I know it’s hard to recognize from our fuzzy picture, but that is a dead spider on our nice Wüsthof knife. Apparently the bugger (sorry English people, don’t mean to offend you) was hiding in our knife block and when I put the knife in, I squished it. Of course, I didn’t know that, so the next time I pulled the knife out, I got a yucky surprise!

We were in Spain for two weeks on vacation. We stayed in the vacation house that friends of ours own and spent the time with our friends Timo and Ruth and their daughter. That’s the short version of the story.

Here’s the long version: The original plan was for us to drive to Denia, Spain and have about five days there on our own before picking up the Hacks at the airport. Then we would have another week with them before driving home. Our friends, however, the owners of the house, somehow got the dates mixed up and booked another family in there during the five days that we wanted to spend alone. So. We decided to make the best of it, throw our camping stuff in the car and instead of driving the 15 hours straight down to Denia, we would stop somewhere different each night and explore the Mediterranean coast on the way down. And that’s what we did.

The first day we drove to Domaso, Italy on the shore of Lake Como. Benni and Annka were camping there for a week, so we hooked up with them and spent a very pleasant evening. The next day, we drove to St. Raphael, France and camped there, having paused to go into Monaco and look at the harbor. The next day, we drove to Port Leucate, France and camped there. Now, by this time, I’ve become completely disappointed. I somehow imagined that we would have more time to see things along the way, even if they’re small, seemingly unimportant things. What we’d actually done was just drive on the highway and sleep. This is unacceptable to me. I don’t even mind driving the whole day if we’re on small roads and going through towns and seeing the actual country, but from the highway you don’t see a darn thing and I was pretty ticked off by this point. So Flo and I talked about it.

And on the next day, we made time to go sightseeing. He really wanted to see Carcassonne, which is a city in France. The unique thing about Carcassonne is that on a hill, above the modern city, is the old medieval, walled city. It is not in its completely original form, but was renovated sometime in the 19th century, I think. It’s full of shops and hotels and restaurants. The palace charges entry, but the cathedral is free. So we went there. We found surprisingly little tourist information in France, no matter where we went, so I can tell you very little about Carcassonne, actually. It was packed with tourists; it is one of the main tourist draws in that area of France. I liked it anyway. It doesn’t take much to impress me sometimes. I did have the feeling I would be cheated out of money if I wanted to buy anything that looked like it was of good quality (except the castle shaped blocks I bought for my nephew), but that could have more to do with my general distaste for the French than with anything else. (In my own defense, I really did try to keep an open mind concerning the French, but while no one was nasty to me this time, they really weren’t friendly or helpful either, so they still haven’t made a good impression.) Anyway, so really we just walked around for an hour or so. More details are included in the comments accompanying the pictures.

After we left Carcassonne, we drove on some small roads through beautiful countryside to Castelnou, which is essentially a much smaller version of Carcassonne. Castelnou is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and it still retains its completely medieval look. At the top of the hill is a tiny castle that originally dated to the 10th century. It didn’t take long to walk around there either, but it was definitely fun. And we saw real, live, wild mountain goats on the hill by the castle! Sweet! That area of France is actually known for having had a heretical cult flourishing there in the medieval times and you can go to different castles that the cult lived in, but we didn’t make it to any of them, although I wanted to. There are plenty of things for us to see if we ever visit the south of France again, but then, hey, how many chances do I really want to give the French to be nice to me?

After we left Castelnou, we drove into Spain and stopped at the town of Mataro, which is about half an hour north of Barcelona. We found a campground that runs a shuttle bus into Barcelona and back once a day, so we decided to do that the next day. In Barcelona, we did a classic Kristy-and-Flo-Blitztour. We started off by walking out to Montjuic Park, which is a massive gigantic park and the parts we saw of it were simply gorgeous. We wanted to see the magic fountain, but it only turns on at 9 or 10 at night, so we only saw it dormant. We saw the outside of one of the art museums and that was beautiful as well. I think the building must have been some sort of palace back in the day, because the stairs and statues and topiary and fountains surrounding it were lovely. Then we went in Poble Espanyol, which is essentially a World Fair exhibit from some bygone year. It’s built like a little village and each “neighborhood” in the village represents one area of Spain – Catalonia, Andalusia, Valencia and so on. It was quaint, but either I missed something or there isn’t very much information to tell you what you’re really looking at. Afterward we walked back in the direction of downtown, finally reached the waterfront, walked along the boardwalk-type area… Then we went into the Ribera Quarter, which I think is one of the oldest sections, and looked around. I’d been reading a book set in medieval Barcelona and the whole book is about building a certain cathedral, so we stopped to see the cathedral, but couldn’t get in, which is too bad, since the building itself isn’t so gorgeous, but the play of light inside is supposedly amazing. Ah well, yet another thing to see on the next trip and believe me, there will be another trip to Barcelona. I really liked that city. So we just wandered around for a bit, then we went to the biggest (I think it’s the biggest) market in the city. One of the things we love to do is go to a market, no matter where we are in the world. They’re fascinating. I would never have guessed that you can buy a sheep’s head in Spain. I mean, what do you do with that? Eat the brains? I thought that was something reserved for Pakistan, not countries like Spain. By then we were completely exhausted and our feet hurt, so we sat down for a while in the shade, then we moved to a cafe and had an espresso, then we moved to the plaza where we should meet the bus again, but we still had time, so we people watched. Then, somehow, we missed the bus, so we ended up taking the train back to Mataro. By the time we got there, however, it was about 9 pm and we were starving, so we thought we’d walk into town and find some dinner. Well, there is nothing near the train station, so we asked a young woman and her mother if they could recommend a restaurant and at first they were stumped, but then they led us all the way to one that they said was really good and served typical cuisine. It was about 3 blocks; I was so impressed with their hospitality! The waiter was really fantastic. He spoke a little bit of English and was just really friendly and helpful and the food at the place was great. We asked him if there’s a typical digestif and so he gave us the Spanish version of schnapps – orujo. One was straight and one had herbs. I had the herb one and I guess it was good if you like that. So we finally made it back to the campground late that night.

The next day we drove to Denia and checked in at the house, then we went on to Alicante to pick up the Hacks. And from there on out, there’s really not much to tell you about. The house itself is glorious. It’s in a gated community and has been recently renovated, so everything is top. It fits 6, so with 4 adults and a baby, it was perfect. There is a pool just a few steps down a pathway and about 150 meters down the lane is the beach, which is beach reserved for that gated community and the few hotels nearby, so there weren’t throngs like on a public beach. A short car ride got you into downtown Denia, which is tiny and caters mostly to tourists, so we didn’t spend a lot of time there. It seems that activities abound, if you want to do that – hiking, boat tours, jet ski rental (way too expensive!), a little castle… And then everything else was a distance away again in the car and it seemed like none of us felt like driving much, so really, all we did was hang out at the beach, move to the pool, cook, eat, sleep, chat. And that was really the point of the vacation, so job well done.

But that means this isn’t the kind of report you’re probably used to seeing from me. Like I mentioned before, though, there are a lot more details in the captions of the photos, so click on this one here and it will bring you to all of them if you want to see how it looked.

These first ones are of Flo with our friends’ baby, Noam. He’s about four months old and his parents tell us he needs action all the time – action, action, action. Apparently our fishies were enough action for him. As soon as we sat down with him in front of the aquarium, he stopped fidgeting and just gazed into the water. So cute!

Next is my new haircut. I’m growing my hair out, so every time I get it cut it’s a whole new style. Props to Nadine, she got my bangs totally perfect this time! (By the way, that’s not to say she’s messed them up before, that’s to say I have extreme difficulty with bangs.) The first picture is fresh from the salon and the next two are the next day, having done my own hair.

This is our latest home improvement project. I’d run out of space for my cookbooks and I wanted a few shelves in a useless corner of our kitchen. So we bought a few cheapie ones at the building supply store (why can’t I think what they’re called in English?). They were natural wood color, so I spray painted them glossy black and then used one color per shelf to make designs on them – a red swirl, green squiggles and yellow polka dots. So we hung them up today and I’ve already filled them up nicely!

The last photos are of our balcony plants. I’d say about three quarters of our plants from last year came back, so we just bought a few to fill things up. Most of them are not in bloom yet, but even the green stuff looks nice, we think.

And for the coolest thing I’ve heard lately, a cute, little old man gave a testimony in church yesterday. He said the doctors had discovered a tumor in his lung and they didn’t know if it was malignant or benign, but it was in a dangerous place, so it would have to be removed. He was really afraid of the operation, which was to be a biggy, and he had people praying for him all over the place. So he went in the hospital for the operation and the doctors were striking, so it got put off a couple days and when the doctor finally got to him, they agreed to do one more test first and you guessed it: tumor gone! Yeah God!

This will probably be the last blog post until we come back from Spain. We’re going to take four or five days to get down to Spain. We’ll be camping along the way. Then we’ll be in Spain for ten days with our friends Timo and Ruth and their little girl. So I’ll likely update it when we get back – with lots of pictures. Til then!

And has anyone else noticed Flo’s side of the family is making it really easy for me to remember everyone’s birthdays: My mother-in-law shares her birthday with my nephew, Zack, my nephew Emil is the day after me and now Paul shares his birthday with my niece, Emmy. Happy Birthday Emmy!

Otherwise, Flo and I cracked ourselves up the other day analyzing our driving styles. We were in the car going somewhere and I kept telling him to shift, because I didn’t like listening to the engine whine. So he said, “OK, I’ll drive like you,” and then proceeded to shift so low that there was barely any acceleration there. And you know what? It sounded exactly like when I drive! So we were having a fantastic giggle about that and then we discussed parking. He’s always afraid when I park the car because I zoom in the spot and break hard. He parks like a granny, inching forward veeeeerrrry sllooooowwlly. So he demonstrated my braking and parking the rest of the way home. It’s funny how you know the other person’s habits without ever thinking about it.

And for those of you who haven’t gotten the lowdown on Skype yet, I’ll tell a little bit about our barmix class. Back in April we spent a whole day at the Mix School in Stuttgart. It’s run by a man named Walter, who is a bar master in Germany. The same way you can become a head chef or whatever, you can also do for the bar here, so he’s one of 30 or 35 bar masters in Germany. He not only invents drinks, competes, owned his own bar, trains bar staff on cruise ships and in his schools, judges competitions and exams to become bar masters, he also designs bar utensils, tools, workspaces. He’s a man very much in love with the bar.

So we went to his school for a day. It’s a very unassuming building and he has one classroom inside and one room with the bar in it – a very impressive bar, I might add. In the morning, he did some theory with us: What are the different categories of drinks, in what ways are they mixed, what glasses and how do you know what drink goes in what glass, shaker technique, etc. It was quite fascinating, actually. Then we went to lunch, and in the afternoon we mixed!

Basically he had a drink recipe book (There was no free pouring going on in that class. His point is, if you want a consistently good drink, you have to measure your ingredients out.), from which he chose a recipe for each person and one by one we went behind the bar and made the drink. So the other students, while watching, were responsible for telling us what we were doing wrong. During the practical time, he also showed us a few easy garnishes, as well as continually giving tips for how to do things more efficiently, with less waste, saving time, etc. It was really fun!

The class we did was the first in a series of classes. If you take all five, you can become a professional at the end. (I think that’s how it is anyway.) It wasn’t such a cheap class, so it probably won’t happen soon, but I’m already thinking of taking the next one.

We chose Nuremberg for our day trip. Flo had been there as a little guy, but I never had. We’ve both heard really nice things about it. It’s a city that still has many of its medieval buildings intact, so it’s the quintessential picture that Americans imagine when they think of Europe or Germany. We’d also been told about a restaurant there (thanks for the tip Dad!) that we wanted to try out, but more on that later. So we checked on the internet a couple of things we could do while we were there and off we went. We drove to the center of the city and parked just outside the old city wall. See, the medieval part is still walled in and the rest of the city has simply grown around it, so we parked at the opera house, walked across the street and entered the old city, hereafter referred to as Altstadt.

You can pretty much follow our trip through town with the photos and comments, but I’ll put the highlights in here anyway, for those of you who don’t have time for the rest. The first thing we walked through was the Craftsmen’s Courtyard, which has several little houses displaying crafts that would have been worked in medieval times. They certainly aren’t still done with medieval methods, though, judging by some of the wares in the windows! Then we basically walked straight up through town, past several churches, through the shopping district, stopped at Starbucks… We took a short tour of the medieval dungeons. That was fascinating. The ceilings were very low and the hallways very thin. A lot of the rooms were empty except for a bed, where the prisoners slept. I should mention that these dungeons were not used for killing folks or holding them forever; they were used for torturing to get a confession or serving a “light” sentence, or holding until sentencing, but it was a dungeon nonetheless. Anyway, a couple of the rooms had stocks in them. It seemed like several prisoners could sit next to each other with their wrists in the stocks for however long it took. Grisly. There was also a room with a well in it, which served the city during wars, when they couldn’t go all over. And then the two most intense rooms, the torture room and the instrument room. The torture room, as you may imagine, was where they tortured people. It had a rack (I’m not really sure if that’s the right term, but basically, you stretch people on it, in several, gruesome ways) and a thumb breaker and some other stuff. What I didn’t know was that the guys who were responsible for recording the “confession” weren’t actually in the torture room. They sat cozily up in another room above the torture room and listened through a shaft, recording. The instrument room had exactly that in it: a bunch of torture instruments the hangman would use. It was also the room where the hangman would make, sharpen, hone his tools. The guide explained what each tool did exactly. Mostly it was putting spikes in various body parts and letting people bleed out slowly. The bakers got a special treatment. That was interesting. There was a certain measure that each roll or loaf of bread had to weigh and if the baker made them the wrong size, they’d get punished by having a metal ring put around their waists, including their arms, and for each measure they were under or over the standard, they would get dunked in the river for a certain length of time. Weird, eh?

After that, we walked about a bit more, wandered up to the Imperial Castle. The castle was one of the most important ones for the emperor back in the day -- and by back in the day I don’t mean only medieval. The castle dates back to 1050. We didn’t go in the castle, but the grounds are actually quite extensive and so we enjoyed the weather and the view and the spring in that historical environment.

On the way back down through town, we stopped at the Toy Museum and went in there. That was pretty neat. They had a few really old toys (really old for me equals, like, a thousand years) and then from about the 17th century, I’d guess. Not too sure about that, but I think. They had a lot of tin toys and dolls and a whole exhibit on toys after World War II. I found out that Nuremberg has a famous history in toys, especially tin toys. I think those tin toys are amazing. Click the image to see all the pics.

And then we wrapped the day up by going to ’s Baggers (for english scroll down and on the left side) for dinner. Basically, you go in and get a swipe card. Your hostess seats you at a space on a giant round table and explains how the system works, which is so: you look through the menu on a monitor attached to the table and then you order via touchscreen all the food you want. Swipe your card and they’ll know who to charge it to at the end of your visit. Then wait. The kitchen is on the top floor of the building and has a large window on either side of it with rails there. Every item you order is placed in a little holder that has rings on it to attach it to the rails and then they just zing the holder down to your table directly. You can watch your Orangina travel to you. Sometimes they even put sparklers in the food, so a sparkler whizzes through the building. The more you want to eat, you just keep ordering! The food comes in the pot it was cooked in, so it can stay warmer longer and they even have extra long silverware so you can eat right out of the pot. The silverware, as long as glasses, napkins and dishes (if you really want them) are on a giant lazy susan in the middle of the table, so you have access to everything you need. There’s also a space for dirty dishes, which get picked up by the wait staff. And once you’ve taken your food or drink out of the holder, you just turn this big ole turntable to push the holders farther along the table (still attached to the rails) and at the end of the table, it drops off the rail and into a bin to be reused. It was such a neat thing! I was so excited about eating at this place. I felt like a little girl. We made a video of the restaurant, which you can watch here. If you pay attention to the background as well, you can see the food sliding about through the atmosphere!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ygt52MXA_Y

The day after that, so Sunday this past week, we did our surprise for this year, which was a day-long mix class with a bartending master. But that’s a subject for another blog entry. It’s getting late!

Other things:
I get to watch Dancing With The Stars now, because we can record it from the internet. I’m not sure how that works, but Flo’s hooking me up. All I’d like to know is, what sadists keep voting to keep Kate Gosselin on the show? Poor Tony.

We went back to dance class after a month off and woo hoo! It was a bit challenging to get back in the swing of things and making it more difficult was: no one else showed up for class that night, so it was a private lesson! But we learned a nifty step, where Flo leans over and I lean on him, so it looks good, I think.

We went to see Flo’s great-aunt last week, Tante Margot. She’s moved into a senior facility and doesn’t seem too happy about it. Her mind is going a little bit, but she is 90 now, so I guess that’s allowed. Physically, she’s still wonderfully fit. I hope she settles in there well. I hate to see people like her unhappy.

We’ve gotten halfway through our spring cleaning and ran out of gas. But I feel really good about the half we did get done! Anyone else doing spring cleaning yet? I find the cleaning of the window frames to be the most satisfactory part of the whole thing.

And we went to the movies a couple times last week. Flo wanted to see The Bounty Hunter, which was only so-so, and I wanted to see The Ghostwriter, which was awful. It was slow and boring. If anyone saw The Good Shepherd then you’ll know what kind of torture you’re in for with this movie. Now we’re looking forward to see Date Night. Anyone seen it? Is it to be recommended?

And I should have plenty to blog about in the next bit. Tomorrow we’re taking a day trip to Nuremberg for our fourth anniversary and on Sunday we’ll be taking part in a bartending course.

Our friend Kira turned 30 this February and celebrated with an 80s party. It was a smashing success by any standard, but the fact that she got Germans to dress up silly and dance is really impressive. Not much more to say about that – it was a night filled with neon colors, big hair band soundtrack and giggles galore. Check out our few pics of it here.

First of all the novacaine shot hurts. Then it didn’t numb enough the first time, so I had to get another one. After that, the top was numb, but the bottom wasn’t and I had to get a third shot.

Then the dentist began working on the top tooth. I was not prepared at all for the manner in which they take your teeth out. I don’t know what I expected them to do, but just digging around until the dang thing can be yanked is most definitely NOT what I expected.

That part was the scariest part!

Until he got to the bottom tooth. That seemed relatively okay until he pulled the tooth out and cursed because a part of the root was stuck in there. So he used two or three different tools and exclaimed several times, that he couldn’t believe it. Then he sent an assistant out to get a different tool, exclaimed a few more times… Then he got up himself and retrieved some kind of tool. The small part looked sort of like the needle you use to blow up a football and that somehow magically attached to the root bit. Then the dentist attached that to something that looked like a mouth harp with a little winch in it and seemed to winch the thing out until he could clamp it and yank.

Then he looked at me and asked oh so innocently if I felt ok. What?? How should I?

So Flo took me home, stopping on the way to buy me painkillers at the pharmacy. Later he made me soup, broke my horsepills up for me so I could swallow them and plopped me on the couch… where I watched old episodes of The Cosby Show on youtube. That made me feel better.

So the moral of the story is: pity me!

