Rock-n-Roll Birthday

We celebrated James' 11th birthday today. His original plan was to stay up until midnight last night to experience the exact moment he turned 11, just like Harry Potter did. But, by 10:00pm, he said he would rather just go to bed.

For lunch, we had James' favorite: Campbell's tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. I bought all the soup bowl/plate sets in Poland last fall while on a pottery shopping trip.

Brownie mix makes a decent birthday cake.

James first gift was his buff he forgot at Mimi and Deeda's house in Massachusetts last Christmas.

New English-language books are worth their weight in gold in our family. Guinness gave James two Gatekeepers books.

Fútbol Club Barcelona is his current favorite soccer team.

Opening the big box

A look of disbelief...

...and pure happiness at opening an electric drumset.

The most important part of the whole drumset. These headphones should save us from being thrown out of the neighborhood.

David getting to work

Thanks to lots of practice on the Rockband video game, James already has some idea of what he's doing. With the electric drum set, you can plug your ipod into the sound system and play along with Green Day.

James should start drum lessons at school soon. He already has the grungy hair style.

Recycling vs. throwing away

Friday is our trash pick up day. For the entire house, we throw away 1 full kitchen bag of trash a week. That's about 1/6 of what we used to throw away back in the States -- even with recycling paper and glass (until it was discontinued).

I did know a few people back in Georgia for whom recycling was too much of a bother and they just threw everything away. Here, you have no choice. Recycling is the law. Refuse to recycle and pay the consequences. And pay you will.

What makes the recycling system work so well is that the German government has made it all so easy for the consumer. Firstly, companies pay fees based on how much packaging they use for their products and how much of it is recyclable. This has been the biggest inspiration for much less, more recyclable packaging.

There are recycling receptacles in two spots a five-minute walk from our house. That's where we take our glass. We used to also take paper and cardboard there, but we have recently been provided with a large paper bin on wheels that is put out once a month for collection. We put paper, cardboard, magazines, glossy flyers and wrapping paper in it.

People often compost their vegetable and fruit scraps, cutting down even more on the amount of trash. In addition, you can arrange to have the city pick up bulk trash (furniture for example) and broken electronics on designated days, free of charge. Return plastic soda/mineral water bottles to the store and a significant deposit will be handed back to you.

And then, there is the the Gelbe Sack.

The Gelbe Sack, or yellow bag, is for virtually all of the rest of your packaging: plastic containers, aluminum cans, "composite" beverage cartons (cardboard-ish with a waxy coating), plastic food wrapping, metal spray cans, Styrofoam, etc. To make things just a bit easier, you are not expected to wash out what you put in the Gelbe Sack and you get the Sacks free of charge at the town hall. We usually put out 4 bags for the bi-monthly pick up.

As an example of how we recycle, say you finish a box of cereal. Break down the box, throw it in the paper/cardboard bin and then put the plastic bag that was inside the box into the Gelbe Sack.

Finish a bag of pretzels, chips or grapes. Just throw the bag into the Gelbe Sack.

Suppose you just bought a vegetable/rice steamer at the store (guilty). Break down the box, throw it in the paper/cardboard bin, put the styrofoam and plastic bags the directions and pieces of the steamer came in into the Gelbe Sack.

You make a sandwich and used up the last of the mayo, cheese and bread. Throw the bread bag, metal twisties from the bag, cheese container and the lid to the mayo into the Gelbe Sack. Wash out the mayo jar and walk it to the recycling receptacle.

You haven't thrown anything away.

Here's a trickier one. You ordered pizza from the local pizzeria. The pizza box has grease on the bottom. You're not supposed to recycle soiled paper/cardboard. Rip out the soiled section, throw it away, but recycle the rest.

We were intimidated by it all when we first moved here. Receiving a 20-page recycling instruction booklet from our relocation agent just served to confuse even more. Now, it's all old hat.

More Grocery Finds

Thursdays is food shopping day for me and I made a point of picking up a few items that have made an impression on us over the last few years.

The name of these ice cream treats brings a smile to our faces. For those of you who live outside of New England, bum is the New England equivalent of the more common word butt. The ice cream in the middle is just a generic vanilla-cherry ice cream, but the coating tastes like cherry children's Tylenol. The stick in the middle is a plastic wrapped rolled gum stick. Only Emilie likes these treats.

These treats are what many kids bring to school to share with their classmates on their birthday. They are large chocolate-covered marshmallows with a thin waffle cone bottom. I'll let you make up your own jokes about the brand name. But I will add that that name is a big improvement over the older common name for the marshmallow treat "Negro's Kiss." That name was finally changed in the 1980s to "Chocolate Kiss."

These tic-tac mints are herb-flavored. There's nothing that says fresh breath like a mint that tastes like grass. Seriously, they taste like minty grass.

We love our windows!

We love our German windows and wish we could bring them home to the U.S. with us. For all we know, they are sold in the U.S., but we had never seen such a system before moving here. These are our dining room windows. They are heavy-duty, two-paned windows set in a thick metal frame.

Turning the handle up halfway allows you to completely open the window. This makes washing the windows very easy. I wish I could say it has inspired me to the wash the windows more often but...well...anyway, when I finally get around to washing the windows, it's much more easily accomplished than when we lived in the U.S.

Turn the handle all the way up and you can tilt or kippen the windows to allow a refreshing breeze to circulate indoors. We don't have air conditioning (most Germans don't) so our windows are often kept tilted. Our big glass doors going out to the patio work the same way.

