some flavor with a bit of ham. Well, having never bought ham, I do not have a lot of experience in this department. So, I picked out something that looked smoked, and like a hunk of bacon, and bought it.

I was please with myself for having ventured out of my normal food routine after smelling delicious pea soup at a local pottery fair this weekend. From my Joy of Cooking recipe, I acknowledged the benefits the added flavor of ham added, and thought, "why not, I am in the land of pork after all".

After measuring out the peas and water and putting it all on to boil, I started to add my ham. I decided to pull out my dictionary first to read exactly what kind of ham this was. Well I could guess that rauchen is smoked, but I did not know what geräucherterbauch was. Well, turns out, Bauch is stomach and what I had indeed bought was smoked pork stomach!

This concludes my adventures in pork purchasing and has moved me one more step back into my old vegetarian life. I am sure that there is nothing wrong with pork stomach, but for me, I prefer my pea soup as is. Maybe I will add some onions and call it a day!

Adventuring

My blogging days are not as active lately as we move from the adventure and discovery phase to mundane routine. Not that we have so acclimatized to Germany that it is blasé, oh no, we are still on the road of discovery, the pace has slowed is all.

We have gone from wide eyed tourists, ogling baked goods and testing sausage, to savvy residents finding the best vegetable market and quickest bike route to school. Adventure takes on new meaning.

We did however venture out of town over a weekend to explore the neighboring Ahr valley. It is a narrow wine growing valley with dramatic hills covered in grape vines. Not unlike Napa and Sonoma, and my mom's own little valley, Anderson valley. There were wineries and restaurants around every corner and lots and lots of tourists driving slowly on a sunny Sunday afternoon, taking in the quaintness of every little bend in the road that followed the river.

One of my objectives with the trip, besides seeing beautiful landscape, was to try a very local specialty, onion cake and fresh wine. The onion cake is more like quiche without custard, and it goes very well with the sweet, early press of the white wine grown in the region. The wine was surprisingly good for being sweet, like drinking spiked grape juice with effervescence.

Of course we were obligated to wander along the Ahr, throw some stones and eat ice cream. It seems that along with beer, sausage and coffee ice cream is a required accompaniment to any activity.

There are ice cream shops everywhere, and it is all quite delicious. It is similar to gelato but not as creamy. A special treat is the spaghetti ice cream which comes looking like a plate of spaghetti with strawberry sauce and white chocolate sprinkles. It is a big hit with the kids.

Like all adventures, big or small, one must be prepared to jump off the path and discover something unexpected. Before we even got to our destination and planned onion cake outing, we spotted something glinting through the trees. We had to pull off the road and check it out. The goats greeted us first, but with further investigation we realized we had discovered a luge park - something I had never seen before.

No question, we had to try it. We paired up and each jumped on a small cart on rails that took us up a steep hill. We were then released onto a winding luge track to careen down at our own risk. Of course there are no waivers here, no helmets, no safety belts. Just mom holding kid and laughing at the fun of it all.

Adventures are good for the spirit and necessary for the soul.

Medieval days

Everyone loves a fair, especially when knights and castles are involved. Last weekend we went to a medieval faire at the Burg Satzvey, about an hour away from Bonn. It was complete with a real castle, jugglers, princesses, knights to the rescue and boars head armor.

It took me back to when I was a kid at the Renaissance Faire - complete with dedicated souls who are so possessed to recreate the time period down to eating from handmade bowls and wearing burlap shoes.

There was an abundance of visual stimuli and a bustle of constant medieval activity. Jugglers on tightropes called out to passersby, a real live hawker, with a hawk on his should stopped Noah in his tracks. He HAD to take a picture. There were knights wandering in full battle gear, prisoners being hauled away in wooden neck braces and damsels in fancy gowns and flowing head gear.

Of course music filled the air. There were lutes being played and even a Celtic bagpipe duo, somehow verging on hard rock, complete with a few middle age(s) groupies.

Our first stop had to be at the blacksmith and check out the armor and chain mail. This is of course because I have a son who is determined to learn to one day make his own armor - and I will not be surprised when he does.

The boars head helmet was a huge hit. According to the blacksmith who created it, the knight who consigned this mask rarely wears it. Not because it weighs as much as a small child, but because he does not think it is vicious looking enough to be taken seriously. Note the boar is smiling, and who would be afraid of a smiling boar in a battle? We were able to see the "Boar Knight" in battle later, but alas he chose not to wear the kindly looking mask.