Flo found some photos of Christmas on the camera – I’d forgotten about them – so I posted them on our photo page. You can view them by clicking here.

And as for the new things, I got a new haircut. I’m trying to grow my hair really long. I haven’t had that in, oh, six years or so and to be fair, I haven’t had long hair without hundreds of little braids since I was 17. I thought it was time to give it another shot. But it’s still growing now so I’m in that awkward, in-between phase. Anyway before Christmas I got it cut so I would at least have a style again. These photos are now over a month old, but you get the general idea.
This one is direct from the salon:

Sorry about the toothbrush… women and their multitasking! And this next one is from the day after. Of course it always looks different when you style it yourself.

And the other new thing I’m even more excited about! Flo and I have this lovely long hallway in a U-shape and it’s been ugly white for over three years now. It felt institutional and as if it didn’t really belong to our actual house. We left it that way for so long because we could never decide on an alternative, but finally did decide a couple weeks ago and voilà! It’s done now! We had five photos from our various travels (Thailand, Italy, Austria, Brazil and Ireland) printed in poster size, bought frames for them and then painted blocks of the walls to hang them in. We chose a terra cotta color for the color blocks. It was hard choosing just five photos out of hundreds! So rather than bore you with details, I’ll just let you see. These are the first two you see when you come in the front door – Thailand and Italy.

Then you turn the corner and have Austria on your left,

and Brazil on your right.

And when you go around the corner again, you can view the Cliffs of Moher from Ireland.

And now the hallway doesn’t look ugly and empty anymore!

You think asian countries are all the same, let me tell you these three different countries couldn’t be any more different…

China:
I was a few days in Suzhou where Bosch has a production plant. I tried various different types of food some spicy some just weird like frog legs. After the first couple days I also master eating everything with chop sticks.
Suzhou is about two hours away from Shanghai and is growing like crazy. My favorite was “The Master of the Nets Garden“, which the picture below is from. The weekend I spent in Shanghai, where I had a collegue from Bosch, who lives in Shanghai, show me around. Having a local “tour guide” was great, she showed me stuff that you usually as a tourist don’t see. She brought me to a restaurant in Shanghai, where I had my first chinese “Ox Tounge”. And for all who want to try something chinese, drink boiled coke with ginger. I know, I also thought disgusting, but it’s actually not bad.
Renaissance Hotel in Suzhou

The Eton Hotel in Shanghai

Japan (Yes the toilets are high tech):
In Japan I was in Tomioka for the week. First, I was quite disappointed because Tomioka is a really small town and there is not really anything to do (especially that it was raining). There is a silk factory which was always closed when I got out of Bosch, and it was just to wet to just wander around. Surprising for me is that japanese people are not really good in english. Even in the hotels you have to speak really slow and with simple words. I tried to ask where the next bank is to get some money…. They were not able to tell me how to get to a bank. One night, my collegues had a farewell party for another german so they took us both to a restaurant in Tomioka. It was one of those where you sit on the floor on cushions and you have these really low tables (now I am wondering did they not have chairs so they made the tables so low or did they have the low tables so they got rid of the chairs??? Anyway enough philosophy).  In the middle of the table is the stove thing where everybody throws the food on cooks it and eats it right from there. After the 5th course I stopped counting but there were a lot. The last one was Okonomiyaki, which is kind of a pan cake, that you also make right on the table. It was very yummy! So if you get the chance, try it out. With all that food we had of course “Sake“, japanese rice wine. Japanese are not strong drinkers but really like to drink, which usually leads to a very funny evening. They also had beer and some other alcoholic drink made out of potatoes. It is japanese tradition, that you don’t fill your own glass, but you always fill your neighbours. The hard part is that as soon as your glass gets half empty someone next to you fills it up again and after a few hours, you have no idea how much you actually drank.

The weekend I spent in Tokyo. Tokyo is also worth a visit and if you are up for it try out one of the capsule hotels. I didn’t have to stay in one, I was in the Ueno Parkside Hotel in Tokyo. Generally speaking, hotel rooms in Japan are really small, as you might see in some of the pictures.
One thing that you cannot miss in Tokyo is the places with Pachinkos, they are everywhere. They are games, that are a little bit like slot machines but with balls. Otherwise a saw a few shrines and temples.

And if you are still wondering about the toilets please watch this one here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGQqqBxXspc

India:
I also have some pictures in here from the Aiport in Singapore and from the Airbus A380, which I was flying with from Tokyo to Singapur.  I never had a better flying experience than with the A380 flying business class, they have a bar, the seat is so big I could share it with another person and BIG screens

In India, I was in a city called Bangalore or Bangaluru. Some people call it the silicon valley of India. There is a lot of IT companies. The people there are really friendly and their hospitality rocks! The collegues there spent every night showing me stuff taking me out for dinner and so on. I saw a temple there but I was not allowed to take pictures. I still took one looking throught the wall (it’s that golden thing picture). But otherwise it was really shocking how they have the rich and the poor so close to each other… But my favorite was the animals in the middle of the streets.

Unfortunately I only saw india from the inside of taxis or at night, so no good pictures…

There you go this was my business trip in November 2009.

1. Salsa Gala
Our dance school puts on a Salsa Gala every year and this year we were there! We went with Benni and Annka. It began on Friday night with a dance party in a club in Stuttgart. They brought in super salsa DJs for the evening and some of the local people (students from the school and others of that sort) did a few performances. I think we four felt a bit like real beginners in a room full of pros, even though we’re in the Advanced Class at our school! The next day it all started in the morning with workshops. They always had two scheduled simultaneously, so you could decide which one was more interesting for you. They were each an hour long, then a few minutes break and then the next one. It went like that (with a lunch break) until about 5 PM and then Saturday night they had another dance party followed by a big salsa show with performances by some of the world’s top dancers. The workshops were intense. They had different ones for different levels of ability or experience and they also had a few different styles of dance, not only salsa. We tried to participate in as many as possible, without killing ourselves.
We began with a course in Salsa Romantica. Basically we learned a few new steps and some techniques how to make it look really romantic, things like, you can turn your head to sort of nuzzle your partner instead of looking forward, or you can make sure the woman’s leg leans against the man’s, instead of being independent. It was really fun! The salsa we learn in the school (New York style) is so fast and energetic; it was fun to do something else. Also, the man who taught it was fantastic. His name is Manuel Mascarell, he’s from Spain and that one was his 400th salsa congress as a teacher. He was very clear, relaxed and authoritative as a teacher. Wonderful.
Next we did New York Style On 2 with Brian and Mechteld. Actually we didn’t know what On 2 meant. It apparently means that instead of dancing on 1-2-3, 5-6-7, you somehow start on the 2 and keep dancing the whole time through. It was totally confusing! Man, once your feet are trained a certain way, it’s really hard to make them do something else. But Brian and Mechteld were really good. They were also fabulous teachers. They took their time and went at our pace instead of trying to smack their program through. If I have it right, they’ve been the Dutch Salsa Champions.
After that, we did a New York Style workshop with Monica and Mitchell. They were really great. New York is what we learn already, so it wasn’t hard to work with them. And Mitchell was really funny. He did Matrix-style dance (slo-mo) every time we needed to see it more slowly and they just had a lot of energy.
For the last workshop on Saturday, we were again with Manuel Mascarell, learning a dance called kizomba. This dance is performed very slowly, with pairs dancing very close together. It’s sensual, but not sexual and it’s a terrific way to wind down after a full day of dancing your heart out to salsa. Click here to see a video of it. After that, we went home and rested a little bit before getting ourselves purdied up to go back into town for the gala evening.
Other than us dancing our tootsies off, the highlight was the show. One of our dance teachers, Sebastiano, organized this whole thing where he got people to do performances that, all put together, tell the history of salsa dancing. So I don’t remember all the different stations, but there was a performance of cha cha, one of boogaloo (hadn’t ever heard of that one either… click here for a video), one of mambo… There were two highlights to the show. One was for Sebastiano himself. His favorite movie ever is called “Salsa” and it is the thing that inspired him to start dancing. So he and Ramona (our other teacher) with two friends of theirs reenacted a scene out of the movie. But really, don’t bother with the movie. We watched it and it was pure corn. The second highlight was seeing Anne and Anichi perform. I don’t know if it was this year or not, but at some point they were crowned European Salsa Champions and they routinely perform at world competitions, so they’re REALLY good. Anne can spin, like, 45 times without falling over! They’re just amazing.
So what did we do on Sunday? We started the day with a spinning workshop with none other than Anne and Anichi. Seriously, guys: Anichi was explaining what guys shouldn’t do while their partners are spinning, so Anne just kept spinning while he picked his nose, answered his cell phone, scratched his butt, fixed his hair… And she’s still going! They’re incredible and we were able to learn from them. Spinning is hard. For non-dancers, they may not understand this, but spinning is hard. Flo and I realized that when he had my left hand in his and I should spin more than once in a row, it worked, but when he had my right hand in his, it was all over. I drifted to the right and would totally lose my balance and he’d have to catch me -and it was always that way, not just during the workshop. Anyway, we asked Anichi what it could possibly be and he simply danced a few steps with me to find out. With him it was exactly the same: left hand, no problem; right hand, falling over. All he said was, “You hang yourself too heavily in his hand when you use your right hand. Work on that.” And that was the secret! Now that I know that’s the problem, I pay attention to it and it works much better. But to be honest, I was just glad that while I was dancing those few steps with a professional, I didn’t step on his feet or anything like that!
The next workshop we did was a bachata workshop with Ronald and Marion. I can’t find a website for them. Oh well. So, bachata is danced really slowly and it’s often played in clubs as a sort of break from the fast pace of salsa. For that reason, Benni and Annka particularly wanted to learn it, so we did this workshop. Well, it’s a really easy dance to learn, but somehow it seems all the non-dancers were in the workshop and so we got bored and gave up when we’d only learned three steps after 45 minutes. Anyway, click here for a video.
After that, we tried to do a cha cha workshop. We wanted to because the instructor was one of these old guys who wears a newsboy cap and tweed pants and he just looked cool. Unfortunately, although he’s evidently a great musician and dancer, he wasn’t much of a teacher. He went too fast and no one understood what they were supposed to do, but instead of just slowing down, he powered ahead. That was naturally frustrating, so we gave up. We were exhausted anyway.
In the evening was an after party in one of the clubs in Stuttgart that regularly holds salsa nights, but the four of us decided that we were so wiped out, we’d just skip it. We had dinner together and watched a movie! All in all, it was a really fantastic experience and well worth the money we paid to take part. I was blown away by the professionalism and it really made both my head and my body work, which is always a nice change!

2. Zauber Zauber
And so, as many of you know, Flo and I surprise each other once a year, randomly. This year, my surprise for him was tickets to a magic variety show at a theater in Stuttgart. Sometime this year we’d watched The Illusionist and Prestige, both movies about magicians. We really liked them and then I saw an ad for this magic show. I’d never been to one and neither had Flo, so I got some tickets. And I want you all to know: this year I managed to really surprise Flo. Most of the time he at least knows when something is coming, even if he doesn’t know what it is. This year I really outdid myself and caught him totally off-guard! The theater is a small one in the basement of a big building complex. It’s basically underneath a big fountain, so you go down stairs behind the fountain and at the bottom of a little waterfall type thing is the front door of the theater. It’s small, but it’s really nice. No bad seats in the house. You can have dinner there, as far as I know, so there are tables directly in front of the stage and then there’s a small ring of seating outside of that. The show had an MC, who was also a magician, so while the stagehands were rearranging things behind the curtain, he was amusing the audience. He was really good. He is a mentalist, so he did thinks like taking rings from different audience members and getting them chained together; getting a coin in a bottle when the coin was too big for the bottleneck and pouring water from a pitcher into a cup, but when it reahed the cup, it turned to schnapps or beer or espresso or whisky, etc. What I particularly liked about him was how clear he spoke. I could understand everything! He was one of those bald, pale guys who looks kind of creepy. It’s easy to see how he got into magic. The different groups that performed were pretty interesting. One of them did the thing where they step in a box and then disappear and reappear, or go in a box and shove flaming swords through it. There were three different performers who did the kind of card tricks where they show all the cards and then they all disappear and reappear in the other hand and then they flip all the cards out at the audience and suddenly have more in their hand. To be honest, three was too many and the best one of them was a kid about 14 years old. His parents were also performers in the show (although not with card tricks) and so apparently he’s just started performing as well. He was great, though. He had personality and stage presence and just enough attitude to make you think that if he thought he’s so good, he must really be that good. His parents were fun. They were quick change artists. They hold the world record for quick change. It was incredible! That’s probably the thing I’d be most interested in knowing how it’s done. And the last performer was an older man, who they told us is something like magician royalty. He’s won all sorts of awards and honors. He does magic mixed with comedy, so a large part of his performance was a parody of the classic magic act. He’d pull a rabbit out of a hat, but it was CLEARLY a stuffed rabbit. Then he’d turn the white rabbit inside out to produce a black rabbit. He did, however, also perform some real illusions. His finale was: He swallowed razor blade after razor blade after razor blade. Then he swallowed a ball of string. Then he pulled on one end of the string hanging out of his mouth and as he pulled, you could see the razor blades had somehow become tied to the string! Crazy! Who does that??
Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed the evening. It was entertaining, out of routine, a little mysterious and pretty cheap: perfect night!

3. Kirk Franklin
For those of you who don’t know, Kirk Franklin is one of the most successful, coolest gospel recording artists. He’s got a little hip hop in there, a little classic gospel, and a little whatever else seems good. I’ve been waiting years to see him and I find it funny that it never worked out for me to see him in America, although he’s an american artist. No, no, no, I had to wait til he came to Germany! Anyway, we were in a very small venue and had no seats, just space to stand and Kirk came with a somewhat smaller band than normal. He had a drummer, bassist, electric guitar, keyboarder, organist, DJ, two male vocalists, four female vocalists and himself. What I really liked about the show other than the fat harmonies, the soul feeling, the great grooves and the fact that there were black people in Germany, was how relaxed they were! I must have been in Germany too long already, in a country where everything has to be perfect, because I was truly impressed by how relaxed the whole band was. What I really liked was that Kirk Franklin asked the audience which songs they wanted to hear and as far as I could tell, he really did his best to play at least a little bit of each one of them. And at one point, he simply brought out a keyboard for himself and led his band in these songs spontaneously, without the tracks they would usually use. Sometimes the vocalists didn’t even remember the lyrics because the songs were so old! And he changed some of the lyrics to german so the crowd could sing along. It was not spectacular, it was not Hollywood standard, but it was a really good evening.

4. Flo Away
And then for three weeks in November, Flo was away. Bosch has promised to send him on business trips for years now, but it wasn’t until the economic crisis hit that he actually got to go somewhere outside of Europe. So he spent one week in China, one in Japan and one in India. Mostly he was doing some analysis of processes, some trainings in software and some organizing of programming projects. He did have free time on the weekends to spend sightseeing in Shanghai and Tokyo. If he ever gets photos up, we’ll let you know, but that’s his job in this case, not mine. He was successful and well-received at each location, even the one that originally didn’t want him to come at all. He really liked all the different countries; he bravely tried everything they offered to feed him; he exchanged gifts with his colleagues; and he really liked the weather in India. So all that time, I was alone, holding down the fort, feeding the fishies….

5. Seminars and Exams
My study is going alright. I have four subjects in the first semester and in October I took part in the seminar and took the exam for the first subject: English for professional purposes. It was ridiculously easy, but you can’t test out of it, so I had to sit in the seminar for four days and take the test. I got a 1.0. You can’t get a better grade. Then in November I took another seminar and exam, for the second subject: Studies of Anglo-Saxon Countries. That’s learning about the political systems, the educations systems, class structures, etc of Great Britain and America. The exam consisted of an essay, but I don’t have the grade yet. Then, next week, I’ll do the seminar and exam for German Grammar. While Flo was away, I studied my butt off in german grammar, because when I started the whole study, I really sucked at it and probably wouldn’t have passed, so I’ve been putting off taking the test. I think I’m ready now and I’m really looking forward to getting it behind me. It takes several weeks to get the results, though, so I’ll probably find out around Christmas if I’ve passed or not. Could be a good present, could be a yucky one.

6. Thanksgiving
And then right after Flo got back, we celebrated Thanksgiving here. We had my mother-in-law and her husband over for dinner, as well as a couple from our church and another woman from our church. It was good. We made the usual, it tasted good and was a hit with our guests. Nothing too out of the ordinary I guess…

Day 1: Filderstadt to Iseo
Day 2: Cremona
Day 3: Iseo to Bologna via Verona
Day 4: Bologna to Siena
Day 5: Florence and Lago Trasimeno (Passignano)
Day 6: Castello and Perugia
Day 7: Assisi to Monopoli
Day 8: Monopoli Beaches
Day 9: Castel del Monte – Basilica St Nicholas – Monopoli
Day 10: Grotte di Castellana – Alberobello – Lecce – Otranto
Day 11: Roca Vecchia to Gallipoli
Day 12: Santa Maria al Bagno
Day 13: Matera
Day 14: Vesuvius – Pompei – Dinner
Day 15: Beach – Pontecagnano Faiano
Day 16: Salerno
Day 17: Amalfi Coast and Positano
Day 18: Castiglione della Pescaia
Day 19: Milano
Italy 2009

Day 1: Filderstadt to Iseo
We drove from home to Iseo, Italy on Lago d’Iseo. We left with 96,000 km on the car. We left at 10:00 in the morning with the car packed to the gills. We stopped in Bregenz, Austria and made sandwiches and walked along the lake eating them. We thought originally we would reach Iseo at 4:30. We didn’t go over the Splügen Pass; we went over a different one, which I’m not sure what it was called, because I fell asleep. We stopped at an overlook from Silvaplanasee and it was really pretty. It was one of the most brilliant blues I’ve ever seen in water. We drove through St. Moritz, which I thought would be like a James Bond town with ritzy casinos à la Kitzbühl, but I was wrong. Our vinegar spilt and we stopped along the road to clean it. As we did, two hunters came down from the mountains carrying a mountain goat they’d shot. One of them asked for a ride to his car, so we gave it to him. He really smelled like a mountain goat. We crossed the border into Italy only to discover we needed to go through another pass to reach Iseo. So we went over the mountains again. There we hit traffic. We’d chosen Camping Iseo as our fist stop and their reception closes at 8:00 pm. I finally got Flo to call to see if they’d still take us if we were late. They would. Flo finally left the main road with the traffic to drive directly lakeside through the towns – and ran into more traffic! No idea what everyone was doing north and returning south. We finally arrived at 8:30 (10.5 hours of driving!) and got a great campground really cheap – about Eur20 a night. Directly on the water. Got the tent up and went to find food. I had gnocchi with tomato mozzarella sauce. Very, very good. It began to storm while we ate. Got a little wet on the walk back. It POURED all night long and into morning. Our tent stayed dry! Good little Aldi tent. I woke up a dozen times, scared that it was leaking, and checked it, but it was always dry.