Almost all windows have rolladen or outside shades. These are either electronic and work with a switch, or manual as these kitchen windows are. Pull the fabric belt on the left side of the window to raise the shades or loosen the belt to lower them. Stop just shy of lowering them completely and the shades allow in a bit of light.

Lower them all the way and no light whatsoever creeps into the room. These shades eliminate the need to have venetian blinds, with all their dust and broken slats. When all the rolladen are down at night, you feel safe and secure inside your house of armor. And in the morning, you can hear everyone up and down the street raising their rolladen to greet the new day.

But have you noticed what's missing? Especially in light of the fact that Germans don't have air conditioning and need to leave their windows open to cool the house?

Our first few weeks here, we noticed several times a week that Emilie and Rebecca were getting bitten by a bug or bugs of some kind. The critters would leave dozens of dime- to quarter- sized bites all over the girls' tender skin. One bite on Rebecca's eyelid our first month here landed her in the emergency room when her eyelid swelled up and she couldn't open her eye. Once fall came, the bites stopped.

But it's summer again and the bugs are back. We thought the culprits were the little-bodied, long-legged spiders we see around the house, but our pediatrician thought they were more likely mosquitoes. The bites don't itch, but mosquitoes could very well be different here.

Emilie and Becca seem to get bit so much more than anyone else and we think it's because their bedroom window is the only one to look out to the back of the house, past which there are acres of fields, horses and a stream. No doubt the home of many bugs.

They needed a screen for their window. People here just survive without screens. The morning last month that I counted 17 quarter-sized bites on Rebecca and was too embarrassed to have her go to Kindergarten in shorts was the day David decided to put a screen on their window.

This is the only screen available -- a velcro screen. There is no slot in the window framing for a screen. David climbed to the tippy top of our extendable ladder and cut-to-fit a flimsy screen that he velcro-ed to a strip he had already adhered to the wall around the window.

Here is that screen just a few short weeks later. We're praying that autumn comes soon.

A Star is Born

A teacher at Becca's Kindergarten surprised me today with this newspaper article. The Kindergarten has been participating in a special exercise program this year, where all the kids were tested in different areas to check on their physical capabilities and a few weeks ago, special designs were painted on the school playground. The kids do activities on the designs (following patterns, jumping from spot to spot, etc.) to encourage their physical development.

The local edition edition of the Frankfurter Neue Presse published an article about the playground, with a photo featuring Rebecca (she's the smiley kid).

And with today's technology, the photo is also on the newspaper's internet site. As a few people mentioned, "You need to come all the way to Germany to have your daughter's picture in the paper!"

Monster Truck Stunt Show

Signs have been posted all over town for the past few weeks advertising a Monster Truck Stunt Show in the parking lot of the local Toom (Home Depot-ish) store. The ad featured the word "USA" and I naively thought that this might be an official American production. Micaela, Emilie and Rebecca were not interested in going with James, David and me.

Checking out the Car Killer, one of the two monster trucks, before the show

We took our seats in the rickety wooden stands and watched as performers warmed up. I took particular interest in the two young kids driving around on their little ATVs, including this 8-year old sporting kein helmet. I'm a bit of a stickler on helmets and and question people taking what I deem to be "unnecessary risks." In retrospect, I should not have attended this show. David said, "I doubt they'll have 4- and 8-year olds doing stunts on ATVs."

Another performer warming up

Here's the finale of the opening act -- the 4-year old ATV driver jumping over someone. I want to go on record as saying I do not condone this and I do believe it could give kids bad ideas. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

The 8-year old then did his thing...

...which ended with a jump through fire.

At that point, the host introduced the kids and the other members of the show and we realized this was a modern-day circus family. Many of the performers had the same last name and a young girl, who looked like the boys, had taken our tickets at the entrance and later on passed around a motorcycle helmet collecting money "to cover their health insurance." The woman working the ticket booth was probably the matriarch. These young boys were learning the family business. Would I have felt so negative about their participation in the show if they were swinging from a trapeze or standing on a trotting horse? Probably not. It made me feel a teensy bit better.

Since we have lived here, we have seen 3 small family-run circuses set up their big top in the field behind our street. In fact, about 10 years ago, our neighbors woke up one morning to find in their backyard a camel who had escaped from his circus pen. We haven't been able to attend any of those performances so far, as we were always heading out of town right when they arrived, but we're keeping our eyes out for the next circus. This stunt show would have to do for the moment.

Motorcycle jump over a few colleagues...

...and through fire. This kid looked like he couldn't have been more than 15 years old.

The host did impressive manoeuvres in this BMW, but being less than 20 feet from a speeding, spinning car made me uneasy. Some people did move out of the front row, so I wasn't the only one.

Note to self: When volunteering to participate in an ATV stunt, be sure not to wear low, low cut jeans. There were many smirks in the crowd as a good portion of this lady's backside was exposed during the extended wheelie up and down the parking lot.

Two wheeling it

Car surfing

Tailgating

Smashing into and flipping a car

A young man was strapped onto the hood of this car. Right as it approached the burning wood fence, the host threw some flammable liquid onto him so he seemed to explode into flames. Loads of dangerous things to get impressionable kids all fired up (no pun intended).

Another car flipping

Over 5 cars and then...

...over 7.

The two monster trucks drove up and down the parking lot a few times, revved their loud engines, and then put the poor little cars that had been flipped over and smashed up out of their misery.

Final pose

James posing with the crushed cars that fulfilled their destiny

James doing his Bear Grylls imitation again. How long is he going to insist on posing like this?

Spectators leaving the show got into their cars, onto their bikes or scooters, or in this case, onto their tractor for the ride home.