Fortunately we went to this fair with some German friends, who spent a lot of time making sure that we understood what was going on, especially during the impressive show. We anticipated the jousting match, which was the main draw to go to this medieval fair in the first place. Little did we know that it would include a reenactment of a story about the Holy grain, complete with evil knights (in black) kidnapping a beautiful princess. There was an evil stepmother, who tried to poison the Kaiser, and engaged the evil knights to capture the Holy Grail. Of course the valiant German knights (dressed in white) rode through fire, rescued the princess, and saved the Holy Grail! This was quite a story, lasting almost 2 hours, but no one complained.

The day was a full one, and after eating a delicious warm waffle with cream, we made our way in home in the pouring rain. The kids went to bed dreaming of castles, knights princesses and chain mail. Maybe one day they will be the crazy ones leading the reenactment, riding horses and juggling fire.

But the streets are sooo narrow...

Like most Americans I have been driving since I was a teenager - it is a rite of passage to get a license the minute you turn sixteen - and now that I am 40 (or so), I have had a lot of years behind the wheel. However, even with all that experience, I find driving in Germany a challenge.

The drivers here are excellent. There is not a scratch on any car that I have seen, unlike in Paris where it is part of the culture to nose into a parking space, literally pushing other cars out of the way to make space, not minding if a few fenders get bent in the process. Here in Germany on the other hand, if you so much as open your door onto another car, it is considered an accident and must be reported to the police. I have heard that if you do not report it and are caught, your license may be suspended!

This is not actually what makes me uncomfortable. There are three things that are very different here, besides the obvious road signs.

1. The streets are very narrow. Most of the streets in my little home of Davis are as wide as 2 lane highways here. So narrow in fact that when two cars meet it is not uncommon that one of them has to pull aside to let the other car pass. And busses, these behemoths require cars to back up around the corner if they have to turn.

I still have not quite figured out the etiquette on who should pull over, so I just make sure I am well out of anyone's way. I have figured out that if the other driver flashes her lights at you, you should go first.

2. Another challenge for me is the one way streets. Once I have figured out where I am going, I like to make it a straight shot. Streets at home are straight and have the same name until the street ends, unless of course it changes from East to West. Most American cities are also laid out in a grid, making it very easy to find one’s way around.

Here the streets can change from two-way traffic to one-way from one corner to the next, and the street names frequently change. Sometimes the name changes 4 or 5 times before I have arrived at my destination, even mid-block! To add to this there is nothing like a grid here, streets shoot off in all directions and seem to start or end at random.

3. Finally there is a right hand rule that rules the roads. All traffic heeds those coming from the right. There are very few stop signs around so this is vitally important. If a car is coming on your right, it has the right of way. There are very few exceptions to this, so we just slow down at every corner, look to our right and make sure it is clear - bikes and cars alike must observe this. This one is especially tricky for those of us who are directionally challenged and still cannot tell our right from left, but it is survival of the fittest and I shall prevail!

All this makes me eternally grateful that the car we bought happened to have a GPS built into it. It did take some time to figure out how to get it to speak to me in English, but now that she does (Frau Verkauft my kids call her), she is my friend. Except when she says, "Please make a U turn when possible." She says this so often that the kids love to mimic her British accent just to drive me crazy.

Though the roads are narrow and take some negotiation, I am learning my way around. I still prefer to bike when possible, the freedom of biking cannot be praised highly enough. However, there are times when I must get into the car and drive, so drive I do, even if it means making several U-turns before I actually get to my destination.

School days

The kids started school last Monday, and they are hooked. It was no difficult task really, since they had been longing for other kids to play with since early July.

I have to admit I shed a tear or two as I watched them walk off to meet their teachers on orientation day. So much anticipation on all of our parts for this day, made us all a little jittery with excitement and nerves.

When you are so happy in a place, leaving it is much harder. We all love Davis, and we especially love our elementary school, Birch Lane. I say "we" because I feel that I am as involved as the kids are. That may seem a sad statement to some, that I love my kids' school so much, or that I have no life of my own, but that is the truth.

I have been involved in their education since birth, from their days at the co-operative nursery school up until now. And it has been only natural to take an active role in their elementary school, whether it is fundraising, planting a garden with the class, or driving on field trips. I like to be involved.

Now they are in a new school and a new environment altogether, and I feel a little lost. The kids do not.