Day 2: Cremona
We got up at 10:00 today and made our way to Cremona, home of the world famous Stradivari violins. A one hour trip south on the toll highway, the center is a beautiful medieval town. I wanted to go because Lonely Planet said there are over 100 violin workshops that can be visited. Three problems: 1) We got there during midday break on a 2) Monday and 3) None of the shops are open for free or without appointment. Which we didn’t know right away, so we just walked around town in the rain for a while. Eventually we ate lunch at a Lonely Planet-recommended restaurant (Ristorante Centrale), because we couldn’t find any other one that was open. I had tortelli ricotta, which was good and Flo had pesto that looked like cooked spinach, but tasted amazing. I mean really amazing. I’ve only had pesto that good one other time in my life and that was in Como a few years ago. The waitress was a gray-haired gramma in white chef’s coat shuffling about in pink Crocs. She reminded me of my relatives – doing nothing but shuffling about serving food. The ceilings in the restaurant were high and the décor was very 70s. Flo said the toilets were a hole in the floor. After lunch, we went to the tourist office (finally open at 3:00), where they explained that most violin workshops are NOT open to the public and the ones that are cost Eur40 per person for 40 minutes by appointment. So that was a big disappointment. Even the museum was closed (Monday). So we took their advice and paid Eur3,50 per person to see the city collection of violins. They all kind of looked the same, but there was a sheet explaining about them, which made them cool. Some of them were REALLY old! – from the 1500s! And they were in fantastic condition. Then we went into the cathedral across the piazza and it was IMPRESSIVE. I loved the outside a lot. It had these walkways around the top, which I found fascinating. It was partly brick and partly pink/white marble. There was a tower and the façade was much taller than the rest, which I also thought was unique. Inside had so much beautiful stuff – the ceilings were the best – vaulted ceilings and all painted with blues and golds – very rich. We took the long way home. Even Italian barns are beautiful, with archways and made of brick with pillars. I like how they often make terraces on the roof of a room. That’s brilliant. We stopped at the store and bought a salad for dinner, then grilled and ate. Planned a little for tomorrow and walked into town. Iseo has a lovely center with small piazzas ad old buildings. Of course any town on the water is lovely. Lots of fashion in the windows for lots of money.

Day 3: Iseo to Bologna via Verona
We decided spontaneously to visit Verona today. We got up at 8 and had everything showered, breakfasted, cleaned, packed and checked out by 9:30. I thought it would take longer. We stopped in town at a bakery where I bought one small pastry – a dough crust cup filled with vanilla pudding and dusted with powdered sugar. It was very yummy, but almost too sweet. I forget what it was called. We drove to Verona, where we paid Eur6 (Flo) and and Eur 4,50 (me) to see the Roman amphitheater, which is now the opera house. It was very cool. You could really imagine Romans there. Verona was dirty. It is a well-preserved city with lots of expensive shopping and amazing architecture. The whale bone did not fall on us – we’re evidently not just. We didn’t go in Juliet’s house, but at least looked at the courtyard/balcony. Apparently a family named Capuletto really did live there back in the day and so even though the story of Romeo and Juliet is total fiction, there’s a whole tourist market in Verona for looking at Juliet’s balcony. Then we drove slow roads to Bologna and found a campground, set up our tent and cooked in the rain. It really poured. We planned our route for tomorrow and undercooked the rice, then ate in the tent – difficult! We saw a statue of Dante in Verona and drank cappuccinos (my first – I decided I would learn to drink coffee while in Italy and since all they drink are espresso-based drinks…). I’ve noticed many houses on the side of the road stand empty – no glass in the windows, no paint, no interior at all, just shells with roofs and I wonder why they’re so. I got a giant blister on my right baby toe and fixed it with a bandaid, but hope tomorrow is nice enough for open shoes.

Day 4: Bologna to Siena
It was an absolute nightmare getting into Bologna. I would’ve given up. (NOTES ON THE PHONE) We packed up our stuff this morning in the rain. It’s been such miserable weather. We also saw Bologna in the rain. The guidebook says Bologna is called Big Red, partly because of the red buildings and partly because of the politics. We weren’t there long enough to see the politics. In fact, there were only a couple of things I wanted to see and then we would leave again. When we walked in, we saw two tall towers. They looked crooked, but I’m not sure if that was just my perspective or if they really were tilted. Where we parked seemed not quite residential, but also not downtown. So the walk we had into the city was kind of neat, because (my impression anyway, was that) we walked through where the real people live. We walked past shops that didn’t look geared to tourists and past buildings that didn’t particularly look like upscale apartment buildings and despite that, someone lived there. The sidewalks were more like arcades, in that they had vaulted ceilings over them and archways with pillars on the street side. That was also quite nice. We walked into the downtown area and saw a big cathedral, which we didn’t go in. There was also a big fountain of Neptune that was rather, uh, explicit. I’d read that there was a square area in the old part of the city where many shops selling tasty things are found and I thought it sounded interesting, particularly as Bologna is known as the culinary capital of Italy. We stopped in a small bakery and I bought a tiny canoli filled with lemon cream. It was so good! It wasn’t too sugary and didn’t have this sort of sour milk flavor that I’ve tasted in Italian bakeries in America. We walked around a while longer and stopped in a deli. It was like going to Willy Wonka’s, except it wasn’t chocolate, it was salami and cheese and antipasti! It took us a long time to figure out what we wanted and also to recognize that you had to pull a ticket with a number in order to be served. They had giant hams hanging from the ceiling, mounds of cheeses and the place was tiny. There was barely enough room to get a line of people through, as in, you had to go through single file. We bought a chunk of parmesan (I mean, Parma itself isn’t that far from Bologna, we were in parmesan country) and some other cheese that we can’t remember the name of. It was very good, anyway. Then we walked around trying to find another thing listed in the book – a whispering gallery, where you can stand in one corner and whisper and the other person in the other corner can hear you. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find it and so we just left. We stopped at the car to make a couple of sandwiches with our new cheese and they were quite yummy. Then we drove to the next campground halfway between Florence and Siena, but it looked like rain and we didn’t feel like camping in the rain again. We stopped at a tourist office in the tiny town of Barberino val d’Elsa. Who would’ve thought that such a small town would have a tourist office? Does Chatham have one? This town is smaller than Chatham. The girl spoke English quite well and called a couple of hotels and bed and breakfasts for us. We looked around and found nothing cheap, so we finally went to the one the girl in the office had found for us. Il Paretaio, it was called. It’s Eur80 per night and it’s REALLY nice! It’s a farmhouse from the 1700s where they make their own olive oil and also have a renowned dressage school. They have probably 12 or 15 horses that you can sign up to ride and have lessons or take a horse ride to a wine tasting. The floors were all big flagstone and terra cotta tiles, the fireplace in the dining room was big enough to put a small table and two chairs in and there were high ceilings. Our room was quite roomy (oops, a little redundant), with a big bed surrounded in a mosquito net. I find that romantic. Flo thought it was practical. There are horse prints and trinkets all over the place, but at least there’s a reason, I guess. In the evening we drove into Siena. I love Siena! Red brick buildings, medieval street designs (Unesco World Heritage Site, like most of Italy, it seems), Italian flair, a horse race every year, pottery, designer clothes, hills, artistic street lamps, Tuscany… a pigeon pooped right on Flo’s shoulder. We stopped at the Gothic cathedral, but it cost Eur6 just to go in (so we didn’t) and it was so over the top gaudy. They used different colors of marble and it was really just – I hate to say it like this, but – kind of an eyesore in comparison to the simpler, brick buildings all around. My favorite church so far is still Cremona. Also in Siena we stumbled across a parade where a whole bunch of people just walked through the streets wearing Mickey Mouse hats and behind them was a marching band. Our waiter said it was to celebrate the victory of the horse race in 1609 (or 1604?). Not sure what Mickey Mouse had to do with that… We also ate ice cream and I’d forgotten how big the scoops are in Italy, so I’d ordered two, but stopped her after one. Her colleague was very impressed that an American wanted less of something instead of more and only charged me a euro instead of two. We also bought an olive wood wine holder for three bottles and talked the saleswoman down to Eur35 because there was a tiny chip in the wood. There were way more American tourists in Siena than anywhere else we’ve been so far. Siena also has a series of escalators that go from the bottom of the hill, at the giant city wall, to the top, where the gaudy cathedral is. That was pretty cool, as it’s actually in the mountain. The first one is open on one side and then it turns a corner and another corner and goes up for a long time. Back in the B&B, Flo and I just kept thinking how much my mom would like a place like that.

Day 5: Florence to Lago Trasimeno (Passignano)
Breakfast at the B&B doesn’t hold a candle to the one after our wedding, but that was quite extraordinary. Florence was not at all what we expected. It was dirty. The architecture was not impressive when you take into account the way the other cities look. There were way too many tourists. The galleries had too long waiting lines to bother going in unless you’ve actually planned a whole day to wait. Parts of the city smelled really bad. It seemed like the city as a whole knew dumb Americans would come there no matter what, so they made no effort to keep it nice. The cathedral (or basilica? What’s the difference?) is one of those baroque wonders where it’s three or four different colors of marble and extremely over the top, like in Siena, but even worse. I did like the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge), which had buildings along the edge of it, but sort of outside of it (kind of like little tumor houses), so the back sides of them were supported with poles going between the side of the bridge and the bottom of the house. The only dumb thing is the cute little buildings are mostly kitschy tourist shops selling gold jewelry and stuff. We did eat lunch there. We bought two sandwiches and iced tea at a grocery store and sat in the park. My feet (I wore my espadrilles) were killing me and I saw later that I got a HUGE blister (at least the size of a dime) on the ball of my foot. No fun. We also tried the famous Florentine tripe burger for Eur2,70. It actually wasn’t that bad if you didn’t look at it. Unfortunately we’d forgotten about it till after we’d eaten lunch and weren’t hungry enough to finish.
From there we drove toward Umbria and decided to stop early at Lago Trasimeno and have a relaxed evening. When we decided that it was 5 pm. By the time we found a campground, it was 6! We tried to find one where you could camp directly on the water, but it ended up we weren’t on shore anyway, but that was mostly because of two arrogant Italians and their annoying little white dogs, who hogged all the shore space with their giant camper. The campground was OK, but it only had two out of five tents in the rating system in our camping guide. The toilets and showers were not too stellar. We noticed driving into Umbria that they grow a lot of rocks there. Still many vineyards and olive groves, but we saw entire fields of just dirt and rock, plus the hills are hillier than the flatter parts of Tuscany; I guess because Umbria is in the Apennines. We went into town for dinner (after a bizarre trio of Frenchies set up camp next to us – who goes camping alone with their grandparents?). The town is called Passignano and we thought we’d walk a bit first. We walked along the water and then turned inland. We saw a big castle type thing on the hill and wanted to walk up to it. We found out later it’s called Rocca Medieval. So we had to go up. I LOVE hilltowns. We had to go up all kinds of stairs (good for staying fit) and through passageways and around corners. It was so amazing and chaotic and medieval the way the streets and alleys were laid out. For some doorways you had to go up a couple stairs to get in, for others down below the street level and then there were terraces and corners to front doors and windows onto the street. It’s so hard to describe. I hope our photos do it justice. The Rocca was closed for the night, but the walk up there was worth the whole trip. At dinner, it was fine. I had pesto, but it wasn’t as good as the pesto Flo had the first day in Cremona.

Day 6: Passignano to Perugia to Assisi
We went back to town today to go in the castle (Eur2 per person), but it was really just outer walls. No guts at all. Then we drove in the direction of Perugia. We stopped first at the tourist info office and got a map of the wine route, so we drove to one of the wineries on the route called Castello di Magione. It was open and a very friendly man was there. But the building! It’s a castle that belongs to the Knights of Malta. It was simply absolutely gorgeous and words don’t describe, so I hope also here that the pictures do it justice. I had a feeling when I got there like the building was really old and had seen a lot of history and when I get somewhere like that it just gives me shivers. We tasted two wines and bought a bottle of each – both from that winery, although they sell others as well. My bottle: Eur 12; Flo’s: Eur8. We also got to see their wine cellar, which was not as mysterious as I was expecting, but still had an air of magic in it.
Then we drove into Perugia. It was a bit difficult making out where we were and where we had to park to reach the center. We finally parked somewhere and walked up to the top. It was similar to Passignanao and Siena in layout and architecture with lots of stairs and alleyways and buildings seeming to connect to each other in the most unexpected of places. While Siena was red brick and the rest of Tuscany is yellow stucco, Umbria is gray stone and I love it. It has character. We ate lunch (I got eight pieces of ravioli for a buck apiece and was still hungry after. Stupid.) and drank an espresso. It went down quickly, but painfully. Many of the buildings seemed to be in the cellar (based on the vaulted ceilings), but were at street level… not sure why that. Perugia’s sign is the griffin, which I appreciate – anything with wings! We considered going in the art gallery, but didn’t have enough time. The shopping street is small; in fact the city seemed small, but big enough. They apparently have two universities there and a ton of students, but I didn’t notice an overwhelming obnoxious aura like near many universities. We saw a nun near the church, on the steps of which is where people hang out. We walked a bit out of the center to see a medieval garden we read about in Lonely Planet, but it wasn’t all we were hoping for. It was supposed to resemble the Garden of Eden somehow and have all these sign describing things like the Cosmic Tree (whatever that is), but first, it didn’t look like the Garden of Eden of my imaginations. It was too orderly, no organic chaos at all. Second, half the plants were in really bad shape, as in dead or dying. It looked like no one cared for them at all, when in fact, the garden is located at the back of a church where there also seemed to be a school attached, so actually there should be enough people around to take care of it. Third, nothing was in English, so we didn’t know what we were looking at. They may have described the Cosmic Tree, but we wouldn’t have known it! But it was still worth a little detour just to say we’d done something different.
Then we got in the car and drove to Assisi. We were afraid the basilica would be closed (according to Lonely Planet – oh how many times Lonely Planet led us astray this trip! But the edition is two years old.), but it wasn’t! We paid Eur1,05 for an hour of parking. Who comes up with a rate like that? We could go in an upper church and a lower church. Signs all over ask for silence, but most of the idiot tourists don’t pay attention, which I found extremely annoying. How many of the visitors even have a clue what they’re looking at, meaning it’s more than just a destination on the itinerary in their tour group list? We went downstairs to Frances’ tomb and both of us just sat there talking to God, not knowing the other one was. Most people just walk through (the tomb can be walked fully around, so most people lemming around to the right side and back out again) and that was that. God told me Frances was so extraordinary because he just tried to be like Jesus and didn’t consider fame or ranking with God. I could learn something about that. Some of Frances’ compatriots are also buried down there. You could buy a candle to dedicate to Frances, but you aren’t allowed to light it down there, just lay it at his tomb. That seemed like a bit of a rip off. As we went to leave, I suddenly felt the awesome presence of God and his love for Frances and I almost cried, it was so intense. Then we saw the little room full of his stuff (I believe the proper Catholic term for that is reliquaries or something like that.) – shoes, robes, etc – and went into the upstairs church, which was quite impressive for the decoration, not only the frescoes, but the pillars between the frescoes and every single detail. I also noticed many different saints had big elaborate statues with altars where you could pray and offer money and they were standing under a window or had a special niche. I saw exactly one statue of Jesus; it could have been cheap plastic, he had a plant and an electric candle and was shoved in the corner. No altar, no offerings. I don’t get that. Why honor people who serve the master more than you honor the master? Then we drove to the bottom of the hill and found a nice campground. Phew! What a full day!

Day 7: Assisi to Monopoli
I drove on this day. We left Assisi around 10:30 and probably the first two hours were on winding mountain roads heading east. We passed a bunch of people one the road selling onions, which I liked. We didn’t buy any, though. Just before we would get on the highway, we stopped for lunch. I think the town was called Civitta Vecchia, but I could be wrong. It was in Le Marche, one of the small provinces on the eastern coast of Italy. Le Marche, Abruzzo and Molise are provinces where we thought we just sort of skip over them for this trip, since mostly they’re good for the national parks and things that were not as important to us for this go ‘round. We parked near the sea and ate sandwiches on the beach. The water was relatively warm and it was a gorgeous day. The rest of the driving was Autostrada (highway) – the A14. It took about four hours to get to Monopoli; I have no idea how many kilometers that took and it cost almost 25 Euros! The Autostradi in Italy are toll roads and you can see they can get to be quite expensive. Twenty-five Euros is twice as much as the same amount of I-90 (from Albany to Buffalo) and in Italy you’re driving faster, so you’re actually going farther (or using more of the road, no matter how you want to look at it) – plus the Euro is worth more. That’s part of the reason we tried to avoid the highways. The other reason is that you don’t see anything from them. We enjoy driving on the smaller, albeit slower, roads, which wind through the countryside and towns. We reached our campground – the Atlantide – and pitched camp, then went into town to find a supermarket. We couldn’t! We wanted to buy meat, breadrolls, tomatoes and mozzarella. We couldn’t find meat or rolls anywhere! So we drove further into town where we noticed a few markets next to each other – as in, produce next to the butcher, but there was nowhere to park. This seemingly small town was jam packed with cars. We finally found somewhere to park and just sat down at a pizzeria directly on the town square. We’d given up on cooking for ourselves for the night. The price was quite good – around Eur16 for two pizzas and two beers. Flo’s pizza was good (four cheese, but with red sauce), but mine was awful. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a pizza that bad before. It was white, with ricotta forte (strong) and fresh tomatoes, but it had no spice. It wasn’t salty, no oregano, no pepper – nothing that pizza normally might have, just an overwhelming blandness infused with a stinky cheese ricotta flavor that was not at all the ricotta I’m used to and not at all pleasant. I couldn’t eat it. Neither could Flo and that’s saying a lot! Lucky for me, my prince shared his pizza with me.
Afterwards, we walked around the square and waited a bit for a performance to start. We’d noticed a stage and seating set up and by the time we took a turn around the park, the lighting and sound techs were there. It turned out to be a recital from a dance school – some hip hop, some ballroom, some flamenco, the works. We watched for quite a while. The whole thing started with Mickey and Minnie Mouse “dancing” to two songs. I really can’t understand the Italian fascination with Mickey Mouse. I think he’s annoying as all get out. Then one of the sponsoring shops had the kids do a little fashion show. Some of them were probably as young as four years old. They were supposed to walk out, pose, take the jackets off and walk back. Most of them couldn’t get their jackets off, which was funny enough. Then one little girl did the classic both-arms-up-jacket-over-the-back-of-the-head trick, which was hilarious. The dancers were mostly pretty good too. One group was three girls and one boy about five or six years old dancing the merengue. They were really cute!

