Strolling through Wiesbaden

After leaving the Titanic Exhibition, I took the kids on a walk through Wiesbaden. They ran their hands through the water at the Kochbrunnen....

...which they said was very hot and smelled bad. Here's Emilie showing off some of the healthy minerals in the water.

The kids washed their hands and did sample the water at the Temple.  A German woman took a collapsible cup out of her bag, had her presumably daily intake of hot spring water and chuckled at the Nylund kids' reaction to the taste of it.  Maybe it's the cyanide and arsenic content (no kidding) that gives the water its distinctive flavor.

Why shouldn't bike racks be fun?

The kids chose Subway for lunch. Subway is interesting for a few reasons. One is that they are known to sometimes carry Doritos, which we have never seen anywhere else in Germany -- until just last week when I found one supermarket that carries nacho-flavored ones. Here's another interesting thing. Take a closer look at the menu.

At every Subway we've visited, the menu is in English. I'm assuming there must be German translation somewhere for those people who don't speak English, but it's not displayed on their overhead menu. And this does cause a bit of hesitation when we order our meal.  David will say, "Ich möchte ein....(slipping into American-accented English) 12-inch Teriyaki Chicken sandwich, bitte."  And I always wonder if I should say the English sandwich name with my best German accent.   

No Doritos today, but the kids were very excited to see bottles of root beer in the cooler. We don't find root beer here at all (unless our church is raffling off a case that was bought by someone who has American commissary privileges).

There must be a lot of Americans who come to this Subway to merit the restaurant getting a hold of this elusive beverage. Our German neighbor, Björn, spent a year in Arizona as a exchange student and took a big swig of root beer when someone first offered him a can there. He thought it was going to be a type of actual beer, and so the unexpectedly sweet flavor threw him for a loop. We one day offered him a can (from when Emilie won such a raffle at church) and he told me how terrible that root beer drink was! But he accepted the can, just so he could share this bizarre American root beer with his wife.

James striking a pose with the equally as elusive Dr. Pepper. I have to admit I find Dr. Pepper as bizarre as Björn found the root beer.

One could understandably draw the conclusion that we used to buy root beer, Doritos and Dr. Pepper often in the U.S., miss them terribly and that's why it's such an event when we come across them here.  But that would be wrong.  I never bought Dr. Pepper, rarely bought Doritos and would only buy root beer a few times during the summer.  It's just the novelty of finding something American that we don't usually see here.

It reminds me of how excited we were when we had a visit from my brother Tim our first year here.  He brought along a suitcase loaded with American food, including Kraft mac-n-cheese and many boxes of Poptarts.  The kids were over the moon.  And so the next morning, when I called out, "Who wants Poptarts for breakfast?" I was surprised when no one answered back, "Me, me, me!"  Having so many boxes so readily available in our own house made the desire for Poptarts lessen.  Had we seen Poptarts in a store a week earlier, the kids would have insisted I buy a box and they would have devoured them on the spot.  Having so many boxes in our own cupboard made them no big deal.

You can't pass by a Gummi Bear store without popping in. We were given samples of gummies that looked like mini fried eggs. Each kid was allowed to by a bag of gummies and I bought David a pack of...

...gummi pin-up girls. For the record, there is also gummi muscle men.

We bought so many gummies, we got a free gummi bear bag.