The school itself could not be better. It is an international school, with 570 kids from over 60 different countries, from ages 5 to 19. The school covers kindergarten through 12th grade and is needless-to-say quite diverse.

The teachers all appear to be enthusiastic, interested, motivated and involved educators, coming from a variety of English speaking countries. I'm sure my kids are going to come home with some kind of mish-mash American/German/British accent when we leave here.

Noah already loves his teacher, who is from the UK, which he explained is not just England mom, you know, Great Britain covers more than that! Ok, so world geography is going to be a natural course and topic of discussion.

Louise has kids from 16 different countries in her class, and the best thing is that kids are kids all around the world, they all like to play! There are 2 other Louises in the 2nd grade as well, (one is Lois actually, but she is French speaking so it is pronounced like Louise - I am told by my daughter, who now wants to learn French so she can play more with Lois).

The school days are long, the kids are in class until 3:20, but they don't seem to mind.

The kids' curriculum is very full. On top of the basics, they have music, art and computer lab as well as PE in a gym twice a week. They wear real gym uniforms and indoor gym shoes - something rather exotic for us.

They also have German lessons everyday, which means that we can help each other with our homework. I too have started taking German, which is good for my brain and my humility. I thought German would be a lot easier for me since I speak Swedish, but they are completely different languages, go figure - like Steve Martin says, "there is a different word for everything!"

Both kids have opted not to do any sports after school this first quarter, since they are a bit overwhelmed by their schedules, and I am all for it. But they are interested in the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts troops on offer, so we are off to check those out tonight.

Really, life is not that different from Davis. We have to rush in the morning to be on time, we bike when we can (if we are not too late in the morning or it is not raining). Play dates are always asked for, friends are fun, school is good, and in not too long I will be volunteering for one too many things again, just like at home.

For now, auf wiedersehen, or Tchuss as the say here.

Everything made it unscathed!

Did I really say stuff is stuff, and we can all get by with a little bit less? Well now we have way more than enough stuff, way too much stuff in fact. And it is not even all that we own, considering we have a large storage unit back in Davis.

What I really want to know is how did we acquire all this stuff and what can we live without?

So as you may have surmised, the awaited container arrived. 68 days after it left Davis! The same container that we watched pull away from our home so long ago, squeezed down our new street on Wednesday morning, right after the kids left for school. This was going to be a good day.

The first item off the truck was my much longed for bed. I cannot express how much I have wanted that bed. We have spent so many weeks bed hopping from what has felt like varying degrees of concrete in different groupings of kids and parents, that my bed looked like the best Christmas gift ever.

I was sure that the bed would not make it up the stairs, but if it did, I was absolutely certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt that the box springs would never follow. Olof said I was just being negative, that I should have faith. I felt I was just being realistic, preparing for the worst. For me this was a lesson in humility and gratitude.

The bed is up, with the box springs, and I am so so grateful for the ingenious and patient German movers. Though they did not speak English and I do not speak German, they knew how much I wanted that bed, and they did it! There is a place in Heaven for those guys.

The day was a steady stream of activity, with 3 moving men methodically going up and down the three flights of stairs, only to break for cigarettes and water. They never hurried, nor shouted nor swore (that I could tell). They laughed when they smoked, then got back to work.

In the meanwhile I was madly unwrapping as many kitchen items as I could, knowing that when the movers were gone, they would leave all the boxes that I had not unpacked, and I did not want to think about disposing of mountains of boxes later.

I did spend a few moments pondering why I had so many cooking utensils and baking pans (I don't even like to bake - no I really don't like making mini-muffins no matter how often I do it). Does a family really need 24 plates? Or Tupperware for freezing food for a year? The answer is no.

We have done without all these things for 68 days, and now I am putting all this excess in boxes to send to those who need it more than I do.

Don't misunderstand, I like my stuff. And most of it we are keeping. In fact we seem to be acquiring more things daily, but the excess is no longer going to be part of our life (at least for now). Keep it simple is my new motto.

Now I just have to figure out the phone and answering machine - so if you call and leave a message, I might not know it for awhile - but now we do actually have a phone so calls are welcome, as are visitors now that we have a few spare bedrooms ready for guests. Almost ready.

Stay tuned tomorrow for details on the first week of school from Noah and Louise.

Happy weekend - we are off to IKEA again to pick up just a few more items...really, just a few.

What makes a home?