Day 8: Monopoli Beaches
Today we did nothing. It was glorious! We got up late, put our swim stuff on and headed to the beach. Directly across the street from the campground is the coast, which on this part is mostly cliff with pockets of sand. A lot of people just sat in chairs atop the cliffs, which were of some kind of dark rock and extremely uneven. We considered that, but if you went down some stairs cut in the rock, there was a tiny bit of sand in an inlet. We parked ourselves there. The water was mostly warm, but too shallow there to swim, so we walked about four meters seaward (or yards, for you metric challenged Americans – oops! I’m one too!). The ground underwater was mostly not sand. It was some kind of rock or coral; I don’t know exactly what it was. It also wasn’t smooth. It quite hurt to walk on, actually. It was also difficult to balance. Then it just dropped off into this beautiful green-colored water. And so did we! It was a bit cold at first, but then really pleasant and we swam around one of the rock formations. The water was really clean despite the beach having been quite gunky. We saw a man cleaning a squid or an octopus in a bucket. The waves rolled pretty high and I liked that. The beach was littered with broken glass and we were very careful not to step on any on our way in and then I went and cut my toe on something coming back. But it wasn’t glass – we hadn’t gotten that far yet. It was one of those dang corals, I guess – jumped out and got me. It was really painful, but I didn’t actually figure out it was cut until the next day. It was on a part of my toe that I couldn’t see without practicing my contortionism. For the next several hours we laid in the sun reading and snacking and going for dips whenever it got too hot. I got tan and Flo got burnt. We talked to a Swiss guy who was also lying there. He was a bit odd – but aren’t all the Swiss? Around 3:30 it got a bit cooler, so we headed back and spent the whole afternoon evening reading and chatting. We cooked noodles and drank wine. Later on, we took a walk along the coast. The water seems saltier than the ocean, but perhaps only because I haven’t been in the ocean in a year. I feel like there’s so many small things I forget to write down, like the mosquitoes here (and there are many) have black and white striped legs. We saw a couple making out in the shadows on the beach.

Day 9: Castel del Monte to Basilica of St. Nicholas to Monopoli
Our day started off interesting. We’d been trying to call Vito (my cousin, who lives part of the year in Italy) the day before and kept getting some recording in Italian, so we decided to try at the office today if they could translate for us, because we didn’t know if we had his voicemail or the wrong number or what. The guy at the office didn’t speak German or English, but he happened to have another camper there who was German and could translate for me. So first, we had the wrong number and then Vito finally answered, so he didn’t have to translate anyway, but we ended up bringing him and his friend to the train station in Monopoli. They were from Cologne and were traveling around Italy on bus and train. They were also a bit odd.
Then we drove two hours to Castel del Monte, which Swabian king (or emperor? What was he, anyway?) Friedrich II built in 1240. It’s supposed to be fascinating and mysterious because it’s an octagon and has no kitchen, no moat and why was it built at all and why an octagon blah blah blah. So we got there and had to pay Eur4 for parking and to take a shuttlebus up the hill – no parking directly at the castel. Then it was another Eur6 (Eur3 each) to get in and what a rip off! It’s falling apart, it’s plain as can be, there is NOTHING left in it, there are about three signs that have English on them explaining anything and it’s quite tiny on the inside. The main attraction is a section of the floor that’s been preserved and that section is not even two feet square. The floor! When even the floor is no longer intact you know there ain’t much to look at. So I thought that was pretty disappointing. By the time we left there, it was 1:30 and I was starving, but we couldn’t find any restaurants. We mostly drove through olive groves. The earth is so red here and seems so dry, but they still grow olive threes. Also many fields had small fires in them, but we haven’t been able to figure out what they’re burning. I was impressed by the amount of stonework we saw. Stone walls for miles – but dry, no mortar – and in almost every field, these bizarre, round, stone huts, also dry. No clue what those were for. The fires smelled good. So do the olive groves.
After the castel, we drove into Bari and as we did, it began to rain – and HARD. And I thought, “Oh shit!” – we’d left stuff out at the campground! It would be all wet! Oh well, couldn’t change it then. There wasn’t too much we wanted to see in Bari anyway. Actually, Bosch has it’s Italian base in Bari, so we just wanted to see what the city and area are like, so we could imagine if we would ever want to live there. I did want to see the Basilica of St. Nicholas, otherwise known as Father Christmas. He’s buried there. He’s the patron saint of children and prostitutes. So we parked just outside it and waited for a break in the rain (five to ten minutes). We managed to get in without getting too wet. There were a lot of tour groups there. Directly inside is a room that seems to hold a lot of special stuff – sparkly, shiny, paintings and crosses and cups and candlesticks holders. I’m not actually sure what it all had to do with, but it was pretty. The church itself was gorgeous. It really looked different (which is saying a lot!). the walls were completely white and only the ceiling was painted and gilt. Also, they’d had to add three arcades to keep the walls from falling in, so it kind of separated the up from the down. I lit a candle. The tomb of Nicholas was downstairs and it was less reverent than that of Frances, but the room itself was neater. Long and low with vaulted ceilings and these lamps in every section hanging. Very groovy vibe. So from there we thought we just drive back to Monopoli, stop at the grocery store and go back for the day. All the grocery stores (we’d spied them out the day before, but it was too late to go to them then) were closed! Italians apparently close ALL the stores on Mondays. By this time I was famished. We finally found a café that had other food (oh yeah, every other restaurant was closed too) and ordered already made calzones (yummy!) and these fried rice ball things – also already made (yummy, but a bit dry). Then we each drank a cappuccino. Total: Eur10,80. at the table next to us were three older gentlemen shooting the breeze. Love it! Then we walked around the centro storico (historical center) and on the water – well, not literally on the water, but along the water. I fell in love with Monopoli (as chaotic as the not centro storico is…). We saw people buying fish directly off the fishing boat. We saw the rowing club practicing. We saw boys kicking a soccer ball against the walls of a church. The buildings were beautiful; there were men and boys fishing with poles; lots of boats; a tiny wine shop open – gorgeous weather…! Ah, love. We bought some bananas and nectarines at one of the produce shops we’d seen Saturday night and in a box outside, they had live snails for sale. Eew! They were creeping all over the place! I’ve maybe never seen something so disgusting in my life. When we drove back to camp, God had a great surprise for us – it hadn’t rained a drop all day in Monopoli and all our stuff was dry! Thank you Jesus! So we spent the evening packing up a bit and playing Scrabble. I won – and I didn’t cheat.

Day 10: Castellana Grotti to Alberobello to Lecce to Otranto
During the night we experienced one of the most thrilling, immediate thunderstorms of our lives. It really sounded like the claps of thunder were directly outside the tent and the lightning was so bright it seemed like daylight. I wondered what it would feel like to be struck by lightning. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t raining. Right around 5 am, Flo woke up and wanted to pack everything up before it started raining and just sleep the rest of the time in the car. As those of you who know me will guess, I wasn’t really up for that plan. So for the next two hours, I wondered what it would feel like to be struck by lightning and whether or not the tent would leak – oh yeah, it started to rain and in buckets.
Our plan for the day, after we packed everything up during a break in the rain, was to see a couple of other sights and then drive on the coastal road along the edge of the heel. First we stopped at the Castellana cavern. A little bit dumb was that we had to wait 45 minutes for the next short tour to start and it was expensive and then it wasn’t even in English. The choices were one hour, Eur10 at 11:30 in Italian or 1:00 in English, meaning ending at 12:30 or 2:00 OR two hours, Eur15 at 11:00 in English, meaning ending at 1:00. I was annoyed that it would take so long and cost so much, but eventually we went in. I actually thought it wasn’t so impressive. I could have skipped it and been fine. A cavern is a cavern is a cavern. You couldn’t touch anything, couldn’t take pictures, couldn’t understand the guide and she didn’t seem too motivated about her job anyway. She seemed more concerned that she look fashionable in her hood than that she be friendly.
From there we drove directly to Alberobello, which is the heart of Trulli country. A Trullo is a certain type of construction that somehow reminded me of a hobbit house. They’re squat, stubby, round houses with white walls and stone roofs. The story goes that they built them that way so they could take them back down within a day. The lord of the area didn’t actually allow them to have a city there, so they thought, well, if he comes to look, we’ll just take it down again and avoid punishment. It was a cute town, but I felt like I was in a theme park or something. EVERYTHING was about Trulli. We stopped in a photographer’s gallery/shop and every single image was of Trulli. How boring! So it was sort of neat to see, but I felt awkward there. They even had a Trullo church. We bought a bottle of cactus fig liqueur for ourselves, and one for Benni and Annka as a thank you gift for taking care of our fish while we were gone. Then we drove south to Lecce. We were quite expecting to like it there as it had been really strongly recommended to us. We found parking easily, which was nice, but there ended the niceties. We first wandered about a bit trying to find the tourist office. We walked past the Roman amphitheater and one of the columns that originally stood at the end of the big roman road from north to south. We saw a lot of shops selling papier maché figurines, but they were all so lifelike; it was pretty disappointing. Then we saw the church there, which was… unique. The Zimbala brothers designed it and it was simple in that it was monochromatic, but there was so much schnick schnack! And some of it looked like mythological monsters, not even Christian symbols. It was interesting. We walked around the castle, but couldn’t figure out how to get in. Lecce made an impression on me of being dirty. Then we left, basically. We drove and drove and drove and couldn’t find a campground that was open – many of them are only seasonal. We did run into a farmer herding some white, long-haired goats. That was fun. It seems like I must be forgetting a whole lot of stuff, but we didn’t notice a lot of new things today. I guess because we’re still in the heel, the topography hasn’t changed really. The earth is still this vibrant, burnt siena color and we noticed people burning something in the olive groves again, but otherwise… so we finally decided to try a bed and breakfast listed in Lonely Planet – Balconcino d’Oriente. I called and the woman had a room with two single beds for Eur55 per night. I had the address, but the navi didn’t have any streets for Otranto, where we were. We stopped and asked a couple of teens/young 20s. The girl thought the street wasn’t even in Otranto. Finally we asked at the tourist office and she drew on the map for us, but we had to go around this huge circuit every time we got lost – one way streets! (Senso Unico) So we finally found it and I ran in and she told me to go the opposite direction to find a parking lot where it would be free parking. After two go-rounds, we found it, but it was dark and a loooong way from the B&B, so we weren’t sure if it was the one she meant. We went back. I asked with the map if it was right. She said yes. I told Flo in the car. I went back in with the suitcase. She told me, “No! So sorry – there’s a market there tomorrow.” I told Flo. I went back in. She gave me a flyer from the B&B and said if we find a spot ON THAT STREET, then we put the flyer on the dash and don’t pay. We finally found one! So she showed us the room. First off, you go down three steps from the street to the reception. At the bottom of the steps is glass in the floor showing the early stone building basement or whatever. Then we went back outside and up the stairs at the side to our room. The door was on the left, then we turned right and left again was a door. That was our “courtyard” and then we had one room and bathroom. The shower window looked out onto the neighbor’s balcony. The bathroom was sweet. I liked it. Something we’ve noticed is the nice places have bidets and the not so nice places (restaurants, campgrounds) have no seats on the toilets. We got a recommendation for a restaurant (La Pignata) and went into town. We walked around and shopped a little first. We bought a ceramic bowl for ourselves – colorful! I really like Otranto. It has a big castle (as in The Castle of Otranto, from Horace Walpole) and a barbour… or wait, does it? It must. Flo says a tiny little one. So we walked along the water and looked at the whitewashed houses with beautiful container gardens and old people. The food was OK. I had orecchiette with broccoli rabe sauce, which was tasty, but EXTREMELY salty. I could barely finish it.

Day 11: Roca Vecchia to Gallipoli
We started by driving north 20 minutes (I know, total wrong direction) to see something we’d noticed in a guidebook, which was called Grotta della Poesia. It loked like a pirate cove and Flo was hell bent on seeing it, so we drove. There were NO signs and Roca Vecchia is a one-horse town, if not less. We drove straight through and couldn’t find it, so we asked at a french fry stand and they told us to go all the way back to the other side of town. We couldn’t find it, but we just decided to stop at an area where a few of the natives were sitting. We saw some guys snorkeling. So we both went in and snorkeled about. We went around a rock and under a small, small tunnel and I hit my head. I was already cold. We saw a bunch of fish, but none of them were really colorful. One of them resembled our siamensis, but as they come out of southeast Asia, I’m sure they’re not the same. It was interesting, but I got bored quickly – not enough colors. I got out and Flo stayed in. after a while, he came back really excited and said he’d found the grotto we were looking for originally. You could also reach it through a tunnel, so we went to look and it was really great! The water was so green! I decided to go back in after all, so I could see it from in the water. That didn’t last long, as I got cold again. I got out to change clothes and make some lunch. I hadn’t even started lunch when Flo got out too. We made some tomato-mozzarella salad and drank an espresso at the beach bar. There was a kitten who kept climbing in our car. We couldn’t keep her out!
Then we hit the road (it was already probably 1:30 or so) and drove along the coast to see as much of the heel as we could. It was absolutely beautiful. We saw so many small towns and dramatic cliffs and sandy beaches and twisty roads and interesting buildings. Once we had to stop and pee on the side of the road. There’s probably a lot I’m forgetting. Hopefully the photos remind me later. We reached Gallipoli around 5:00 and Vito and Anna (my cousin and his girlfriend) were there almost right away, so we met them. Shortly, we walked around town, then stopped at the store, went home and cooked, then went out for ice cream. They’ve been staying at a friend’s beachhouse two towns north of Gallipoli (Santa Maria al Bagno). Vito and Anna are very friendly and very good hosts. I’d actually never met Vito before. He’s my grampa’s cousin, which makes him my first cousin, twice removed. They are very generous hosts and fed us a feast before letting us sleep in the master bedroom.

Day 12: Santa Maria al Bagno
We’d invited to take Vito and Anna with us to Salerno instead of making them ride the bus, but that meant we had to wait an extra day and leave Friday instead of Thursday, so we spent the day hanging out, repacking the car, eating, chatting. We also went into town quickly to mail mom’s birthday card and go to the baker. On the way, we asked two guys at the side of the road where the post is and one of them spoke German and had even been to Esslingen! (If you know the system, you can see from our license plate that we’re from the district of Esslingen.) he looked like the rival thief in one of the Ocean’s movies – the one who has to steal the Faberge egg. Then, at the bakery, it only took me, the clerk and two customers to get what I wanted. But everywhere we’ve been we’ve come through. Then Flo and I took a walk in the evening. It was interesting to see that road going directly along the beach looked pretty run down – empty parking lots and shuttered ristorantes – but when we walked a block inland… some of those houses and yards were simply gorgeous! And that’s saying a lot in a country where most people don’t care what the outside looks like as long as the inside is nice.

Day 13: Gallipoli to Matera to Pontecagnano Faiano
We left about 10:30 in the morning with the car packed to the gills. We’d offered to drive Vito and Anna up with us and Anna said they only had two small suitcases. And they did – plus one backpack, two large bags and a giant purse. They were pretty squished in the back! But the weren’t complaining. I guess the bus wouldn’t have been any more comfortable. We made it to Matera within a couple of hours. Matera is in Basilicata, which is a province in Italy known only for its poverty. They also shot “Passion of the Christ”, from Mel Gibson, there, but I don’t remember it very clearly. It was fascinating, to say the least. They actually built homes in caves and then walled in the open side. Those are the primitive sassi. Many buildings are quite normal homes built into a hill. It’s sort of hard to describe (this is becoming a theme). Some of the buildings simply end in cliff face, much like Lichtenstein near Engstingen. None of the buildings are painted, so it makes a very homogenous impression. I thought it was beautiful and could imagine living there, except it’s so far away from everything. And while we were there, my grampa called to check on us! That was so sweet of him.
We saw the landscape change again from flat in Puglia to mountains. I guess they’re the lower Apennines. Then we reached Campagnia and our relatives. For those who don’t know, my great-grandmother came from Italy and we still have a whackload of cousins there whom I’d never met. Flo and I thought it would be fun to meet them, which is why we hooked up with Vito – he could translate for us and make introductions. The tree is something like this:

Anna + Cosimo (dec) had Gaetano, Antonietta and Massimo.
Gaetano married Tina and has Cosimo and Annamaria.
Antonietta married Benedetto and has Benedetto and Alfredo.
Massimo married Ida and has Massimo and a baby on the way.

Domenico is Anna’s brother and married Assunta. They have three kids, one of which is Francesco.

Rosetta is Anna’s sister and married Alberto. Their son is Candido, whose wife is Marianna and the baby is Alberto

So Anna, Domenico and Rosetta are siblings and my grampa’s cousins, which makes everyone on that list somehow a cousin of mine. It can get very confusing. Literally none of them speak a word of English. It’s too much writing who came when and what got said, so I’ll try to write at least my impressions.
Anna: She’s not silent, but she doesn’t say much either. She doesn’t address us directly, I guess because she thinks we won’t understand. She cooks amazingly well. She wants to feed us more and more all the time, but she seems to have learned that I can only eat so much. She’s a giant block of a woman, though not taller than average and she’s not particularly feminine looking, though I’ve only seen her in skirts. Her husband died about 15 years ago and Vito says she’s let herself go since then. She seems to still be mourning him. I think she has a warm heart. She was excited that we came and asked why nobody had come before she gave us her own bed and a bottle of homemade limoncello.

Gaetano: This is my Italian Jeremy – not because of something specific, just because of the way my heart reacts to him. He’s wonderful, always looking after everyone else and being sweet and handsome. When their father died, he should have gotten a certain apartment, but because his little sister whined, he gave it to her and took the one she should have gotten. (Oh yeah, it might be important to mention that Anna and Cosimo built a huge house with several apartments and now Anna lives in one and each of her three children live in one, plus have an extra one to rent out, or the restaurant that’s in the building, or land to farm, etc.) Gaetano (and his brother) are classic Italian looking with olive skin and black hair and broad shoulders. He stayed up with us the first night until his eyes got bleary. He showed us his racing bike (he used to road race and would have been world class, had he continued) and some pictures on the internet of stuff he thought we should see and he Google Earthed our house, so he could see where we live.

Tina: Gaetano’s wife is super friendly. She’s tall and thin and gentle. I think she’s beautiful, but looks like a real hotty when she does her makeup and everything. She’s a real family person and worries that her son will move away (he’s 16 and plays soccer). She takes care of an older woman in town and she was really good at speaking slowly enough that we could understand her a little bit – I mean, as much as we understand Italian at all. Their other child is a little girl, Annamaria. She’s five.

Antonietta: She’s a funny one – middle child between two boys. She dyes her hair a reddish color and does her nails with those fancy swirly designs. She’s evidently made a huge stink about her inheritance, feeling slighted, which is how she got the apartment that should have belonged to Gaetano. Her apartment is very stylishly decorated. I think she likes to look rich. She invited us for pizza one night and was very funny, but I get the feeling a little bit like it’s not totally genuine, like maybe she wanted to look good by having us over? She wanted to take us to the beach the next day and simply didn’t show up. That seemed odd. And she never apologized for blowing us off, or anything. Her husband, Benedetto, is also a little bizarre. He’s a hunter and I hope that didn’t influence my impression of him, but he seems sort of dangerous. He’s really, really funny, but I sort of felt like if you knew him well and got on the wrong side of his mood, you might be in for it. But then, that’s totally just an impression. Maybe he’s just a lamb, who knows? It was sometimes hard to tell the way people really are and the way I imagine them based on the associations they brought up and the things others said about them. Their two kids are Benedetto (17 and another soccer player) and Alfredo, who’s 14 or 15 and seems very friendly, but perhaps a bit nerdy.

