Wet 'n' Wild 'n' Mostly Cold

Anja finally slept well last night.  Ian was up every few hours.  I would alternate between giving him a show to watch or a bottle to drink.  But his sleep pattern was basically: sleep, bottle, sleep, Bubble Guppies. repeat.  My sleep pattern was slightly different: suspect Ian isn't sleeping, get confirmation, put him down, fall asleep with him screaming for 20 minutes, wake up to suspect Ian isn't sleep, put on Bubble Guppies, repeat.

Susi had a meeting in the morning with the kids and we skipped it entirely.  It seemed more important to try and convince Anja to eat a breakfast than it was to try and get everything out the door any earlier than we did.  The students had a swim-morning planned and we joined them at the "Freibad" which is a nice out-door water park with a few pools, including a children's pool with a small water slide.

It rained.  It rained and it was cold.  Neither of those two weather conditions prevented Anja from having a thoroughly good time in the water.  She loved the slide, loved the foam water balls, the water fountains, everything.  I was just glad I had a hearty breakfast because the chill went straight through me.   Had I slept, I would have probably been in a better mood but cold+wet is not a good equation for me regardless of my treatment by the Sandman.

After swimming, we returned home to concoct a plan for lunch.  Despite the great kindness of our host, we really did not have the necessary items to make a lunch.  Nor did we have time to run to a major grocery store like Real.  Instead Susi and I went in our little VW van down to the Aldi-esque grocery store in town called "Lidl."  Lidl is a fascinating little grocery store.  Featuring every item you could really desire in a grocery store, including but not limited to:

 - Fashion! Well, "clothes in a bag," but they did have "New Fashion Denim Skirts" (translated) and "Trendy T-shirts" (literally, this was on the bag).

 - Power tools!  A cordless electric drill was available for 30 Euros!

 - Booze! Because, damn it Minnesota, booze is a grocery store item!

While we didn't get any fashion items, power tools, or booze, and I really tried to find booze worth drinking, we went home to make some lunch.  I made up some traditional German fare with sausages and sauerkraut.  With no sleep and a full evening ahead, Susi and Emily let me take a nap.  Naps are glorious.  I wish Ian would take them.

I needed to be awoken by Susi pushing on my nose.  Yelling was ineffective she claimed.  I'm not sure she tried or whether she just wanted to poke my nose.  Regardless, we needed to get some phones.  Obviously, we are not living with our primary host this trip and it would be nice if Susi and I could contact each other while apart, without incurring substantial charges to our regular cell phones.  And since we weren't going to be staying long we thought some prepaid arrangements would be a nice way to go.

German cell-phone sales staff must not make a terrible amount of money on prepaid cell phone sales.  It also didn't help that the USB-stick she recommended didn't work particularly well with Macs.  In all honesty, it works just fine now, but I don't know enough German to explain the concept of "updated drivers" to someone.  They probably didn't know enough about computers to understand what I was saying even after I crossed the language barrier.  I decided I could get it working with updated drivers and paid the little amount of money it took to escape the office with the hardware I needed.  I will skip some of the drama with my "o.tel.o" USB stick and SIM card but recommend that anyone looking to this type of travel get Vodafone or T-mobile.  "o.tel.o" is technically Vodafone but, really, it's Vodafone without any support and without a website that makes recharging your SIM easy.  The other two have both of those things and have better connectivity.

I was at least able to get enough pieces of hardware working at the same time to have my weekly staff meeting with Ben and Zach.  Things are going well at work, even without me there on a Monday, we haven't scared off any customers or burned the building down.  All signs point to success.

We've found some play grounds for the kids to use around town but the real fun was for Anja at tonight's "Welcome Dinner."  I've historically found that when new people are handling a program, and they are nervous about its success, something will undoubtably go wrong.  I find that our German hosts got fairly lucky as the only failure of the Welcome Dinner was the food arriving roughly an hour late.  At least it felt like an hour.  It may have only been 20 or 30 minutes but Emily and I intentionally came 20 minutes late with the kids and it was another 20 minutes before there was any food on a table.  In the interim we were entertained by a student band, with the ever catchy name, "Catchy Tune."  They played all American rock 'n' roll, loudly and with a heavy German accent.  I won't be too harsh on the boys as the oldest didn't look like he could order his own beer.  And the drinking age here is 16.

None of this mattered to Anja.  Micheal, one of our German hosts, has brought his expansive collection of sporting equipment to the welcome dinner.  Anja entertained the high-school-aged-girls with her dancing antics -- more than once asking me to get off of her "stage."  "Stage" being defined as the top-most step of the staircase.  And she then had an entire group of high school boys playing frisbee and attempting to hula-hoop with her.

