2 Big Things and some other things

Another week. I am trying not to panic that our time here is going by too quickly. It seems impossible that we've been here for a month already. Two big pieces of news this week: (1) we had our first visitor, my brother Lukas, and (2) Alex is now speaking almost exclusively in German. More on both, and other things, below.

(1) At some point late last week (or maybe last weekend) I got an email from my brother with the subject line: What are you doing on Wednesday? He was going on one of those (insane) American business trips and would have an evening free for us. Wow. Hurray. Well, yes, it turns out, we are free on Wednesday! Though we had just seen my brother and his family over the holidays, the thought of having him here in our Heidelberg life was a great thrill. So, Alex and I headed out to buy some gifts for his boys (a Lego keychain flashlight for the older cousin, and a toy tram for the younger one), some yummies that I know my brother likes, a belated birthday gift for him, some things to send back to my mom, etc. Though we followed our normal routine including a trip to the library etc, we basically spent Monday and Tuesday in eager anticipation of his arrival. It was almost 9pm by the time he actually got to our place on Wednesday night, but it was so fun to have hime here! It turns out that trying to get to Brussels, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Heidelberg in 48 hrs can be done, but it's exhausting. On Wednesday night, we feasted together and chatted late into the night. I have no idea how my brother didn't collapse from exhaustion, but we reveled in his presence right here in our little apartment. The next morning, we had breakfast together and Lukas was off again to catch a plane in Frankfurt that would take him back to San Francisco.

On his way, he drove us to Alex's school in his rental car, which turned out to be a rather gigantic van.

It was a quick visit to be sure, but so great to see him - here!

The rest of the week went by in a flash. In Alex's class at school, they have been reading a particular book called "Millie kocht!"which is about a little girl exploring the kitchen, cooking, and baking. The kids were all asked to bring a recipe for their favorite cakes or cookies (we supplied the recipe for his favorite oatmeal-raisin-chocolate chip cookies) and the whole unit culminated in a baking bonanza with the kids on Friday. The teachers picked a recipe for a typical German pastry/cookie, ironically called an "American" - sort of like a big soft sugar cookie with icing. The teachers had put a list with all the necessary ingredients on a bulletin board and we all signed up to bring something. Alex chose to bring the eggs. So, on Friday, everybody brought their ingredient and the kids took over the kitchen for a while to bake. I wasn't there, unfortunately, and have no pictures to share, but according to Alex, it was really fun and the cookies were yummy. Needless to say, by the time I got there around 4pm to pick him up nothing was left. It struck me as brave of the teachers to go into the kitchen with 15 3-6 year olds, but also wonderful.

(2) In the midst of all this, Alex has started to speak German this week. I mean, not just words and fragments, but the real language. Of course, I've been speaking to him in German since the beginning as have his grandparents. He's watched German DVDs and he has books, but so far, with the exception of a few words and phrases, he had not actually spoken German. He could understand it, but he did not speak it. Well, after 3.5 weeks in Kindergarten with peers, his German is there. He's making grammar mistakes, of course, but it's hard to tell sometimes if these are mistakes because he's just figuring out the language or if these are normal 4 yr old mistakes. He says all sorts of idiomatic things and is working hard at putting long stories together. Those of you who know him, know what a chatterbox he is. Well, now he's chattering away in German. To say that I'm thrilled and amazed is an understatement. I was hoping it would go fast, but this seems very fast, indeed. Last night he woke up at some point form some kind of a nightmare and when I came to his bed, it was clear that he wasn't fully awake, but he was jabbering away in German!

Here's a gratuitous shot of him in bed pretending to be asleep. Note the slight smile on his face.

Today, Alex and I had all sorts of plans, but then the day turned out completely differently from what I had planned. I woke up with a bear of a headache. Ugh. Then, we were headed to a particular bakery/cafe in our neighborhood, because I had promised Alex a particular kind of pastry for breakfast. Well, we got there and the bakery wwas out of the pastry and the cafe was closed. Now, I had a headache, no coffee, and a fussy kid. And then it started to rain. Part of me just wanted to go back home and go back to bed, but instead I called Sherry on her cellphone (which, by the way, inexplicably is called a "Handy" in Germany). Thankfully, she answered and knew just what to do. We started by meeting at the farmer's market in her neighborhood to get locally farmed produce and meat for the week. (I also got some herring that's not local, I'm sure, but delicious!)