Massimo: We didn’t see a lot of Massimo or his wife, Ida. Massimo still farms the land that Anna and her husband probably farmed back in the day, so maybe he was working a lot. He looks just like Gaetano and is also very warm and friendly. I have the impression those two guys are very capable and know how to take care of things. Ida is a sunny, open, little bit of a thing. Their son, Massimo, is about 10 and they have a punkin’ on the way.

Day 14: Vesuvio and Pompei
We got up early so we could get a good start on what promised to be a full day. Showering was interesting, as Anna has only a tub and a showerhead, but no shower curtain. Plus, the water shoots out the head in the normal direction as well as out backwards where the hose attaches to the head, so the trick is holding it properly so you don’t water the whole bathroom. I mostly managed. We were ready to leave at 9:00 when Vito came home from the store with all kinds of food for us for breakfast and to make sandwiches to take with us. We actually weren’t planning on that, but OK, it was nice of them to think of it. They were all convinced we wouldn’t have enough time to see everything we wanted to see in one day and couldn’t believe we hadn’t left earlier.
We drove to Vesuvius and walked the last 800-1,000 meters up the mountain. It was a beautiful drive. The area around the volcano is a national park, so it was mostly trees and nice views of the coastline. We also saw some bizarre sculptures along the drive in the park – like a giant head or a giant torso. Flo paid Eur6,50 and I Eur4,50 and then we paid a couple bucks for parking. Walking up was quite exhausting; I don’t think because it was so steep or long, but maybe the air was thinner? I actually have no idea how high up one is on Mount Vesuvius, but thin air will be my excuse. We heard a TON of Americans. At the top are a couple of gift shops selling postcards and fairies carved out of lava. I actually expected to see molten lava in the cone – it is an active volcano, right? But I was disappointed. It’s just dust and ashes. It was cool that you could see how the force of the last eruption blew the walls straight inside the cone. They don’t really go gradually down to the center, but really are vertical until the bottom and then there’s a little dip in the floor. There was some steam coming out of one area of the wall and some rocks slid down, which we overheard a guide saying was a real treat to see that, but frankly I found the whole thing quite boring and disappointing. We probably spent more time just walking up than we did at the summit. Then we went back down again and I paid 50 cents to use a Portapotty. Flo says the man looked pretty astounded that I actually wanted to look in the potty before I paid, but I mean, come on, I’m not paying for something only to find out too late that it’s unusable!
Then we drove to Pompeii. Gaetano was really worried about the car, since we would be near Naples. At Vesuvius it didn’t look dangerous at all. In Pompeii, we decided to go in a parking lot that said “safe” on the sign (for Eur3 per hour it should be), but on the ticket it said in fine print that they’re not responsible for theft or damage of the car or accessories, so I’m not sure what’s up with that. We ate our sandwiches and walked across the street to get in to the ruins. We got to the entrance and discovered our great luck – it was free! That day and the next they weren’t charging admission because of European Culture Days. We didn’t even know it before we got there! So we saved ourselves Eur22. Armed with a free map and Lonely Planet, we headed in. we’d been told it was huge and to expect to take a long time. Well it is huge. I mean, it’s a city. Or was. I think I read once about Pompeii, that when it was discovered, they could see bodies and furniture and utensils or tools. I’m sure some of it got carried off with the lava, but some of it stayed there, as far as I know. You wouldn’t know it by what you see when you visit today. Only the most intact of buildings have ceilings, the frescoes have been almost completely destroyed or plundered, there is NOTHING remaining in any of the buildings… again, relatively boring and disappointing. I feel like a heretic for even thinking that, but I was expecting so much more! When they say ruins, they really mean ruins. We often couldn’t even tell if the two to three foot high crumbles of wall that we were looking at belonged to different rooms of one house or if they were all tiny houses next to each other. Where had there been doors and where was it just so dilapidated it looked like a door? What I did like were the streets. They even have names, to help with navigation. Anyway, the streets appear sort of sunken, because it’s higher to the “sidewalk” than on a modern day curb and then at some of the bigger intersections, they have gigantic stones that form a sort of crosswalk. I’d say about six people could sit for a rest on each crosswalk stone. So they have four or so of these stones across the street and then you just step on those to get from block to block, instead of stepping a foot down into the street and walking across. I liked that. We tried to just look at some of the highlights, because everything else was basically bare and ugly. Highlights included:
- a park next to the arena/amphitheater. It was the only green thing in sight for what seemed like miles. Back in the day it would’ve overlooked the sea.
- a rich guy’s house. We attached ourselves to a tour group in English for this house. It had a nice sort of atrium place right in the middle of the first floor with a hole in the roof. Rainwater collected there. They had a replica of a safe that stood there and could point out where the kitchen, bathroom and slaves quarters had been. Also, the walls and floors were mostly intact (although I’m highly suspicious of how much is original and how much done to look like original).
- – a different rich guy’s garden. It was just a garden and no one knows what plants he really had, but there were nice mosaics in the ground and a statue of a faun (supposed to bring good luck)

Then we went home. We were back by 4:30, which shocked everyone there, because we were so fast. So they fed us (pasta and roast beef cooked in the pan) and we went to meet Alberto and Rosetta.
Rosetta: This is Anna’s sister and they couldn’t be more different. While Anna rarely speaks and then doesn’t address us directly, Rosetta wanted to talk to us non-stop, but it was more like a yell. And Vito said she behaved herself during the visit. Perhaps she’s hard of hearing. She’s shorter and thinner than Anna, and dresses herself a tick more fashionably (which is still a far cry from a Sophia Loren kind of Italian grandma), but has the same straight eyebrows Anna has – not, however, the same almond-shaped eyes of Anna. She was also good about speaking to both of us (often times people only talk to me and not Flo) and slowly enough that we could figure out what she wanted to say. She showed us her whole house and apologized that it’s so small. She wanted to feed us, but settled for candy and coffee.

Alberto: As Rosetta’s husband, he’s only married in to the whole clan, but I could totally take him for an extra grandpa! He has a big, long nose and glasses and wore a grampa sweater, although it was really too warm for one. He and Rosetta were farmers their whole lives and still keep a pig (raise and kill one every year) and rabbits (for eating) and have a garden with all kinds of vegetables. They make ham and bacon and such things from the pig – we saw a leg hanging up that would hang there for another four years. It was completely moldy and nasty looking, but when it’s done curing, they wash it in wine and it’s supposed to be yummy. They also make wine (of course) and we didn’t drink any, but it’s supposed to be good – the best in the family. We saw a huge barrel of grapes fermenting. They would do that for a day longer and then be pressed – he showed us his winepress as well. We think Vito told us Alberto would get 200 liters of wine out of the vat we saw. We left with two bottles of wine – Barbera, which someone assured us is a very good and normally expensive wine – and a homemade salami.
Then we went back to have pizza at Antonietta and Benedetto’s. They went and brought it to their place. So the six of us ate and it was fun, but of course Vito had to translate everything. I sort of had the feeling after like they knew all about us, but not we about them. We laughed a lot, which I always think is a good sign. We drank a lot of wine, partly because Benedetto just keeps filling glasses and doesn’t take no for an answer. He showed me his hunting rifle and we made a lot of jokes. Antonietta invited us to go to the beach the next day from 10-12 and offered to do my nails for me.

Day 15: Beach at Pontecagnano and the town
10:00 came and went without Antonietta. Vito finally found her in her apartment. She’d decided she had too much to do and wouldn’t go to the beach, but never mentioned that to us. So at 10:30 or 10:45 the four of us finally decided to go without her (instead of Flo and I using the day to drive along the Amalfi coast, as had been originally planned). We drove off and Vito told us where to go. We parked in a side street that had a bunch of garbage in it, but there was another care there, so we figured it would be alright. It actually wasn’t beach weather, so Flo was the only one who really went in. Anna did some power walking up and down the beach, but mostly we stood with our feet in the water and talked. We saw some guys training their horses running up and down the beach, but not jockeys. They had the little carts behind. Vito said there’s a racetrack nearby. There were also a whole bunch of fishermen there. We’d told the other Anna we’d be back between 12 and 12:30, so just as we were about to go, some people came running and shouting that an Audi had been broken into. Of course. So here’s what apparently happened: some gypsies (two men and a fat woman) smashed air back window with a loud pop and had just moved the cover back to look around when the shady-looking people who live in the shell of a house next door heard them and came running to see what was up, because they know that sort of thing happens all the time. They scared the gypsies off and nothing was stolen, but the window was broken. So we drove home and waited for Gaetano. Somehow we all assumed he would know what to do. And Anna fed us – rabbit, this time, that she’d killed in the morning. I’d never eaten rabbit before. I liked the taste, but I found it to be stringy. I don’t know if that’s just how she cooked it.
Flo and I relaxed for a bit and then cleaned the car out – brought all of our stuff inside, washed the cloth things that had gotten glass on them (like my pillow case) and got all the glass out of the car. Antonietta was working outside and didn’t even apologize – neither for the car nor for blowing us off. I have to say that made a really bad impression. Gaetano finally came and said he had a friend he would call who worked somehow for Audi. That guy came and took the number of the car to check if his garage would have the right window and said we should bring it in the morning. Then we went walking.
We walked to the home of Anna’s brother, Domenico and his wife Assunta. They have three kids, but we only met the one who lives at home, Francesco. He’s mid 20s and mentally handicapped. They seem to be a bit lower on the economic scale. He owns and runs a fruit and veg store in another town. Their apartment was clean, not very big and furnished in a quite outmoded (although somehow typically Italian) style. None of them were at all fashionable. I had the impression Asunda particularly had lived her life for her kids and never really looked after herself, but she didn’t seem embarrassed either, which I appreciated. She was extremely friendly and spoke slowly and clearly, so we could understand her. She’s very short and has a serious overbite. Domenico is quiet, but after he listens, he says something and we had the feeling you should listen to what he says. Francesco was born normal and only became handicapped as a small child after some sort of virus or illness.
After we left them (where we, of course, were served espresso) we simply walked around town a little bit. We saw a couple of big villas and the downtown part. We stopped at the bakery. Flo got a rumbaba (rum cake), a specialty of the region (and boy was it rummy!) and I got a tiny tart – basically a pie crust with vanilla pudding filling and kiwi on top. It was very tasty. We walked around town for quite a while. It was a nice night. Then we went back and three of us (not Anna) ate some vesper, basically. Vito made salad (tomatoes, olive oil, oregano and probably salt and pepper) and we had salami (not a kind I really liked) and a meat somewhere between ham and bacon and also had buffalo mozzarella and two other cheeses (Asiago and Parmesan). I didn’t have any bread and actually, I liked it much better than normal German vesper. I’m in total heaven eating so often and so late at night!

Day 16: Salerno
We got up quite early today so we could bring our car to the garage. The plan was to drop it off there (halfway between Pontecagnano and Salerno), take the bus into Salerno and spend the day there until the garage called saying the car was done. When we drove there, Vito pointed out where he used to live as a kid. The buildings look pretty run down now. They had stables across the road, which look like private garages now a river that he used to fish in every day. That river barely has any water in it now.
When we dropped the car off, the friend of Gaetano already had the window ordered from another garage and he thought the car would be done around 4:30. we walked a few minutes to the next bus station and got on the first bus that came – Eur1,10 got you 90 minutes on the bus network. It turned out that bus didn’t go where Vito thought it did, but then we realized we have all day and no plan, so we could ride around and get off anywhere. Where we did get off was the mains hopping strip in Salerno, (Corso Vittorio Emanuelle II), but that mostly because around the corner was a store specializing in rumbaba, which Anna is crazy about. I tried one with a lemon filling (but no extra rum splashed over it) and it was quite tasty. I’m just not very fond of the consistency – they’re all mushy from being soaked in run.
On the shopping strip, we looked in all the windows. It seems no matter how small or poor-seeming the town/city in Italy, it only has high-end designer shops. Flo and I went in a bookstore looking for a thank you card and didn’t find that, but did buy a pocket dictionary English-Italian. I really wanted to try communicating with my family without Vito. From there, the street leads directly into the historical center of the city. I bought a postcard for Nanny and Grampa. We wandered about and looked in shop windows and headed toward the water. First we went into a little park. It was little, but I guess it would be one of my favorite places in the city if I lived there. It had beautiful grass and palm trees and different kinds of flowers. It was very well kept and the best word that comes to mind to describe it is “lush”. We’d gotten hungry, so around 11:45 or 12 we started looking for a restaurant. Vito didn’t seem to like that. He thought we should eat later in the day, at 1 or 2, but we didn’t really care – we were hungry! Between the four of us, it was hell trying to choose a restaurant, so Flo and I finally just did. We sat outside and it was a beautiful day. I had past fagioli and the portion was actually quite alright. Because Italians eat pasta as a first course and meat or fish as a second course, sometimes the pasta dishes can be quite small, but like I said, this one was pretty big. Still, because I love pasta fagioli so much, I could’ve eaten a whole nother plate!
Afterward we walked to the water and Vito wanted to show us the barbour, but they’re doing a massive construction job and the old way to get there was blocked off. We had to walk all the way around and when we got there, we realized it still wasn’t the right thing. We’d landed in the Coast Guard harbour! They gave us some funny looks, but left us alone. So we walked all the way back. Flo and I decided it would be good siesta time. The waterfront in Salerno has a long stretch with grass and trees and every so often a fountain or statue and bench along the whole length. It’s quite nice, actually. The construction they’re doing looks like sort of adding on to or improving that bit. So we sat down with the newspaper Flo had bought (the Süddeutsche Zeitung) to find out who our next chancellor would be (Angela Merkel). The election had taken place a full week before. Anna couldn’t take the sound of the construction, so she and Vito went farther down. It was possibly our most peaceful hour since we’d met them, since we were actually alone. It was lovely! As we got up to go, we saw an old man with a thick moustache pull up on one of those old military motorcycles. It looked like a rat bike, but without all the crap attached. He had a matching skull cap helmet and a little white Maltese dog on the gas tank. I spent the walk to where Vito and Anna sat trying to imitate the putta-putta noise of his engine. We rejoined them and immediately sat down in the next cafe for a cup of coffee, by which I mean, of course, espresso. Then we went back across the street to check if the bus stop there had the right bus for us. It did and came almost right away, so we got on and rode back to the Audi garage. 410 Euros later, the car was like new, but actually the glue still had to set, so we could drive home and that was it for the day. So we did. On the way home, we stopped in Pontecagnano to buy flowers as a thank you for Anna. Flo just pulled to the side at the first florist we saw and I jumped out with the wallet and the dictionary. i went in and ordered a bouquet of pink lilies from a man who looked more like a butcher than a florist. As he was binding it together, Vito came in and seemed a bit taken aback. Evidently Anna sent him after me to make sure I could get what I wanted, but then he didn’t seem to know what to say when I already had everything under control. So he talked to the guy in Italian, telling him not to charge me too much. It was only Eur8 for three or four lily stems. I guess it would be at least Eur12 in Germany, but the flowers we bought Anna were bigger and fresher. It annoyed me for three reasons that Vito did that. 1: I would gladly pay what the man asked. It’s his business. 2: it was for Anna. If she would have accepted our money (which was no good in Campagnia), we would have given her much more. 3: Vito knew the shop and that guy’s dad, so he should have been able to trust him. I thought the shop was neat. In Germany and America (and I’m sure many shops in Italy), the florists try to make everything perfect. This was basically a bare room (sort of like a storage room or work room) with cut flowers in their buckets on the right and plants in pots on the left and that was it. Completely unadorned. When we went inside and gave Anna the flowers and said thank you, she smiled so big! I hope I never forget that smile. She said she would put them on her husband’s grave, which seemed to make her really happy. It felt good to make her smile like that. Then in the evening, we went out to dinner with Vito, Anna, Tina and Gaetano. Six people had to ride in two cars, so Flo and I rode with Tina. We brought our little dictionary and did our best to talk to her on the way. We found out she’s a caretaker for an old woman in town. Gaetano is a plasterer and painter. he actually did a lot of work on one of the big, nice villas Vito had pointed out to us. He’d shown us some of what he did in his own apartment and I loved it about him that he always tried to tell us about himself – his work, his bicycle racing. He’s so great. They’d ordered antipasti for everyone to share, which was good, because it gave me time to decide on a meal. Those antipasti were so good! I think there were at least ten different plates. One platter had different bacons and hams (or prosciutto, if I want to be correct) and salami, as well as mozzarella. There was bruschetta, one with tomato and one with some green spread. There were vegetables – two or three different kinds. There were these fried rice balls and French fries. There was probably more, but I can’t remember it all. And it all tasted so good! And I was so full after it! So instead of ordering individual meals, they just ordered different kinds of pizza and everyone could take what he wanted. I tried one with potatoes and mushrooms on it and one with bacon and some green stuff. They were both very good. I felt after the meal like I knew them a little bit, which I was hoping for, like we’d made some effort and at least laid the first brick to build a relationship. We made sure we said that we have a guest room and they can come visit us.