I tried to post this from the library in Bad Godesburg, but did not manage very well, so now we are connected from home, oh happy day!

We have moved. Into a very empty house. But it is our home for the time being, and we couldn’t be happier.

We left our little apartment in the center of Bonn on Saturday and moved our multitude of suitcases and plastic bags into our fantastic 6 bedroom house (ok, 5 really, the sixth room we call the lego room, where the kids can build their lego creations, is a very small attic space).

Now we needed something to sleep on and closets and dishes…and lots of other stuff to fill in until our container arrives. So where did we go? Like a good Swedish (American) family we went directly to IKEA. Note here that like ALL stores in Germany, even IKEA is closed on Sundays, so we had one day to outfit ourselves.

We only bought essentials on this trip, along with the promised bunk bed for Louise, but that was plenty. We got our dish pack, our “starter kitchen” essentials and even vanities for the bathrooms - because those are not included in the house.
And the fun continued during the weekend. Being the savvy shoppers that we are, we scouted out the “Craigs-list” equivalent in Germany, and found four second-hand wardrobes (since we have no closets, really no closets, or drawers, or “where do you put the linens”-type spaces).

We also purchased a freezer at the spur of the moment this way (for the meatballs we bought at IKEA only to discover later that we had no freezer!). Figuring out the transport of all these items required a lot of logistics, but we did it.

Now my hands ache from assembling furniture. The kids and I spent most of one day getting Louise’s bed together and assembling wardrobes. We also worked very hard on the trampoline we decided to buy as a special surprise for the kids.

Thankfully Olof came home with the much longed for washing machine a few days later.
Today is day 4 in our house. Noah told me it feels like much longer, and I agree. Being in a more settled state has worked wonders for all of us. The kids have space to escape to when they need it; they can jump on the trampoline and play games out side, or go to their rooms and read. I can cook in my new (very white) kitchen and we are HOME!

There are still a few more days left until our furniture from Davis arrives, but we have learned that it really takes very little to make a house a home. Stuff is stuff, and though it is a comfort to have things from home, we can all get by with a little less.

Playing outside of the of the box

We happened upon a giant camera. That is what the kids called it anyway. There it was, rainbow colored and bigger than life. Big enough to climb inside of and walk around in. Right there in the middle of the park that we go to every day.

It was a kid magnet and we had to check it out of course. Situated right in front of this "camera" was a toy chest full of fun. All for the public use. There were big kids, little kids, grown up kids and babies even digging into this toy chest and playing.

From what I could gather of this public play station that it was somewhat of a living and traveling work of art. Maybe not art, but a public experiment of sorts. Give folks free reign of toys and let them play.

We stayed for hours trying to master a cylindrical toy that we could spin on a string. The aim was to throw the cylinder in the air and catch it again, which none of could really get the hang of, but we sure had fun trying. We also tried out the spinning disks and jump ropes.

What a great idea. Just for fun, bring toys out and let people play. At first you could see the hesitance on the faces of the parents, was this okay to use? Who did these things belong to? As far as I could see there was no one in particular in charge. But the kids never hesitated for a second. See toys, play!

What’s for dinner mom?

It seems like my eternal question is what to feed the kids for dinner. This is not a new question. It was something I grappled with regularly before we left California. Rumor has it that this is something that plagues many of the moms that I know. So there is no reason why it should be any easier in a foreign country. Being in a makeshift kitchen here, with unfamiliar ingredients, it is even more of a challenge to put something delicious and nutritious on the table each night.

I do not really consider myself a housewife, and never really have. But this role has fallen heavily on me in my childrearing years while I have chosen to stay at home and not work full time (for pay). This means, amongst other things, that I am the primary food preparer in the home. Granted I really enjoy cooking. I love strong flavors and creating new foods from scratch. I would even go so far as to call it a hobby.

Unfortunately, my love of cooking has not flourished with having small children, and most of my meal planning consists of a starch, a vegetable and a protein, in forms that kids will eat and love. Read: pasta, salad, maybe chicken or tofu. Not very exciting.

Throughout the years I have spent countless hours appreciating the fact that we have the means to be able to provide food for our family. More than enough food in fact. And I still find it a challenge to create a meal that satisfies my criteria of being healthy and tasty for both children and adults. I recognize that this is an indulgence that I am able to gratify living in the circumstances that we enjoy, be they the U.S or Europe. Not every mother can provide ample and varied calories for her offspring, something that makes my heart ache regularly.