Our collection of serious professionals: Matt (the other Exchange Teacher) and our hosts Isi and Rudager.

The previously mentioned Hulu hoop.

I believe the soccer ball is "somewhere in the air."

Much international mingling amongst students.

"Episode 2: The Revenge of the Ian"

Night 1 did not go well.  Ian did not adjust and we suspect his teething is really bothering him.  He is getting in molars and some eye teeth.  Neither one of those sets were very comfortable, and really, both of his gums seem to be jam-packed with teeth ready to try and escape. Susi and I switched off between Ian and Anja.  She ended up hungry as she refused to eat the delicious Lasagna made for us by Isi, our host.  Oddly, as she also refused to eat any thing on the plane, she ended up being hungry.  Hunger will happen if she doesn't eat once every 24 hours or so.

I called my Dad to wish him a happy Father's day but he didn't bother picking up.  So, I called my Mom and chatted for a few minutes just to let her know we were in and settled down.  Of course, to do this I wanted to use Skype.  Their international calling setup is both functional, convenient, and reasonably cheap.  Unfortunately, despite the promised DSL connectivity, I found myself unable to stay connected to the Wifi network.  A chance run-in with our building manager garnered the information that we can't access the Internet in our living room but she did recommend that we use our bedroom with the windows open.  Since the kids will need to NAP and SLEEP in that bed room, I'll be off to Vodafone to get a mobile-data card tomorrow.  Of course, I need to do it tomorrow because every commercial outlet except bakeries are closed on Sundays in Germany.  There are no open grocery stores, no open restaurants, really the only open businesses are cafes and bakeries -- which have limited hours.

Those limited open hours did give me the opportunity to indulge in my favorite German breakfast: Chocolate croissants and coffee.  Unlike the anonymous and swidgy-bread found in most US bakeries, the croissants here are damned good.  Flaky, buttery, and when properly optioned, full of German (or Belgian) chocolate.  Anja enjoyed her chocolate croissant too, unsurprisingly, she was still hungry in the morning.  After some clean up we decided to head into town.  It has been two years since we last visited and wanted to see if some of the big construction projects that were in progress last time had been finished.  This adventure led us to down town and it was amazing to see everything that had changed.  There are large new buildings going up and Königstraße and the Hauptstraße have all been improved to be much nicer to pedestrians.  It was a little sad to see change in a place that holds substantial sentimental value but the new and improved is welcome.  When we arrived in the actual down-town area we were very sad to see the toy store had gone away.  The toy store and its owner were neither the most approachable.  Many of the toys had dust and the owner was as likely to yell at your for suspected shoplifting as he was to thank you for your purchase.  Despite that we had told Anja about all of the dolly-toys that were on the top floor and were disappointed we couldn't show them to her.

A proper main street.

A proper main street, backs up to mountains, of course.

We made up for this by getting her (and ourselves) an ice cream.  Pinnochio's is probably the most important feature of the entire city to Susi and Emily.  It is an excellent gelato-shop which can whip up just about any flavor of cone or becher.  It was the perfect warm up to dinner at Isi's.

I like Tex-Mex food.  I like Mexican food.  I've always enjoyed other Middle and South American foods.  I've enjoyed them so much as to try and become a bit of an expert.  When Isi, a native of small-town Germany, mentioned she would be making Chili, a very American-contential dish, I had my utmost suspicions.  I'd eat it no matter the quality as I am not rude and enjoy most combinations of tomato sauce, hamburger and beans.  But it was good! Suspicions eased!  I even got Anja to eat about half of a bowl with me.  Bribing her with more ice cream and feeding it to her manually helped.

Ian ate some bread.  He was mostly cranky about it.  He also ate some yogurt.  Got crank about that and decorated Matt, another exchange teacher, with the purple goo.

Ian's crankiness has given us some limitations.  Someone always needs to stay back with him at night.  We're still formulating a complete plan to get him feeling better but we know, for now, we can't have him out late.  This allowed me some freedom on Sunday.  After dropping off the girls and Ian, I headed back to Isi's flat to watch Germany play in the European Cup.  It was me and four fluent speakers of German sitting in a room watching a soccer game that was televised in German.   It was a complete blast.  Having some context and knowing some basic German let me understand much of what was happening around me and even contribute some.  But, basically, I spent a very fun night with four very friendly people who really made things enjoyable.  Oh, and Germany won, so they'll be playing again on Friday night.

War is Hell, Flying on Airplanes with Kids is War.