Day 17: Amalfi Coast to Tuscany
We got going around 10 (10:30?) this morning after taking a couple of pictures and packing the car. We wanted to drive along the Amalfi coast and see some of what is known to be Earth’s most lovely views. Gaetano was worried that our car would be too wide for the road, but we just took off – throw caution to the wind! The road is ALL S-curves back and forth along the edge of the cliffs, every now and then passing through a town. It was so beautiful. I just kept taking pictures, knowing they would all look the same later, but not wanting to let a single impression go. The whole area had something rugged about it. We were wondering how people got medical help quickly if they needed. There was nowhere to land a helicopter and a boat would only be fast coast to coast. Every now and then on the coast side was a really small parking spot for a car or a gate with stairs going down to a house. I also saw a big, flat basket on a wire going between a house and the parking spot at the street. I thought that was quite clever. Much of the countryside was terraced vineyards and gardens – olive trees, of course. One thing I loved was when a house was on the cliff near the road and stairs led up to the front door. They led straight from the street to the door, but parallel to the road, not perpendicular. I can’t really think of that much to say as far as description, just that it was absolutely stunning. I don’t think words would ever do it justice anyway. One time we were about to go through a very short tunnel that ended in a sharp curve and what comes around the corner but a bus! And it wasn’t stopping either. We tried to back up, but of course there were cars behind us and so it took a long time, but the bus driver didn’t stop! It was really quite hairy and I honestly was afraid we’d get a giant scratch and dent along the whole car, but nothing happened after all. Tina had highly recommended Positano and actually I’d read that it was really touristy and would’ve skipped it, but because she so glowed about it, I thought maybe we stop there. Well, actually, we’d already stopped for maybe 15-20 minutes in Maiori, a very small town. We bought a croissant filled with apricots (very yummy) and a sugared dough thing (also very yummy) for breakfast and walked up and down the boardwalk. So, back to Positano. We parked quite above the town, because you could drive into town, but we weren’t sure what the parking situation was and it would’ve taken forever to go around again (one way streets). Then we just walked down into town. It was nice and not really that far. They’ve painted white lines on the side of the street (like a crosswalk) that serves as a sidewalk. Every now and then it crosses the street and continues on, the whole way down. The street is very narrow and I guess having a proper sidewalk would make it simply too thin. We walked past a school, complete with school bush, which I thought was neat. Germany doesn’t have school buses. We saw a lot of shops and you could tell it’s a tourist town, because most of them didn’t close for the siesta. Oh yeah, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that yet. Everything in Italy closes around 1:00 and doesn’t open again until 4:00 or 5:00. Unfortunately for us, we got really hungry a couple times right around 3:00 and couldn’t find a single restaurant open. That took a little getting used to. Anyway, in Positano the shops were mostly quite high end, nicely designed, nicely priced (if you’re rich), full of nice things. One store we went in had all things lemon – cookies, candles, soaps, limoncello – and even a woman dressed like a giant lemon. Well, not literally, but her dress was a print of lemons, she had a lemon yellow apron and crocs on and a lemon yellow hat decorated with lemons. To be honest, it was silly. The store was very boutique-y and her kitsch didn’t really seem to fit and it was hard to take her seriously. We saw a church there (of course) and there is a sand beach, but I guess the biggest draw of Positano is the quaintness of the town itself and the shopping. All the hotels looked quite nice and we were wondering how expensive they are, particularly because there is no place with a bad view. Everything is built so steeply that everywhere seems to have a view of the sea. In fact, I even saw some places where houses were built over each other and each had a balcony, so the balconies were sort of layered and each one was huge and beautiful without disturbing the one above or below. The whole Amalfi coast sells a lot of ceramics. We saw while we were driving what we can only assume was a graveyard, but honestly, everything seems to be rock there, so I don’t know how they bury anyone. But there were a lot of stone archways and so we assume that’s what it was. We heard an astounding number of Americans in Postiano. I didn’t even know Americans knew the Amalfi coast exists! The places where we heard them the most were there, Vesuvius/Pompei and Florence/Siena. Everywhere else we heard mostly Germans, if not Italians.
Then we drove up to Tuscany, to Castiglione della Pescaia. It took much longer than we’d anticipated, probably because with our stop in Positano, the Amalfi coast took twice as long as expected. Castiglione della Pescaia is on the coast and we purposely chose a campground on the beach – Baia Azzurra. The girl at registration was really cute and really helpful and fluent. She was a little pudgy with messy brown hair and giant, fashionable glasses. She was fluent in Italian, English and German and really friendly. We decided to eat at the campground restaurant, but we were so late we only had pizza. Mine was really good. I had sausage! A great thing about Italy is they have Italian sausage and it all tastes good – not like in Germany, where all sausages taste like hot dogs. We set up the tent in the dark and went to sleep.

Day 18: Tuscany to Milan
We packed everything in the morning and went to the beach for a couple hours. It was a gorgeous day with a warm, blue sky. There were a lot of families with little kids on the beach. There was no lifeguard, but a sign that said swimming is dangerous because of “missing life services”. I thought that was a funny way of putting it. Op – where’d they go? There was a cliff on one side and the earth was really red. You could walk a long way into the ocean without really getting in. it was quite shallow. The water wasn’t actually too cold. With that swim it was the fourth sea we’d been in: Adriatic in Monopoli, Ionian in Gallipoli, Tyrrhenian in Pontecagnano and Ligurian in Tuscany. We knew we had to drive quite a way to Milan, so we left around 1:00 or 1:30 and stopped at a roadside restaurant where there were no menus and no one who spoke English. The waitress rattled off a list of options that even if I understood Italian, it would have been too fast. We ordered spaghetti with tomato sauce and paid an inordinate amount of money for that, a bottle of water and two espressos – Eur24! Crazy! Of course she didn’t list prices when she listed the menu. So we went on and drove to Milan, where we could only find one (expensive) campground, but figured it would still be cheaper than a hotel. It was, uh, interesting. It had all the stuff for a top campground – bar, toilet paper, wifi – and at the front were all these richy rich campers with BMW SUVs and Landrovers and then way at the back, where there were no bathrooms and no electricity, they had spaces for tents. That’s where we were – in the sale rack. Oddly enough, they had all these wealthy people and at the same time a couple of sheep, a handful of goats, a troupe of bunnies and a whole bunch of fowl. We thought that was really bizarre, but kind of cute. There was only one other tent in the section and it was very quiet until laaaaate at night when some jackass drunk guys came back and turned their radio on and started shouting and laughing and singing. I was so mad! It had already taken me a long time to fall asleep and then that. I hate to say it, but it made me feel pretty good when we got up early in the morning and made all kinds of noise packing things up – and right next to the picnic table where on of the drunkards was sleeping!

Day 19: Milan to Filderstadt
So we went into Milan and found some expensive parking – Eur5 per hour! We went first to the National Museum of Science and Technology, since we were parked quite near it. We wanted to go there because they have a whole section on da Vinci, where they’ve built models of many of the machines and contraptions he designed. That was pretty cool! None of the models was huge, but they were quite detailed and they showed representations of his drawings and explained how they work and partly for what specific purpose or person they were designed (to redirect the Arno for Count So and So in year XXXX). They also showed supplicates of much of his anatomical drawing, topography, music and instruments he studied… we decided da Vinci was an übergeek – there seems to be nothing he wasn’t interested and knowledgeable in, as well as good at. We didn’t see absolutely all of the museum, but we saw rooms devoted to jewelry, TV, radio, globes, clockmaking, musical instruments. For some of the topics (like jewelry), they had a little workshop set up with the tools, what one would look like. What I thought was really good was the design of the museum (housed in an ex-monastery). Each topic had its own design for presentation, basically, with its own colors and level of schnick schnack and layout. For instance, in the part about TV, the spaces were divided by white “boxes” hung between the walls, but they were really only a suggestion of a box. I guess that doesn’t even really make sense, but it gave me the idea that museum guests were the people in a box, which I simply found clever.
From there we headed to the center of the city, where the Duomo is. Now, after three weeks in Italy, you’ve seen a lot of churches of all different styles and surely one is bound to strike your fancy. I liked many of the ones we saw, but I really liked this one. It’s Gothic architecture and only one color and has about a gazillion statues. As a woman, you have to have your knees and shoulders covered to go in and they have army guys with guns checking bags at the door. That seemed a bit overkill. I mean, if AC Milan were playing, I could understand it at the stadium, but at the church? We saw little kids having their art class outside in the square – sitting on the ground drawing the church. I loved the floor. It was a big, bold design in several different colors of marble. And the best part about the Milan Duomo is you can go on the roof! For a piddly Eur5 (Eur8 for the elevator) you can climb 169 stairs to the first level or 250 stairs all the way to the top. There you can overlook the city from between the spires and the saints. It was definitely worth the money. There were all kinds of people up there, taking pictures of themselves and each other as souvenirs, getting angry at the other tourists when they were in the shot. I found it amazing again and again how people could visit a church and for them it was just a nice building or an amazing feat of human achievement, but they didn’t think at all about honoring the one for whom the whole thing was built. Just like in Assisi, they had signs asking for silence and barely anyone obeyed. Sad. Flo and I were commenting how no one builds something like that anymore. There is no ornamentation nowadays, no small details that make a railing into a work of art, nothing extra – everything modern is so sleek and simple and in some ways I guess it has its beauty, but it’s hard to recognize any emotion, passion or love in such design.
After the Duomo we ate some lunch. Flo had Burger King and I had the Italian version of Sbarro’s – my last piece of Italian sausage pizza!
We stopped at the tourist info office, because we’d read that they had a map showing where all the designer outlet stores are, but they didn’t have such maps anymore. The woman wrote on a map where two of them were. They were in complete opposite directions from each other and from the car, so we chose the one that was closer to the car and to which we would have a nice walk through the park. So we walked along a pedestrian shopping street and then into the park, at the entrance of which is an old castle. It was quite nice. I’d read that Milan has many different styles of architecture and I found it to be true, but while the writer found that to be pleasant, I found it to be somewhat unsettling. So anyway, the castle thingy was nice. I think there were museums or something inside, but we didn’t go in. We walked straight through to the park. You can tell a lot about a city by its parks. (Vienna, for instance, seemed almost like more park than city – and beautifully kept.) The park in Milan was very nice. It was clean and there were a lot of people in it walking or picnicking or napping. I always think that’s a good sign if the locals want to be there. I had said to Flo that if we lived in Milan, he could always find me at the top of the Duomo and he quickly remarked after reaching the park, that if I weren’t on the Duomo, I would be in the park. He’s right. There was some water in the park; unfortunately most of it was standing and a bit dirty, but I think it’s probably not always like that. In the middle of the park we came across a little car that sold espresso and I don’t know what else. Two old men sat next to it playing cards and not far away, three more old men sat on a bench shooting the breeze. We’d been impressed the whole time with the old men who sit around kibitzing. We thought they were really funny and could totally understand my grampa, how he knows everyone around him and chit chats and knows all the town gossip. There doesn’t seem to be much else for them to do, so they sit and talk. Not a bad life. Flo got a coffee in a little plastic cup and we sat for a few minutes.
Then we kept walking and finally found the Emporio Isola and went in. The salespeople were very Pretty Woman. They didn’t seem to want to greet us or help us. Oddly enough, most of the clothes we saw were more fit for a woman over 40 than for someone my age. Plus, Italian sizes are different and I don’t know what size I am and some of the things really were affordable, but many were really not. Then I looked at the jeans and they were all really ugly! They had bling or stupid designs or washed out patches. I would have felt like one of those bottle blonde, plastic surgery, overrich cougars they constantly show on German TV, trying to recapture a youth I never had. So we didn’t buy anything. I can’t believe I didn’t buy a single thing to wear in the city or country of fashion. Oh well. I suppose I’ll have to go back.
And that was the trip. Then we drove home. We stopped about a million times for gas and drove past the Matterhorn. We ended the trip with 100,500 km on the car – which means we drove 4,500 km in three weeks.
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned how many stray cats and dogs Italy has. They were everywhere and just hung out. No one seemed to mind them, either. They didn’t seem malnourished.
I also can’t remember if I explained why there are so many empty, unfinished houses in the countryside. It’s because culturally, Italians do that. They want to build a gigantic home, where their families will live with them and they don’t count the cost before building, so then they run out of money and just leave the construction where it is. And still real estate prices are rally high – at least as high as in Germany. And we found out that having a living room with windows facing in two directions is so desirable and rare enough that they actually list it in the description for sale. I found that interesting.
We also found out that the fires in the olive groves are started by the farmers. They rake up all the debris and burn it so that when the ripe olives fall to the ground, they’re easy to collect.
All in all, I think I could imagine myself living in Italy (a question we ask ourselves of every country we visit). It would be a bigger culture adjustment than it was moving to Germany, even though parts of Italian culture are so similar to what I grew up with. The chaos, the siesta, the garbage (have I mentioned how Italians throw their garbage everywhere?), all these things are a bit different from what I’m used to. But I think I could get used to it (past fagioli!) and maybe even learn to love it (daily napping – eating at midnight – pasta fagioli!). What a wonderful trip.

And so, the 20th of September – signifies the completion of the unification of Italy!

and…

Dominic!

Our neighbors had their eighth baby this morning around 4 a.m. and his name is Dominic. That makes exactly 4 sons and 4 daughters. We don’t have any more details yet, but mom and baby are both doing well.

Thought 2:
They sell yoghurt here in Germany that’s marzipan with poppyseed! For some people I know that would be like dying and going to heaven! You can even buy it in a big jar.

Thought 3:
Sports teams have salary caps. (For the unsporty among our readers, that means each team is only allowed to pay a single player a certain maximum sum, which is supposed to keep the teams competitive, in case one team can’t pay as much total for its players.) Why doesn’t banking and stocks simply have a salary cap for their big bosses? No extra bonuses, no over-ridiculousness. I mean, sports players and finance guys get paid ridiculous sums anyway, but a cap should help, shouldn’t it?

Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoUsV74MZWA

The last time I picked raspberries was when I was still young enough that Jeremy and I spent summers at my Gramma Drowne’s house and she actually still had raspberry plants in the garden. That was, oh, ages ago. And I’ve thought all these years since, that I don’t really like raspberries. I was wrong.

I actually only agreed to go picking because my husband loves berries, but then I got there and tasted the first one. Now I know that I do like raspberries. It’s just that Gram’s fresh berries ruined me all those years ago for anything less. I can’t stand the ones from the store. They’re always sour. So I picked 1.5 kilos of raspberries (3 pounds) for 6 Euros and went happily home. My goodness what a pleasure that was.

I also picked up a great tip from Rahel (the neighbor). She told me that if you get raspberry on your clothes (or your kids do, so moms out there – listen up) you just soak the stain in milk overnight and wash the article like normal. She doesn’t even worry a bit if her kids get all messy with raspberries. I tried it out. I laid the berries out on kitchen towels yesterday to dry after I’d washed them and the towels were covered in berry stains after that. I put milk on them, let them sit overnight, just pulled them out of the washing machine and there’s not a red or pink smudge to be seen. She says it works on all red fruits – cherries, strawberries, etc.

Also, on a totally different, random note: I’ve finally seen a Jackie Chan movie that I liked. Fittingly, it’s one he made in China, meaning it’s NOT a Hollywood blockbuster, in which he always plays a martially artful idiot. In this one he actually has a character, gets to kick people’s butts and has to act. Shocking, I know. Maybe he’s just better at it in his own language. Anyway, the English title is New Police Story and it came out five years ago. Check it out.

“Ik hev man jüst anfungen to schnaken, dor wuß hei schon, dat ik ut Tängstedt bün.” Ich dachte es wäre Niederlandisch und habe aufgegeben. Nächstes Beispiel.

“Ich han bloß e paar Wööt jesacht, un do het dä ald mitkreje, dat ich us Kölle bin.” Ich habe es nicht mal versucht. Nächstes Beispiel.

“I han bloß a baar Wort’ g’sagt, ond scho hot der mitgriagt, dass i von Schduagerd ben.” Ach! Das verstehe ich! Das verstehe ich absolut ohne Probleme! Wie peinlich – ich werde langsam doch schwäbisch!

And now for those of you who can’t read German – I was studying today for my “German Culture” class. It was discussing the different (beloved) dialects of the country. As an example, they used the sentence – in dialect – “I only said a few words and he already knew, that I come from _________.” The blank was then filled in with the city in which that dialect is spoken.

The actual sentences won’t mean anything to you, but you can look at them above. Anyway, the first one I thought was Dutch and I gave up trying to figure out what it said. The second one I didn’t even try. It was definitely another language! The third one was Swäbish, the dialect of the area where we live, and I understood it immediately! With no trouble at all! I’m so embarrassed – I’m slowly becoming Swäbish after all!

On Flo’s actual birthday, we threw a party for him here at our house. We’d invited about 30 people (one for each year?), so we planned to have it outside, but then the weather wasn’t very nice. Our amazing neighbors offered that we could have the party in their barn, use their electricity, their tables, their drinks, their potty, their decoration. They are so unbelievably sweet. And, they were going away for the weekend, so they wouldn’t even be able to make sure we didn’t mess anything up! So we grilled and partied in their barn, which worked out really well.

On the weekend between our birthdays, we drove to Berlin for the weekend, so we could see U2 in concert. That was our present to ourselves. What was supposed to be a six or seven our trip turned into 13 hours, due to an overturned truck that had been hauling hazardous materials. Luckily we’d brought along books for me to read aloud to Flo, so we made the best of it. Because of the delay, we didn’t see much of Berlin on Friday night. We pretty much ate dinner at the Italian restaurant on the corner from our hotel (amazing food!) and went to bed.

On Saturday, we wandered around the city for a bit, seeing the things you’re supposed to see in Berlin. We saw a bunch of famous landmarks and went into the museum and Checkpoint Charlie. The museum doesn’t cover a lot of physical ground, but there is SO much stuff to read and look at in it. It discusses the history of why the wall went up, various attempts at escape (successful and otherwise), various uprisings, various everything connected to the wall, actually. About two thirds of the way through, I got overwhelmed and stopped trying to read it all. It was very interesting, though. I learned a lot about the wall and realized how little we really learn about that in school in America. It’s like we spend so much time on Nazis that we don’t have any time left for Commies. After all that, we went back to the hotel to rest a bit before going to the show.

Now, I’d never seen U2 in concert and I’m not a crazy fan. I don’t own all the albums, not even one t-shirt and I certainly don’t know all the lyrics. Still, it was a life goal of mine to see them live, so this was it (and no, they weren’t playing anywhere closer to Filderstadt). We actually got there and while we were waiting in line to buy wieners for dinner, the opener started playing (we didn’t know who was opening). I got really worried that we’d still be in line when Bono came out! But my fears were unfounded. We got to our seats about halfway through a set by Snow Patrol. It turns out we even knew some of their songs! Then, after a bit of a break, U2 came on and rocked out. It was pretty much what I would’ve expected, after having seen concert DVDs – a mix of new hits and old tunes to sing along to, a little political message peppered in and Bono acting like he knows everything and has it all under control. Which makes me think, perhaps he does know everything and have it all under control… Anyway, it was definitely worth it. I’m glad we went.

Sunday morning we got up slowly and then met my cousin, Abie and his son Marvin for breakfast. That was fun, as I haven’t seen Abie in yeeeeaaaars. Then we drove home and there was only about one hour of traffic jam on the way home. For pics of Berlin, click on the one below.

And then it was my birthday. Prepare yourselves for one of the weirdest birthdays ever, and yes, I wanted it that way. We went to Dachau to visit the concentration camp there. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to visit one and Germans have a mandatory field trip to one when they’re in school, so none of them would want to go with me. They get so much Holocaust history crammed down their throats, they really can’t take any more. So I figured on my birthday, Flo couldn’t say no. He was very gracious anyway. So we went there. We didn’t take any photos. That would have seemed weird to me, even though everyone else was doing it. It actually wasn’t as emotionally impressive as I’d expected. After the end of the war, the camp was used first to house German soldiers (POWs) and then refugees and I don’t remember what after that, so basically only a couple of buildings remain. Two of the prisoner barracks have been rebuilt, the crematory still stands, the maintenance building and the building where the SS had their administrative offices. The gate with the famous “Arbeit macht frei” is still there and a museum is housed inside the maintenance building. I guess, to enjoy the museum, you would’ve had to live in a cave and never heard of the Holocaust or Nazis. I found that most of the information was stuff I already knew. What I did like were some of the more personal details about prisoners who’d been in Dachau. Otherwise, nothing looked like it did when it was used by the Nazis, and so the overwhelming emotional impact I was expecting didn’t happen. But I’ve been there now and seen it, so I’m satisfied. In the evening, we went to our favorite restaurant for dinner and then saw Ice Age 3 at the movies. And there you have it – our birthdays! Phew!

