Easter Sunday

We woke up to a snowy Easter morning, too cold for the Easter Bunny to have hidden any goodies outside. The kids hunted for treats inside and found chocolate eggs, chocolate Euros and gummi bears.

Then it was time to pack for our big Spring Break trip. The kids have off two weeks and when we read that all kids under 7 are free at Disneyland Paris until April, we figured this was the right time to go. It should be a 5-hour drive and we plan on staying four days.

I had done some research on Disneyland Paris and felt I had to lower our expectations a bit. It is much smaller than Walt Disney World, with only two parks. Some people have complained that it was rundown, the cast members could be rude and cutting in line was rampant. And alas, we would miss the new smoking ban by one week. We were hoping for the best.

When we left Liederbach, it was cold and the ground was covered in snow. We drove through beautiful mountainous areas that looked like a Christmas card and then blinked, the snow was gone and we entered France. You cross the border and all signs are in French. No transition period in either Germany or France where the signs are in both languages.

Suddenly, the responsibility of dealing with people and reading signs was with me. This whole time we have counted on David to do the translating, but now it would be my turn. The pressure was on and I found that my brain had to work to separate German from French when I was searching for words and phrases.

We drove through beautiful countryside and made it to the outskirts of Paris where we spent the night in a hotel and planned to get up first thing in the morning to hit one of the Disney parks.

Animals

Living outside the city of Frankfurt, we see many farm animals. There are chickens just up the path from our backyard and every morning and evening, two ponies get walked up the street in front of our house to go from their barn to a little pasture. There are larger pastures across the stream from our house where we see several horses. We also have mice, moles and shrews digging holes in our backyard. And you see dogs everywhere, of course.

This week, though a few funny things happened. Driving home from school on Thursday, we turned onto Haingraben and then had to wait for a duck that had wondered into the middle of the street. He waddled around for a bit, then stopped to take a drink out of a puddle, oblivious to our simultaneous impatience and amusement. He finally made his way to the other side of the street and we were able to s-l-o-w-l-y pass by him.

Yesterday, Micaela and I were walking home from the bakery when something caught my eye. On a side street, a woman was gazing into a shop window, as was the large horse at her side. They checked out something on display and then proceeded to walk down the sidewalk, both the lady and her horse, as if he were a dog. No one else around seemed to find this noteworthy. I thought it pretty humorous.

Guinness had his first vet appointment on Friday. Dogs and cats, and probably many other types of animals, need to have a "passport" in Germany, a booklet that lists all information pertaining to vaccines, microchips, addresses, etc. Guinness needs the passport before he can be boarded at a kennel. Looking through all of Guinness' paperwork frustrated the vet and she shook her head, saying, "Why don't they just do passports in America? It is so much easier than trying to figure out all these papers! The passport he will get today will be recognized all through Europe."

Also, his microchip did not scan properly, so he needed a new one. Microchips for pets are mandatory, unless they have a readable tattoo in their ear. But even the tattoo will not be enough in a few years and all pets will need microchips.

Fußballspiel

If you had told me 6 months ago that James would participate in a soccer game for ISF where his teammates would be excited for him to play in his first game and they and the coach would congratulate him at the end for a match well played, I would have told you you were crazy.

You may recall from blog entries from last fall, that James' first few months playing soccer at ISF was one of our toughest trials. An American kid who hasn't played organized soccer in a few years joining a team of European and Asian kids who have been playing avidly their entire lives, it was a recipe for disaster. And a disaster it almost was. The other boys were very hard on James and several times after a particularly difficult practice with his teammates, James questioned whether or not he should quit the team. It was one of the few situations in Germany that made me shed tears and had me asking if moving to Germany was the right decision for our family. We normally would have lectured James on his committment to the team, that winners never quit, etc. In this case, after a few months of such treatment, we felt that if James wanted to quit, it was entirely justified. But he persevered and took it week by week.

At the first game he was selected to play in, the coach realized that the school put James on the wrong team. He needed to be moved up to the next level. "Great," David and I thought. "It's only going to get worse."

It was with great trepidation that James went to his first practice with the new team. What a great surprise to hear how welcoming, supportive and forgiving his new teammates turned out to be. After a few months of practicing with his new team, James' name was put on the roster for today's match with the notation "For good achievement in practice!!!"

Coach giving James a pep talk before the match

Put me in, Coach! I'm ready to play (clap, clap clap) today!



Reflecting during half-time on the 3-0 score


When the whistle blew, ISF had lost by a score of 4-0, but we considered this day a great victory for James.

Rhein-Main-Therme

Our day yesterday was on the busy and cold side, so today we wanted to relax. We have driven by this indoor pool center many times over the last 5 months or so, and the kids always ooh and aah over the cool slides. We have promised them that yes, we would go one day. It seems like it takes us having visitors to finally do these types of things.

This center calls itself a wellness paradise and the website assured us that what awaited us was "excitement and thrills...in this subtropical bathing experience of the world" featuring pools, slides and saunas. As we were getting ready to leave the house, I asked David, "Are there going to be naked people there?" He answered, "I don't think so. Maybe in the saunas though."

After checking in, our first stop was the locker rooms and Hello! Naked people! Naked people! Naked men, naked women and naked children! All over the place in the locker room! We all wore our swimsuits under our clothes, so we didn't need to worry about changing in front of everyone and thankfully, people all wore swimsuits out in the pool area. The kids were not fazed by any of this.


