"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.