1. Dairy Queen Surprise Party

2. Esposito Wedding

3. Vienna

4. Updated Apartment Photos

1. Dairy Queen Surprise Party
For their 30th birthdays, Bonnie had this fabulous idea of surprising our husbands with a party at the Dairy Queen. Since neither of their birthdays are in June, I think we actually managed to surprise them, as well. They knew that something was going on, but not what. They had friends and family from the area show up, which was fantastic. Also, Bonnie’s parents came up from Virginia for the weekend (as if they need an excuse to come see their first grandbaby again) and friends of ours, Geoff and Calun with their son Judah, came up from Pennsylvania. We hadn’t seen them in over three years, so that was also fabulous. The boys got to wear funny party hats (thanks Mom!) and open some presents. It was terribly hot that day, so Blizzards were just right for the occasion. Thanks to everybody who came and made our men feel loved.

2. Esposito Wedding
Well, this is a wedding we’ve all been waiting a long time for. We had a lot of fun getting ready for it, even though there was a lot to do, and then we had a lot of fun partying down. I have to say, the people in our circle in America really know how to enjoy a party. They dance and laugh and ham it up like there’s no tomorrow and that is so much better than the weddings and parties where everyone is self-conscious. I did throw a bridal shower for Audrey, but somehow I don’t have any photos of it. Maybe someone can send me some? The shower was fun. We had really yummy food – thanks everyone who pitched in! – and beautiful decorations – thanks a lot deco team! – and lovely atmosphere – thanks to the guests who didn’t make Aud too nervous!. And I think the most fun thing was that we had a competition to make a bridal gown out of toilet paper. Dang, I wish I had pics of that to show you all. Anyway, so that was a good time. The wedding itself had great food (mmmm, ribs) and was in a beautiful building on the Chatham Fairgrounds. (The building we used is in the first two pictures on the site.) It rained like heck that day. Luckily I only had to go potty twice, because you had to clump across the field to get to the bathrooms. I survived. My shoes are a little worse for the wear, but no problem. The bride and groom did a sexy cha-cha for their first dance, there were only two or three times where the bustle didn’t hold up properly (isn’t there one at every wedding?) and a whole group of us danced the entire Thriller dance from Michael Jackson! May he rest in peace. I know, I know, these aren’t a lot of details, but it’s really hard to cram three weeks into a little blog entry. Maybe I should consider updating the blog while I’m away, if I’m going to be away for so long… Hm. I’ll think about it. Oh, by the way, there are other pictures from America in with the wedding pictures and for some reason, they’re all out of order right now. Flo has to fix it. Sorry. Also, don’t be surprised if there are a ton of my nephew. I’m not too in love with him or anything.

I added some pics of the bridal shower, in case you didn’t make it to that shindig.

3. Vienna
After we came back from America, we spent two days doing six loads of laundry and then we left for Austria. Someone from our church was getting married to an Austrian fellow and we’d been invited. We thought when we have to drive six hours to Graz anyway, we may as well go a little bit out of the way and stop by in Vienna. We had one and a half days in Vienna and I have to say, it is definitely a city I want to go back to and spend more time in. There was simply soooo much to see and do and it was all beautiful. It was, by the way, recently voted the “most livable city” in the world. Huh. Who knew people rate such things? Anyway, here’s my overall impression of Vienna, and then I’ll go into detail of what we saw: Vienna largely escaped being ruined in the war, so there are still many grand, old buildings standing. (Our hotel room, for instance, had massively high ceilings, which I’m a total sucker for. It was also very affordable and only 15 minutes walk from the heart of downtown.) It seemed like at every turn we saw a giant park, extremely well manicured and public to boot. The cultural offerings in Vienna are out of this world – theater, opera, music of all sorts, 100-year old restaurants, everything from label and boutique to gimmicky tourist shopping, a whole museum quarter and a giant ferris wheel to boot! There is simply so much history in the arts in connection with this city and they really live it up. There is also a beautiful cathedral, St. Stephen’s Cathedral and a Spanish Riding School (I know, like, Spanish school in Austria??) and the Danube River flowing through the city. In fact, you can take a boat trip across the river and go to Bratislava, which is the capital of Slovakia. I had no idea they were that close. Obviously we didn’t have time to do all that. We went in the butterfly house and in one of Beethoven’s apartments and in the Kunsthaus Wien, which is a museum housing mainly works by Friedensreich Hundertwasser. I’d never heard of him and so that was very interesting. Otherwise, we just sort of walked around and tried to take everything in. It was a lot of fun and then the wedding in Graz was good too. Much more relaxing than in America, as I was simply a guest. Flo played some keyboard during the ceremony, but that was it for him too. So that’s that!

4. Updated Apartment Photos
While I was in America, I tried to show Kathy Pooler what our apartment looks like and realized we only have photos from when we first signed the rental agreement! That means, pictures of bare, ugly walls and floors. So, I took some and put them up here so those of you who haven’t been here (yet) can see how we live.

Dunh dunh duuuuuunh: Conspiracy and intrigue! Bring on the spy movies, the cover-up movies, the who’s the bad guy really? movies! I totally feel like we’ve reached another, deeper level of oneness in our relationship…

You may have also noticed the blog has been relatively quiet lately. That’s because I’ve been too dang busy for blogging! I officially began a distance-learning course to become a state certified translator. That was a month ago and the first material they sent me was German grammar. What?? It’s been pretty challenging, so I’ve been getting up early every morning (like, the clock has had an 8 in it!) and studying all day. I rock on comma placement, in case anyone needs help with that. Yep, so I’m a student again. The course takes two years and I think it looks pretty good.

We went window shopping in the city the other day and I saw these lamps, which I figured Jeremy and Bonnie would probably like, since they have a baby and like colorful things… I guess that means Kyla would also like them. Maybe you can send her a link. Here they are:

Next up: we have a colorful balcony! Since our perennials from last year decided to come up in the fall, they weren’t really feeling up to coming out again this spring. That was disappointing, but we just went to the flower store and bought different flowers. We didn’t even pay attention this year to what is annual and what is perennial. (My logic from last year was that if I got perennials it would save money and be less work. Ha!) The main point was to have color on the balcony and I dare say we’ve succeeded rather well. Have a look -

And then this is the edible side of our garden.

In the big box we have chives, parsley (which is growing like freak this year! We had to cut some of it back just so the poor chives could stand up straight)), coriander and we will put basil in there when the plants are big enough to go outside. Then on the windowsill and in one of the pots we have strawberry plants and the other pot has a raspberry plant. We’re simply hoping all the fruits don’t ripen while we’re away.

Oh? You didn’t know? I’m flying to America in two days to spend a month there and Flo will come for the last ten days. We’re going for a wedding, mostly. My uncle is marrying a very good friend of ours. Yay!

By the way, the blond hair and blue eyes may be Drowne traits, but that puss is Bonnie through and through!

And then we have Emil, who is enjoying his legs lately… standing on them… watering them…

And I don’t know what happened between the beginning of April and the beginning of May, but Emil is looking more like his daddy again. He was born the spitting image of a Marcard, but after a month or two, Lea’s genes took over. However, if you put a baby picture of Basti next to Emil, you will now certainly see a great resemblance. And, just to make sure you know how well those little legs work, here is a short film of Emil showing what he can do with them.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnB-Wr7Hjuc

Last weekend the trade fair going on was called Mondo Italia and it had to do with everything made in Italy. Because we’re planning an Italian road trip in the fall, we thought it might be good to go get informed. It ended up being a bit smaller than we expected, but it still had plenty to see and most importantly: taste!

Aside from the tourist information booths, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Ducati, etc were represented, as well as ice cream dealers (doesn’t sound amazing to Americans, but wait til you’ve tasted real Italian ice cream!), liquer producers, vineyards, ham and salami vendors, cheesemen, chocolateurs and Stuttgart’s own pizza academy! (Who knew?) We walked around and tried to take everything in. We got loads of regional information, which I’m sure will be helpful as we make our way through the country.

A couple of the most fun things we didn’t end up getting pictures of. One was the limoncello. A company there makes different liquers and spreads for bread – an artisan type small company. Well, Flo got a mini-shot of limoncello. The tiny cup it came in looked like one of these medicinal dosage cups for cough medicine, but maybe even smaller. He drank it down and there were about three drops left, which he let me suck out of the cup. But boy! Those three drops were enough! Woo hoo! And the second wonderful thing was… hm. I don’t know how they’re called, so I’ll describe them. It was something edible, shaped like a cone and fried. It seemed to be mostly rice, with some cheese and chop meat stuffed in the middle, rolled into a cone shape, coated in bread crumbs and fried. Apparently, it’s a Sicilian specialty. Well, it suddenly became clear to me why Sicilians are so into organized crime: if I had such a winning recipe, I would also want to protect it using any necessary means! My goodness was that thing yummy. I could imagine Nanny Rose making it, even though she wasn’t from Sicily.

So that was the wrap up of our Mondo Italia date. Click the picture below to see more.

Also, we send our condolences to our neighbors, whose mother died on Easter.

We say happy birthday to Aldenio, who turned 31 (!) on our anniversary.

And we congratulate our friend Katrin Grajez, who came in 70th out of over 12,000 in the Hamburg Marathon recently!

Thank you for the phone calls, emails and cards sent. We loved them all.

We decided to have a quiet night last night, by way of celebration, so we went out for dinner and a movie. Pretty conventional, huh?

We went to a very nice restaurant in downtown Stuttgart called Ambiente Africa. It was yummy and very affordable. Here’s a picture from their website:

Then we went to a movie (in German – I really have lived here too long). We basically chose it on convenience of show time. We saw Knowing with Nicolas Cage. It was an interesting mixture of sci-fi and biblical prophecy. And it scared me (doesn’t take much) so it turned out to be a perfect date movie!

And now your intense desire to know how we spent our anniversary has been quelled. Thank you.

And that seemed to get Flo in the mood for cleaning… what a good husband!

1. Anastacia

This is evidently an American, but I’d never heard of her until I got here. She sings something between rock and pop. She has a very recognizable voice, but it’s not my personal taste. I just think it’s weird that everyone here knows who she is.

2. David Hasselhoff

Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone in America knows who David Hasselhoff is. Another American, David is known in that country as a buff beach lifeguard, running around in his orange shorts, playing with Pam Anderson. In Germany, ask almost any German, almost any age, and they will be able to sing you a couple lines of one of his songs. Don’t ask which one. I don’t know any of them. And that should say everything.

3. Joey Kelly

This is a really baffling one for me. The Germans believe he’s Irish, but the entry in German Wikipedia says he’s American, so I don’t know. Anyway, you know how America has Paris Hilton, who’s famous for being famous? That’s sort of the same role Joey Kelly plays in Germany, but Paris Hilton initially became famous because of her family. I’m not sure how Kelly got famous. There are vague rumors of some band he used to be in, but now all he does is show up at various extreme sport competetions.

4. Bruce Darnell

Yes, another American. They seem to be everywhere here. Bruce’s website will make you giggle, but you won’t understand any of it, since it’s only in German. Here’s a Wikipedia entry to give you all the info. Basically, he’s one of the judges on Germany’s Next Top Model. He also happens to be the runway coach. He’s known for his horrible American accent and bad German grammar. Oh, and my favorite tidbit: before he started his international modeling career, he was six years a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborn!

Well, actually, that kind of exhausts my list of weird imports. Somehow it seems like more, but hopefully it was a bit fun for you anyway.

1) We have a day so nice today that even in a bikini top and skirt, I’m hot on the balcony! Spring has truly sprung in Filderstadt.

2) I tried out another new recipe the other day and it was amazing. It was Chickpea Ragout and here’s the link. Now, we ran out of couscous, so we ate it with rice, but I’m sure it’s incredible either way. Plus, it uses pretty common ingredients, it’s really easy and it’s a really tasty vegetarian meal. I know, I know, most of my blog readers won’t even utter that word, much less eat a meal that could be labeled as such, but c’mon. Somebody out there’s gotta love it. Lacey? Marianne? Bueller?

Other stuff: we spent last weekend in England to celebrate Timo’s 30th birthday. It was very nice. I think eight people flew over from Germany for a surprise weekend and then some others came from different parts of England as well. On Saturday, the boys went paintballing. None of them came back dead or maimed, which was good, although Flo did bleed from his head because someone shot him too close. Good that I wasn’t there. I can’t take it when people bleed out of their noggins. We actually didn’t take a single picture while we were there. Bit lazy I guess. But y’all know what those guys look like anyway. So kudos to Ruth, who’s been planning this massive venture for months and managed to keep the whole thing a REAL surprise for Timo. The look on his face when he walked in the room and saw all of us there was really priceless. And Timo always has something to say, but I think for the first 15 minutes after we all arrived, he just ran around the house from person to person, looking at them, shaking his head with his jaw dropped open. I’m glad he didn’t drool or anything.

And, I finally read a book I got about four or five years ago for Christmas. It was one I’d wanted and I started reading it then, but somehow didn’t get into it. I picked it up again a few weeks ago and couldn’t put it down! It’s called A Bright Shining Lie and it’s by Neil Sheehan. It follows the life of one man who fought in the Vietnam War. It was really fantastic. I can recommend it if you enjoy war stories and don’t mind reading books nearly 800 pages long.

The City: Warsaw was a bit different than I’d expected. I’ve seen travel reports about how cheap Poland is and what a wonderful vacation destination. I agree. I think it was wonderful – just different. I’d read that most of the city was destroyed by the end of WWII and parts had been lovingly rebuilt, true to original. Where we stayed was in “Old Town” which is one of the rebuilt sections. It was very classic European with quaint houses and cobblestone streets and ornate metal signs outside the shops. Those kinds of things still impress me. We had rented an apartment for the weekend and the inside of our apartment building looked like it could have been really lavish and generous in the 30s, 40s, 50s. I could easily imagine putting on a fur coat and Flo a fedora leaving our apartment for a night out. I suppose it was partly because of the incredibly high ceilings in the whole apartment (I’m such a sucker for high ceilings) and the way the staircase was to reach the third floor, where we stayed. There were also old wooden mailboxes in the entryway instead of the ugly metal monsters most buildings have these days. So Warsaw was in some ways more glamourous than I expected. Knowing it is a former Communist bloc country, I sort of expected to see more of what we’d seen in Ukraine. Didn’t see that, thank God! I also expected, due to these travel reports, that shopping would be great in Warsaw. Typical woman, I know, but with four zlotys to the Euro, it seemed enticing. Well, the guidebooks all named a certain street as the main shopping avenue and what a joke. It was mostly full of cafes and cocktail bars and the few shops it had weren’t much to look at. It seems most of Warsaw’s stores are located in malls. We were in one and the building itself was really neat (there are pics up in the gallery), but there stores were all stores you can find here in Germany. Read: not interesting at all. On top of that, the prices were simply jacked to make it only a fraction cheaper than shopping in Germany. I know a lot of people who would have taken advantage of that fraction to shop in stores they’re familiar with and still feel like they’re getting a deal. I’m not such a person. If I shop in another country, I want to get something that I can’t get at home. Otherwise I’ve just spent money on a flight to do what I could have done at home and that doesn’t really save me any money, now does it? Even in the Old Town, there were very few stores. Most of the real estate seemed to be given to restaurants and the few stores we did see were either galleries (which are fun, but still too expensive for our wallets) or sold amber (again, beautiful and fun, but that ole wallet). Due to the level of chic I saw on the streets, I expected to see lots of Polish label boutique clothing stores, gift shops with a higher level of gift than the plastic crap that’s sold in every country, perhaps home deco stores with a different style of deco than is popular where I live. Nope. None of it. The closest I saw were a few delicatessens (in the vein of selling delicacies, not deli meat), but I wasn’t in the market for buying food. The other thing I expected in Warsaw was some sort of comprehensive museum/history tour concerning the Ghetto, the Warsaw Uprising, etc. The couple of freebie guidebooks we had weren’t really all the much help. I highly recommend buying a guidebook if you want to visit anywhere and not come back with the feeling you missed something important. I didn’t do that this time and I regret it. It seemed, from the books we did have, that most of the history of this time is scattered about the entire city and you’d need a day just to tour around seeing it all. That would have been fine, except most of what they listed was such things as the Jewish cemetary (so I can look at a bunch of headstones that I can’t even read?), umpteen memorials (so I can look at a modern abstract art bit with an inscription that I can’t read?) and the Jewish theater (so I can look at a building, but probably not take in a play in the middle of a weekday?). We managed to stumble across a few things that were either genuine relics of that time or reconstructed well enough to produce an eerie feeling, but I didn’t encounter any moment in Warsaw that knocked me over for historical impact. Since we got back, I read a little about the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Perhaps that has everything I was looking for, but its name seems to limit it to a relatively narrow time period already – the uprising lasted only 63 days. So I was a little disappointed by what I couldn’t find in Warsaw, but like I said, if I’d been better informed when I got there, perhaps I would’ve found everything I wanted. The downtown, central district is big and bustling with lots of skyscrapers and people looking important. It’s very easy to navigate and the public transport was cheap and a breeze to use. I didn’t, however, sense the sort of energy that I appreciate most in big cities. In some cities, (think NY) it feels like everyone is moving forward and has plans of their own and is an individual and is excited about life and hopeful and brimming. I didn’t sense that in Warsaw. I saw a lot of creative stuff (shop windows, ads), but felt like the city hasn’t fully arrived yet. Which I guess is OK, considering all the transitions it’s gone through in the last 60 years.

The People: Our first encounter with a real Pole was at the tourist information desk in the airport. We wanted to know where we could buy bus tickets. The woman was very friendly and spoke English quite well… just with a pretty heavy accent, reminiscent of Frau Farbissina, that had Flo and me holding back giggles so as not to offend her. Generally the people we met in restaurants and such were very friendly and ready to help. Most of them spoke English, except for the older ones. We tried to find a rooftop garden and couldn’t. When we asked the security guard, the poor man looked so flummoxed I felt bad for him. He was clearly in over his head at that point. I noticed that the women are very vain and I don’t say that to dishonor anyone there. It just looked like they pay very much attention to how their hair is done, what they wear, their make-up, etc. And mostly they looked the same. I don’t like that. It’s the same in Germany. All the women look great (except for the ones that don’t, but German women are in a league all their own when it comes to style and fashion), but they all look the same. I value individuality too much for that. Many, many of the girls and women wore skirts and even mini skirts – and that in March! At first I thought they’re crazy, but after a couple days of seeing it, I realized it must be all the rage right now and realized that it looks good, even if they do freeze their sticks off.