So back to the present, I am still making meals based on the three above named starches – though it is most often pasta, since I have a daughter who could live on pasta alone, and it is always easy to prepare.

If I really wanted to embrace the German culture, however I would be serving potatoes with every meal.

The vegetable selection here is very good, and so far and I am sure I can make just about anything I made at home, but it is different somehow. I miss exchanging dinner ideas with my best friend, and being inspired by her. I miss the farm basket that we subscribed to, and often planned my meals around. In that past life I made more delicious dishes out of kale than I could ever have I imagined for example, and the kids even liked them. Here I am stuck in a rut of tomato based sauces or soups.

I am slowly building up supplies, and can only buy a few supplemental cooking items each day like salt, parsley, oil and garlic. Eventually I will manage to duplicate my rather extensive supply of spices, herbs, condiments and other essentials, and my creativity will return. I am sure of this.

So, what is for dinner tonight? Pasta. Chicken in spinach sauce (that the kids will opt out of no doubt), and salad. At least they always eat salad. Not very interesting, not very German, but food, and plenty of it, so no one goes hungry in this house.

Ah the freedom of a car

Time to move away from public transport and I can hardly wait. Olof and I are reconciled to the fact that we are, quite frankly, car people.

While it is fun and amusing to take buses, trains and even ferries everywhere, and rather efficient most of the time, we are all tired of waiting at bus stops.

Initially we thought we would wait until we moved into our new house to buy a car, since there really is no great need yet, but after what seems like hours spent waiting for buses and trains, we decided the time is now! So we have been tackling the car market.

This has not been as easy as we thought it would.

Olof is no stranger to buying used cars, even buying used cars in Europe. I would almost call it a hobby of his, not the buying per se, but the perusing of what is available. Perhaps even the fantasizing about what to buy could be called a hobby?

Actually the car buying process began while we were still in Davis. Olof spent numerous hours checking out all the German made cars and researching which would be most fun to drive on the autobahn (BMW hands down) vs. which would be the most cost effective (NOT BMW, sorry Olof).

So we thought we were fairly prepared to buy something once we decided the time was right. We settled on getting a VW Passat, not too old, not too new, and looked at all the dealers within 20-50 kilometers radius. There seemed to be a lot to choose from in our price range, pretty easy so far, all thanks to the internet (i.e., my lifeline).

First step, we sent out email inquiries to a few interesting prospects. While in the states this would result in a flood of responses, here we heard nothing back. Ok, so perhaps it was the English that stopped people.

Next we decided to go in person to a dealer whose website showed having several Passats to choose from. If anyone has ever been to a car dealer, used or new, in the States, you know how popular you can feel. Two or three sales guys come rushing at you as soon as you show any interest. Test drive, no problem. Ask questions, no problem. Chit chat, wheel and deal, and you are out the door with a car. So far we have not managed to meet any salespeople at all.

When we got to the dealership, last Saturday, the one guy who was there seemed very uninterested in showing us anything. He told us the salesman was on vacation and may or may not be back the following week. He certainly was not over eager to sell us anything.

After that Olof tackled the market over the phone, calling dealers all around Bonn and beyond. Many of the cars shown on the internet were apparently not actually at the dealership, but "in transport". This did not sound promising.

Because of his persistence, Olof did actually get to test drive a car last week. It seemed great, but we still felt it would be better to at least compare it with one other car live and in person. We ended up having a comical weekend searching out two other vehicles in outer-lying areas of Bonn, with absolutely no results. Though we did make a great trip out of it all, which ended up with a beautiful boat trip on the Rhein from the quaint town of Linz, back to Bonn.

To wrap up this rather mundane blog post, we have decided to go with the one car we have actually physically gotten to sit in, with the confidence that we have done the best we could. As I say more often than not these days, it is all part of the adventure kids…

Since our weekend was much more fun than just searching for a car, the pictures at the top of the page are from our visit to Linz and the tantalizing treats that we indulged in. Note the grim faces on the kids - they were demonstrating how criminals were measured against the wall in medieval times (not convinced by us that the measuring posts were to mark the river levels).