We started traveling on a Friday afternoon and stopped traveling late on Saturday afternoon.  There were seven hours of timezones in the middle.  There were also two plane rides, a bus ride, and finally a short drive in the middle also.  We flew out of MSP airport with the kids, both ours and the members of the exchange program. Our time spent in the terminal was interesting enough.  The terminal we used was very small.  It features one restaurant, one coffee stand, one news stand, and a substantial amount of chairs.  None of the airlines that use this terminal are known for consistent on-time marks.  Luckily, US security measures are stringent and inconveinent enough that travelers need to arrive so early to the airport that they never need worry about a late flight, they'll be there to agonize over ever extra second spent in the overtly beige environment.  This terminal does feature a single saving grace -- an indoor playground.  Anja was able to run around for nearly an hour before getting on the plane.  I'd like to think this helped but it wasn't quite enough to entertain her while we were waiting.  After she and I had spent some time in the play area we went back to see Susi and Ian, who were holding all of the snacks, to get a small bite to eat.  We did so and Anja's eye saw the small (dirty, gross, expensive) video game arcade that is also available to entertain children waiting for late aircraft.  Susi had the patience and fortitude to actually take both Ian and Anja in there for a while.  Excursions to these video game arcades rarely cost us any money.  The kids don't know the different between the actual game and just pressing buttons and watching things change on the screen.  They really don't require an action-reaction to have a good time.  To one strange man in the arcade, this was apparently too wild of a concept.  He repeatedly asked Susi if he could give them some tokens to play the games, and she both politely refused and informed him it didn't matter much to the kids.  Apparently, this made the odd man indignant and he decided to "win the kids a prize."

Much to our misfortune, this was a man of skill, and he managed to pull a motorcycle-rider dressed plush pig from the crane game.  This is a standard plush pig with a black jacket sown to it and a T-shirt embroidered with "Born to Ride."  Not that Anja can read, and not that she has any concept of the styling for this pig, but she now has it and loves it.  It is, quite possibly, one of the most terrible plush toys that has ever been pulled from a crane game and it is as I type this, still taking company with the rest of my daughter's bed-things in our little German apartment.

Then our plane arrived.  Ready to lift us to IcelandAir's main terminal in Iceland.   That's six hour flight for anyone wanting to score this trip themselves.  Anja slept on my lap, holding her pig.  Ian screamed on Susi's lap, holding on to any part of her body that might incite some discomfort.  He refused the use of his carseat.  

We enjoyed EU customs in Iceland and introduced the exchange kids to what it is really like in European airports.  Unlike the comfy American airports with chairs and restaurants, traveling Europe introduces the concept of a queue - large groups simply funnel themselves down into a single file line but only at the last possible moment.  A vast amount of time is spent standing waiting for the persons managing the little tiny gate to open it.  And at Iceland the gates are packed right next to each other.  If there is more than one gate open at a time, then there is a pleasant risk of entering the wrong gate the first time and having to start the process from the end of the crowd.  This was roughly an hour.  No students were lost and only one of them managed to lose their ticket on the plane.  Losing a connecting flight's ticket on the plane is a bit like losing a shoe.  I've never done either and think it requires some substantial lack in foresight which makes someone think it is not important.

Our second flight was from Iceland to Frankfurt, Germany, and we could at least begin to start tasting victory.  Oh, this was three hours for anyone still counting.  Again, Anja sleeping and Ian screaming.  It was an A+ time but at least it was shorter than the bus ride that followed it.  Yes, to get from Frankfurt to where we are actually staying in German it requires another three hour bus ride.  The bus driver was also an interesting case in culture.  I've found that the US is not the only culture which has people who take intellectual niches and dialect to the extreme.  The bus driver spoke a local dialect of German known as Schwäbish.  And while I can understand some German, Susi understands quite a bit, and has even studied in areas renowned for thick dialects, this guy was not comprehensible.  Even one of our hosts made mention of the fact that he was "grumpy" and "not trying very hard" to work with his passengers.  I picked up on that when he slammed the bus-storage door right in front of me while I was holding a stroller.  He had decided it needed to be on the other side but did not feel that it was worthwhile to communicate that with anyone but himself.

As this could have been grossly overwhelming much of it faded quickly into memory.  Both because of sleep depravation and due to the incredible kindnesses we received upon our arrival.  The teacher that is hosting us actually can't.  As she is younger, her and her husband have a very nice apartment but it is not equipped to handle a three year old and an 16 month infant.  That takes up space, which is limited in Germany, and special equipment, which is generally expensive here.  So instead, she has helped by arranging us a very nice apartment with all of the "fixins." And even before we entered the door she had filled our refrigerator with all of the basic necessities to make it to Monday (beer, cheese, meat) and some niceties for the kids (two adorable plush dolls and some candy).  She also made two large pans of Lasagna.  We ate very well.

Ian and I, happy and settling in.  No that's not a zit, it's a gash from my children.

Our entire group gathered and ready to sleep.