The Food: Oh, the food. I’ve come to realize one thing since I gained the privilege of traveling so often – I love food. And I love eating it. All kinds of it. We asked our Irish friend’s Polish fiancee if there’s anything we needed to try while we were in Poland and she told us bigos and pierogis. Aye aye! On the first night we ordered bigos right away, which is a sort of stew made (traditionally, anyway) out of wild game or other meat and cabbage. It was very tasty. We also ate kielbasa, which of course you can get in the United States. We found out it’s basically what we call here in Germany “red sausage”. So that was no great culinary departure, but we ate genuine Polish kielbasa in Poland. Yay yay yay. As for pierogis – well. Perhaps it comes from my Italian heritage, where everything either is a dough, is wrapped in dough, looks or feels like dough, has something to do with dough, but I really like pierogis. It’s basically the Polish equivalent of a ravioli (in the same way that maultaschen is the Swabish equivalent): a filled dough pocket, served either boiled, fried or baked. I like the baked ones best. I had ones stuffed with chicken and mushrooms, that were sort of ground up together. Man were they yummy! But you can get them stuffed with almost anything – potatoes, cabbage, cottage cheese, pork, spinach, poppyseed, apple – yep, anything. We also noticed lots of pork on the menu and much more duck than we’re used to seeing. Altogether, the food is very tasty, but very heavy. I came home and made a menu of vegetables and salads for the week, just so my stomach could finish digesting what I’d eaten over the weekend. We also had a bit of difficulty with breakfast. I don’t know if it’s uncommon to eat breakfast in Poland, but we couldn’t find any cafes that served less than a full on meal. All we were looking for was a croissant or muffin and a coffee (or, for me, a hot chocolate). We’d planned to simply stop at a bakery each morning and pick something up. In Germany, we’re accustomed to having at least one, if not two, bakeries on each corner and then one between those, just for good measure. I think on our third day we finally found a bakery. That was shocking. And then the girl working the counter had absolutely no customer relations skills at all, but God bless her anyway.

Stuff We Saw And Did: Mostly we walked around, looking for the next restaurant we would eat in. At least Benni and I did. It was really nice for a change to have someone with us who is hungry as often as I am! We went into the Royal Castle and the Pawiak Museum, which began as a political prison and morphed into a sort of pre-concentration camp camp until the Nazis razed it. At that museum we had one of the experiences on the trip that was the most interesting for me. Because the museum is actually underground, we were looking around the yard, where some stuff is above ground before we went in. The museum guard (I say ‘the’ because I think there only was one) came out and spoke to us in Polish. When he realized we didn’t understand him, he asked in English where we’re from. Annka answered, Germany. He got very excited and made us come inside and showed us the guestbook, where he flipped through half of it page by page until he found the page on which someone had drawn the Bavarian flag. The he put on an audio guide for the room we were in with German audio. Then he led us to the next room and did the same. And he showed us games the prisoners would have played – these games where you have to untangle wire and such. He was so friendly and excited to have us there. The part that made it so interesting for me was that this guy was older – probably somewhere between 60 and 70 years old and if he can’t remember the war himself, at least his parents and grandparents certainly could have. Still, here come a bunch of German kids (to him we are) wanting to gawk at what their ancestors did to him in a ready-for-tourism-wrapped package and he was friendly about it! It was just bizarre. I’m probably reading way too much into it and I realize that, but it made me think anyway. We also walked around the Palace of Culture and Science (what a fancy, communist-like-in-its-delusions-of-grandeur name) and around downtown. We walked down to the river (the Vistula, by the way), tromped through New Town (dating back to the 15th century – very new), had a look from a few stories up from an observation deck on a dinky tower… actually it doesn’t seem like we did very much. Hm. But as usual, click on this photo to see the gallery and get more specific details about the things we saw.

Lucky for him, we’d already booked flights! We were thinking about how we hadn’t been away with Benni and Annka for quite some time, so we suggested we all go somewhere for a long weekend. They were game; German Wings had Christmas deals coming up, so we chose a city none of us had ever been to and booked.

Tomorrow, the four of us will fly to Warsaw and spend five days discovering Polish food, (hopefully) communicating successfully in English, finding our way around the beautiful city and (if you listen to Annka and me) shopping! For one Euro I can get almost five Polish zlotys! Oh baby here we come!

To get a taste of where we’ll be, see the picture below and we’ll get info up as soon as possible when we’re home.

You may now applaud.

Congratulations Aldenio and Luluca! Yay! There’s a little Borges on the way. It’ll be here mid to end of October and if everything runs right, it will be a little dual Brazilian Canadian citizen. They hope to move to Quebec in August, so everyone pray that their visas come through. Luluca is doing well and they’re very happy to start a family. We’re happy for them, too!

Today I’m working on translating text for a website for Benni. The sentence in english should read:

“Your sleep is important to us!”

What did I type? You guessed it!

“Your bleep is important to us!”

Sorry for the long silence. Somehow we suddenly couldn’t log in to the site where we write the entries and Flo had to do some computer voodoo to get it up and going again.

To make it good again, I’m posting something Flo sent me from work the other day. I hope it makes you laugh as much as it made me.

As soon as you meet non-Americans, you hear how Americans know nothing about the world outside of their own borders and how that’s really too bad, because they’re so powerful and they should be better informed. Well. After listening to a bunch of nonsense from BBC World, we switched over to N-TV, which is a German news channel, and listened to a bunch of nonsense in German.

“You have to realize how important this is – Rick Warren has basically just taken on the position of the nation’s chaplain, by saying the inaugural prayer.” What? That’s ridiculous!

“Of course with children this age you think of the famous photo where Caroline Kennedy as a very small girl sat under her father’s desk in the Oval Office as he worked.” Huh? How can you mistake John John for Caroline?

“Here is Aretha Franklin singing the national anthem of the United States.” My personal favorite, because in my country, that song is known as My Country, Tis of Thee… decidedly NOT the national anthem.

Yeah. So there.

We flew Austrian Airlines through Vienna to Kieve, and I have to stop and praise this airline for a moment. Our connections were really good, the airport in Vienna was clean and easy to navigate (mostly), but most of all, the food was fantastic. I never thought I’d say that about airline food, but it was actually very good. The best of the meals we got was a giant chocolate muffin. Oh, it was New York quality! Plus, I was surprised we even got food, as neither leg of the flight was longer than one and three quarter hours. So, kudos to Austrian.

In Kiev, we were met by a guy named Andrei, part of the Ukrainian team. He helped us navigate and translate and figure out what the options on the menus were (pizza – with dill on top!) and exchange money and get us to the train station, where we got on a train for another three hours. Turns out Ukraine is quite big. We really didn’t get to see any of Kiev, but that’s what we expected. All work and no play, this trip. At the train station in Kirovohrad, when we got off the train, a song played for us! Andrei explained that every city has its own song that plays when the train arrives. I don’t know for sure, but the music sounded like a throwback to the old communist days. We piled in a minibus for a half hour ride to our lodging and on the way got stopped by the police, who wanted money from the driver if he was ferrying passengers, but he told them what all good Christians would tell the police in that situation, “I just have my family with me here in this bus.” Bless him.

Flo and I got dropped off first, as we were staying somewhere different than the rest of the team. At the outside door to a communist block building, we saw buttons. You have to punch in a code and pull a bar to get the door open. There is no knob or handle that turns. Well, Andrei couldn’t get the code right, so we froze our buttons off while he called on his cell phone (with which Ukrainians are obsessed) to get the right code. The person on the other end of the phone informed him you don’t need a code. They’d installed a handle after all and you just had to turn it and open. Bless Andrei. Inside, a young couple welcomed us and told us there’s no light in the bathroom because the bulb blew and there was some food in the kitchen, but they weren’t sure if the refrigerator (in the closet) worked. Then they all left. And we were alone. Which hadn’t really been made clear to us, so it was a bit shocking. Missions keep you flexible. The one room apartment (sofa = bed) belongs to a grandma from the church, who’d moved out for the duration of our stay. Bless her, too. We spent the evening warming up and watching Ukrainian Karaoke Superstar on TV. We didn’t know any of the songs and couldn’t understand them anyway, but it was fun.

Our first full day there, we attended their normal church service. I don’t know if I can describe Ukrainian worship, but I’ll do my best. Fast. Loud. Yup, that about sums it up. Although other churches in Ukraine (I’m told) sing english worship songs or translate them into their own language, this particular church sings only Ukrainian written, in Ukrainian language, worship songs… for at least an hour every service, if not more… and they dance… energetically… all of them. It was really quite amazing. They must be super fit. And the fast songs just keep getting faster, this typically famous style of music where it just keeps going and eventually the musicians are playing so fast and the dancers are dancing so fast that they all just fall over. It was really cool! After church we went to The Potato House, where you can get all variety of meals based around the, you guessed it, potato. The food was tasty, but I really mention it to say this: their decor and marketing centered around Native Americans… as if they ate potatoes?

The conference started the next day and lasted three days. We found out that Orthodox church celebrates Christmas on January 7th, which makes sense if you also have Three Kings Day being January 6th, as we do in Germany. So our conference covered two days before Christmas, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The kids told us they don’t really have any family time or meals or gifts at Christmas, which explained why they all wanted to go to church instead of stay home. If this thing had been scheduled on my Christmas, I probably wouldn’t have gone. Basically every day went the same. We had four sessions per day, with the 1st, 2nd and 4th sessions including an hour of worship time. That was really fun, because all the kids danced together. They’d make circles or line up holding hands and dance in patterns or just booty shake as if they were in the club. I assume it depended on the lyrics, but who really knows? The 3rd session we started with games, which was also hilarious as Ukrainians really like playing games and are seriously competitive. Most of the theme for the three days was God’s father heart and experiencing his perfect love. David, Joy, Flo and I did the preaching as well as praying for the kids (with the rest of the team, of course) and just trying to be nice people and let God’s love show through us, for those people who’d never experienced it before. It was tiring, but definitely worth it. We heard a lot of good testimonies about people being able to let go of bad stuff that had happened to them and look forward with renewed security in themselves and God. That’s awesome.

The people we met were all so warm and open and eager to know us. There was quite a bit of language barrier in some cases, but with enough gesticulating, anything can be made clear. They fed us amazingly well and the food was very yummy (although I don’t think we got a meal without dill, which isn’t necessarily my favorite herb). We had soups and things that looked like tortellinis and chicken and noodles. I was a bit afraid of the food before we got there, but like I said, it was really good. They were simply so generous. They even (the Ukrainian team) got together and gave each member of our team a unique gift before we left. How amazing is that?? They served us and supported us and helped us and made us feel very, very welcome. It was total turnaround from what it should have been – we went there to serve, support and help them! Anyway, some countries I go to and fall in love with the food or the land or the vibe, but in Ukraine I fell in love with the people themselves.

To see pictures, click on our beautiful blockhouse below:

this is Flo writing this time. We just got back from Ukraine and before my wife starts to blog about our amazing trip. I just wanted share an awesome thing with you.

It’s iBethel.tv.

There are lots of free videos from Bethel Church in Redding California.

So check it out!

Okidoki and something else to announce. I started a project a while ago, but no it is online.
I started a website where you can get your own wedding website. I am still working on some new designs for templates but at some point I just wanted to release:

www.myWeddingWebsite.de

We spent a nice New Years playing games with the family and watching fireworks.

Super congratulations to our friend, David Patton, who got engaged over the holidays to his sweetheart, Justyna. We’re extraordinarily excited for them and we can now open our bottle of wine labeled “For when David falls in love”. Yay!

We are leaving tomorrow for Kirovohrad, Ukraine, where we will minister for five days at a youth conference with our friend Joy and a team of people. It’s gonna be freak cold there, so please pray against frostbite! We’ll let you know how it was when we get back next week. Til then!

Christmas morning we stuck to what has already become a tradition of getting up late, eating breakfast, opening presents, eating apple fritters, chilling out and doing video Skype Christmas with my family in America in the evening. We sat on the floor and opened our gifts like little kids this year. We got each other a bunch of nice stuff and felt very thankful that, despite a bah humbug feeling going around this year and a tighter belt on our and everyone else’s bank accounts, we were still able to really bless each other and think creatively and just enjoy God’s favour in our lives. And the apple fritters were out of this world! We’re getting better every year. Flo kicked my butt in Risk. When we skyped with America, Liam was wearing his Santa suit, which I have to say, was adorable. He seemed to like playing with the ribbons as much as Emil did. It’s too bad they’re so far away from each other. They would love playing with each other, I’m sure. So Jer and Bonnie, for Liam’s sake, just move over here!

Second Christmas Day (the 26th, it’s really called that here!) we had brunch with four friends, which was different for us and very pleasant. Then we saw Flo’s mom and siblings again for Christmas with the part of the family who wasn’t at Sebastian’s. That was also very nice. Everything was nice this year. For some photos, click on Emil:

Well, President-elect Obama has caused his first uproar. This whole business with the Illinois governor didn’t do it, but his selection of the man to pray the inaugural prayer was enough to put folks up in arms. I hate that a possibly corrupt politician is more acceptable to our society than a man of God, but whatever, I’m not going to change opinions merely by disagreeing. Obama has chosen Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, author of such popular books as The Purpose Driven Life, to inaugurally pray him in. (And no, “inaugurally” is not a word.)

Now the entire gay community, all of Hollywood and probably most of the state of California are ticked off. They heard how Warren lumped the legalization of homosexuality in with legalization of pedophilia and polygamy. Warren is a Christian pastor. One sort of pre-requisite for Christian pastors is that they believe the Bible, which places all three items on that list under the broad heading of sexual perversity. So he’s doing his job right.

OK, the gays feel slighted. I understand them. I really do, because I’m not gay, but they’re doing the same thing to me. They want to exclude from the historic inaugural event a member of a group with whom I identify myself (Evangelical Christians, whatever that means, but the topic of why there are so many different kinds of Christians and why I don’t know what they all believe different is for another blog entry on another day). Isn’t that sort of just as prejudiced? Give Warren a chance. Maybe he’ll surprise you. And an argument could be made that evangelical Christians are also a persecuted group, just like Muslims and Jews and gays and racists and, and, and, and. I’m not making that argument. I’m wondering why the gays are so offended, but the atheists aren’t upset that there has to be a prayer at all. Whatever happened to separation of church and state? I mean, I believe the state needs the church, so I’m happy there’s a prayer. Who wouldn’t want to receive a blessing on the day he steps into the biggest shoes in the world? (…after God’s) So, offended people, here’s my opinion: It’s not all about you. For three years, 364 days after inauguration day, Barack Obama’s life will revolve around you. Let him have his day the way he wants it and if he asks Warren not to do it after all, or if Warren decides himself to step down, you won’t see another blog entry from me. Let it just be and think of someone else.

On to my next Obama-inspired rumination: black guys’ hair. Has anyone else noticed the astonishing number of black men who have square hairlines? Let me show you just a few.

Of course, the man who started this rabbit trail of mine, Barack Obama.

Oscar winner Jamie Foxx

Oscar winner Denzel Washington

Morpheus – uh, I mean, Lawrence Fishburne

Well I’m sure he has a square hairline somewhere under there. It just seemed inappropriate to list such great black men and leave Sam Jackson out!

My mom’s right – I forgot Will Smith, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air! How could I?? OK, so here he is, evidence piece number 6:

In the meadow, we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Parson Brown
He’ll say are you married, we’ll say: No man,
But you can do the job when you’re in town

Aaaaaallllll these years I’ve wondered why a man would sing a song about a parson proposing to him, as if Parson Brown were propositioning the singer by asking if they’re married.

Suddenly it hit me today that the singer is walking with someone and the parson asks if they’re married to each other.

Now, either I spend too much time on Christmas carols or this is the silliest thing I’ve ever misunderstood!

Flo and I spent four days in that city last week and I tell you: I totally understand the fuss! Hamburg is a wonderful city! It is the second biggest city in the country and a very old one. It dates back to 800-something and has been an important trade center ever since. These days, it is culturally superb, with many musicals and concerts and also has many museums and is, as an acquaintance of mine ecstatically proclaimed, great for shopping!

Our first day we walked around down town, went in the Hamburg Dungeon, took a harbor tour and went to a fair. Downtown has lots of brick buildings, the typical building material of Hamburg. Everything seems old and there are shopping galleries tucked away in every corner, almost. Cobblestone streets abound. The Christmas Market was being built while we were there, so everything had a festive air. Hamburg is a city where, you could be very comfortable if you have money. Tiffany’s, Jil Sander, Prada, Louis Vuitton, and on and on and on. There are also more affordable stores -- and good thing! Otherwise, it just seems like downtown Hamburg is very clean, chic and has a very positive energy. In comparison to Zürich, for instance. The Hamburg Dungeon is part spook tour, part history lesson. Real actors (and here I thought Bonnie would get a kick out of playing some of these people) basically take you through the history of the city and try to scare the pants off you in the meantime. We experienced the plague, the Inquisition, the Great Fire of 1842, the great flood and some other stuff as well. It was really fun! I actually fell asleep during the harbor tour (we had an early flight!), but Flo took a million pictures, which you can have a look at. Basically we got to see the whole thing, all the big container ships and also the smaller ships. Then we went to a volksfest, which I’ve never been to in winter before, so that was fun.

Our second day we visited the Reeperbahn, the Hamburg Museum (history of Hamburg) and saw Tarzan, the musical. The Reeperbahn is the red light district of the city. Don’t worry, we didn’t pick up any girls. It was day time. We just wanted to see how it was, as it’s famous and all. The history museum was fun, although there was so much in it, that it was hard to take it all in. My surprise from Flo for this year was to go see the musical Tarzan. What was really fun about that was that the lead actors for the musical were cast through a casting show on TV. We didn’t see all of it, but we saw some of it, so we’d actually seen these two actors competing for their roles. To be honest, the story of Tarzan isn’t really enough to make a whole musical, but the acrobatics of the ‘monkeys’ and the artistry and fun of the whole thing made you not really care that the plot was a bit thin. It was a great time and totally worth it. Thanks Flo!

The third day, Flo had training (the excuse for us to spend a long weekend in the city) so I shopped a bit and went to see the biggest model train in the world. That was actually a bit disappointing, because the tracks are so expansive that you have to wait quite a while until the trains go by. It was very impressive in how much detail all the scenes are done. It’s all to scale and has different countries or regions, such as America, Scandinavia, Germany. The Swiss part actually includes the Alps and therefore covers two stories. Anyway, in the evening we went to the oldest jazz club in the city. It’s called The Cotton Club and they had a blues band out of England playing that night, The Steelyard Blues Band. They were ok. The club wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. A small, dirty back room of a bar with low ceilings and wood paneling on the walls. I don’t think they’ve remodeled since the 70s. But we were there. That was the important part. It was fun.

The last day, Flo also had training, so I went to the art museum and shopped. I actually got lost in the art museum. I made it the whole way through the museum, chronologically from beginning to end and couldn’t find my way back out to the coat check. When I finally did (after asking the way twice), I realized I’d entered the museum from the wrong door. Not that it would’ve made a difference as far as finding my way back out again. And yes, I spent the rest of the day shopping. My friend Kathrin told me about a cool store called Die Wäscherei (The Laundry) so I took the subway out to another part of the town and found it. It is a furniture and home decoration store with a definitely Asian flair. Believe it or not, I didn’t buy anything for me or us. I only went in stores we don’t have in Stuttgart and I only bought Christmas presents. That’s right. Look at that self-discipline!

To see photos from Hamburg, click on this one here:

And I took this little video of some buskers on the bridge. Check it out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lzo4arEmJI

We’re off to England for three days, so we’ll tell you all about it when we get back. And have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Yayayayayayayayayayayayay

First up: Emil. His parents decided recently to try feeding him carrot baby food. If I were him, I might protest til I got the plums…

And next comes Liam. His parents set up a (sort-of) professional photo shoot for his baby announcements. Thanks Lu!