The kids loved the big tube slides that curled around the outside of the building. There were hottubs, fountains, waterfalls, jets, wave pools, lap pools, a little kids' area and, my favorite, an outdoor pool you could swim to. There we were, in below freezing weather, swimming outside.

People were indeed all naked in the all co-ed saunas, but we chose to stay pretty much in the water.


You just went with the flow in this "centrifugal force" pool.


A few nights a month, the center has naked night where you can go au naturel in all the pools.


In the end, the locker rooms did have individual dressing rooms, probably for visiting Americans. We made good use of those.

Limburg and back to Braunfels

We decided that with visitors here, this would be an excellent opportunity to go back to Braunfels Castle and take a tour, as it is open on the weekends. We would first go to the city of Limburg (1 hour away) which has a beautiful Altstadt (Old Town) and make our way back to Braunfels.

We were not counting on roads being closed, however. That one-hour trip to Limburg took over two, but it didn't seem to bother the kids too much. Limburg does have a striking Altstadt.

Apparently, the nursery rhyme about the crooked man who lived in a crooked house has some basis in reality.


No translation needed for this store.

This house is said to be the oldest inhabited half-timbered house in Germany and dates from 1296.

St. Georgs Dom painted in its original colors. The cathedral was consecrated in 1235.

Christophe posing below a 13th century fresco of his patron saint.

After a long drive and a long walk through town, all were hungry. The soda Mezzo Mix is like spetzi -- a mixture of cola and orange soda.

At most traditional German restaurants, a water bowl for your dog is provided, as he or she is most welcome to accompany you for your meal. This is by far the cutest water bowl we have seen.

We made our way back to Braunfels castle where a guide was happy to give us a tour in English.

A count (descended from the original family) and his family live in certain sections of the castle. We noted a trampoline in one corner and a satellite dish on one side of the castle.

Christophe was chosen to unlock the huge wooden door.

Emilie thrilled to see real princess dresses. Except for this one little museum section, photography was not allowed inside the castle. When we finished the tour, the gift shop was already closed, so I could not buy postcards. We surely will return with other visitors one day and then I'll be able to post pictures of the incredible suits of armor and furnishings of the interior.

Canons used to defend the castle and town.

Our guide showing us how far said canons could shoot.

Another great day.

Christophe's here!

James has known his good friend Christophe since they were three years old. Seeing that Christophe's mom is a flight attendant, we thought it entirely appropriate to nag them about coming to visit us. For the past month, James has been counting down the days on the calendar till their visit and finally, this was the weekend.

We picked up Christophe and his mom Jennifer early this morning at the airport and had no plans for the rest of the day, letting them recover from the flight. This didn't stop James and Christophe from heading over to Liederbach's skate park to show each other how good their ollies and kick flips are.

A Day Trip

This week is Ski Week, so the kids have no school. Maybe some year, we'll actually go skiiing.

David took the day off today so we could do a day trip. We have felt that, for the kids at least, the last few months have been mundane and that a day trip was in order. We decided to drive through the Taunus mountains and visit a castle and a few little towns. The drive only took us an hour, but we didn't count on uncooperative weather and lots of up and down motion. We finally arrived at our first destination, Braunfels, after a stressful ride where we kept driving up and down, and in and out of thick fog and at the end Micaela was horribly carsick, but managed to keep it together till she exited the van.

Braunfels is a privately-owned castle whose oldest sections date from the mid-thirteenth century. It's last renovation was in the 1880s, when many castles were being built in a romantic style.

Alas, the castle is closed on weekdays during Winter, so we plan to come back another day for a tour.



At the foot of the castle is a delightful village, which was virtually deserted. We walked around a bit and had lunch at a café.

Note the pretzel doorknob on the bakery door.

Micaela was still a bit green at this point. The fog gave the area a mysterious quality.

What crime has James committed recently? Where to begin...

Children's revenge.



We learned at the visitor's bureau, that there was a display of China's TerraCotta Army nearby. Somewhere on TV in the last few years, I had seen a report of how a Chinese emperor from 200 B.C. had buried 9,000 terracotta statues of warriors and horses to help him rule another empire in the afterlife. They were discovered in 1974. Well, we saw a centuries-old castle, but to see these statues from over 2,200 years ago would really be impressive.


To be more authentic, Emilie should be holding a small crossbow. The weapons the warriors wielded deteriorated with time, as did the colorful paint they were covered it.

As we walked by the statues, I thought that they seem amazingly un-eroded (is there such a word?) and thought that some of the statues looked like they were carved with power tools. I didn't like being skeptical, but when David asked at the giftshop about the authenticity of the army, we were informed that these were indeed "replicas." Some originals are on tour in London. Talk about feeling duped! We paid a not-so-small amount of Euros to see replicas. Ugh! To make ourselves feel better, we're working on the assumption that some of the smaller, worn-looking statues on display of horses and carriages were authentic.

We made a quick tour of Weilburg-an-der-Lahn's Altstadt.

One older fellow watching us trek through the Altstadt couldn't resist asking us if we indeed had the entire family with us.


We can never resist a playground.


This strange-looking contraption spun around and also see-sawed up and down.
In spite of the white-knuckled drive through fog, a bout with motion sickness, the castle turning out to be closed and paying a significant amount of money to see 2,200 year-old statues that turned out to be replicas, this ended up being a great day.