Things kids notice about Germany

1. People talk different
2. there is more public transportation, like buses and trains and street cars
3. it is closer to Sweden
4. there are more icecream stores - and the lemon ice (like sorbet) is the best!
5. you can travel easier to other places in Europe
6. everyone has a dog
7. everyone smokes
8. there are lots of playparks and grassy areas
9. you can buy sausage from street vendors
10. some drinking fountains are left on all day and have very cold water (no water shortage here)
11. the libraries are in German, but they have English books (and now we have a library card, hurray!)
12. there is an outdoor vegetable market in town every day
13. people dress the same as at home
14. garbage trucks are different, the back is left open
15. there is a really good apple drink called "Lift" that is like bubble water and apple juice
16. police sirens sound different, police uniforms are brown not blue and police cars are green and white
17. taxis are cream colored and are usually Mercedes or VW wagons, and they have built in car seats for kids, cool.

Köln or Cologne?

We say Köln now that we are in Germany, but even people who live here say Cologne. I guess it is an honor to this city's long history, dating back to the Romans in 50 AD. But maybe we should say, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium instead?

Köln is only about a 30 minute train ride from Bonn, or 64 minutes by local train, as we found out last week (all part of the adventure kids). It is Germany's 4th largest city and it is where we decided to go last weekend.

We had planned to go to the zoo, but we were stopped by the rain, so we quickly changed gears and made our trip a historical one. Köln is home to northern Europe’s oldest cathedral. It is hard to miss when you arrive in the city, with spires jutting 600 feet into the sky.

I was worried that visiting a church would not appeal to the kids, nor suffice as a replacement for the zoo, but I was dead wrong. The kids at that point were happy to get inside out of the rain, and a huge, old cathedral was a mighty nice diversion.

Giving them free reign of the camera inspired them both to discover interesting details that we might have otherwise missed. Noah in particular loves finding secret doorways, and this curiosity led us to find the staircase to the upper towers.

Ok, it was not so secret, but we would have otherwise missed the best part of our day if Noah had not been seeking out secret passageways. Love the 9 year old sense of what is important, medieval weaponry, escape routes and war strategies (his favorite word right now is portcullis).

Amazingly the kids were totally game to climb the 533 steps to the top of the tower. I am sometimes taken off guard by their enthusiasm, in a very good way.

We climbed a very narrow spiral staircase for what seemed like an eternity. There were no points to stop and take a break until we got to the top, and we had to share the narrow space with the folks on their way down. The air quickly got thick with people smells in that tight space, much to Louise's dismay, but eventually we came to a doorway and we had to explore.

This was the bell tower with its eight massive bells, overseen by a benevolent guard who offered to take our photo. We decided his role was to close off this part of the tower when the bells were going to ring, and protect tourists and their delicate ears.

We still had a few more stairs to climb before we came to the top of the tower, so up we went. When we got to the top we were rewarded with a panoramic view of this ancient city, the Rhein river and beyond. The cool, fresh air on our faces brought everyone joy to be so high and free and alive.

When we came down to earth again we all decided that the this had been better than going to the zoo, which we could visit on another trip to the ancient city of Koln.

Always look on the bright side of life, tra la

It is not always so easy to see the glass half full.

I really wish I had a constant sunny approach to life like some people I know, but I have found it hard to see things brightly these last few days, mainly because of my kids.

Noah and Louise are not particularly happy right now. They are missing their friends deeply. They are tired of living out of their suitcases, without their toys and books to keep them amused. And they long for their own beds! It has been 46 days of "transition" so far (but we are not really counting), and the end is still at least 2 weeks away, if we are lucky (our ship is due to come in on the 13th of August, but we will have to wait for customs to release our household goods, which may take another week after that).

I have to say though, that my kids have been real troopers. When we walked an extra mile or so to the car dealership, just to find it closed, they did not complain. When the rain poured down and we did not have our umbrellas, and we decided to skip the zoo, they happily went to McDonalds instead. Yes, I have resorted to McDonalds as a comfort for them, and will continue to do so as long as necessary.

It is hard to carry the burden of my children's joy, or lack thereof, and keep a smile on my face as we head out the door for another day of exploration. I am trying to keep a "we are camping approach" to it all. Meaning, lots to discover, creating our own fun, but not quite home.

Going out to buy a puzzle and a new book really help sometimes, and apple cake, and our daily ice cream treats are a must.

We did discover a wonderful water park this weekend, only a bus ride away. And even though the icy water took my breath away, I dove in and swam for hours watching my kids laugh and splash, just like at home.

No, we are not quite settled yet, and each day is a little bit different, and not always very fun, but we still manage to remember that we have each other and our adventure is what we make of it.