She then asked us to join her family for lunch. Homemade crepes with all sorts of jams and sweet spreads and a huge cup of coffee with steaming hot milk. My day was getting better by the second and the headache had all but disappeared. We then all headed out for some more errands and reconvened at Annika's basketball game which her team won 74 -54 and which Alex LOVES to watch. We had stopped by at home on our way (to drop off the groceries) and found a thick envelope with all the holiday cards that had arrived in Greencastle after we left. So, Alex watched the game and frolicked around the gym while I read a whole pile of wonderful cards and letters. Thanks, everyone. After that, Sherry, Alex, and I went for a long walk (including a stop at the playground). We headed home to warm up and play for while and then the three of us went back out for a wonderful, lovely, and delicious dinner at a local restaurant. On the way back to the bus we realized that the Italian gelato place at the corner which had closed for the winter re-opened on Feb 1, so life is good, indeed.

Sick, but out and about

Alex started the weekend pretty sniffly and coughed quite a bit, but we were out and about anyway. The apartment is just too small to keep us contained for much more than a few hours at a time, even in freezing temperatures. We're becoming quite hardy - trying to keep up with the Germans, who seem unflappable in this weather.

On Saturday, we pretty much just ran some errands in town, but had fun meeting an American family on the bus as our two boys were fighting for the coveted spot in any bus (if you're 4 years old),  the last row. It's seats are slightly elevated and afford an excellent vantage point to see what's going on inside the bus and outside. Well, the "dispute" was settled, room was made for both boys and we got to talking. It turns out it's the family of an ethnologist and I was thrilled to meet someone who was not an astrophysicists or other natural scientist. (No offense, scientist friends!) I hope we can connect again in the future. Anyway. We mostly ran errands and then stopped into the Hauptbahnhof (central railway station) which was the site of a wonderful little traveling science exhibit on water. They had all sorts of displays (kind of like the water things at Wonderlab). The docent explained that it was a grant to bring science out into society (hence the somewhat weird location) where lots of different people would see it without an admission fee. And there were certainly a lot of people there. Alex and I had a good time trying to understand the physics behind the various experiments. Here are some shots of him enjoying the fun.

We spent the rest of the day at home, reading books and snuggling, as Alex was getting increasingly crabby and tired i.e. sick. I put him down on the early side, but he woke up 6 times before midnight and was pretty feverish. I had - stupidly - left our thermometer at home, but not the Children's Advil, which he took at some point in the night and which seemed to have restored him to almost normal. I had a chance to talk to my friend here today on the phone and mentioned this to her and she told me that these kinds of medications are only dispensed with a prescription here, so I was doubly glad I had brought some.

After a long night (Alex woke up at 7:15 instead of 6:30 am!), we had a leisurely morning and then headed out for more adventures. We got off the bus around mid-day at Bismarckplatz - note the Bismarck statue in the background - which is kind of a central starting point for most Old Town adventures (and can be reached by a direct bus from our apartment).

Much to our delight, we saw a bunch of firetrucks and firefighters. We even got close enough to see what had happened. Apparently a city bus had leaked some gas into the street, which was being contained and remediated by the firefighters. This was particularly exciting, since we had just read a library book this morning about exactly such an occurrence. To see it play out in real time was cool. (I'm not trying to make light of the emergency, but no people or even the bus were in danger.)

After all this excitement we found a bakery for lunch.

I realize that Alex's selection does not represent the best nutritional balance, but we had zucchini and spinach for dinner. When you see his enjoyment of the chocolate croissant, you'll understand.

We then headed out and - to our delight - found a guy selling hot roasted chestnuts. We'd been looking for this stand for a while, because Alex loves collecting chestnuts and when he found out there were also ones that we could eat, he got very excited. Also, look at how picturesque the stall is...

In the end, he liked the idea of eating chestnuts better than their actual taste (though they were perfectly delicious and hot), or maybe his belly was still full of chocolate croissant.

Our final stop of the day was the local history museum, the Kurpfälzisches Museum. The Föhrs had recommended it to us, and they did not oversell it. Wow. We had a blast! For the (somewhat silly) entry fee of EUR 1,80, we got several buildings and stories worth of local stuff ranging from (and I'm not exaggerating here, if anything, I'm leaving things out) archeological findings of Homo Heidelbergensis (somewhere between Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens) to dioramas of Bronze and Stone Age folks, to huge dioramas as well as archeological artifacts, statues etc. from Roman times (including a separate exhibit on Roman funeral practices) to the Francs (Merowingians to be exact) to the Middle Ages, etc. Then there were vast collections of furniture, china, glass, silver, coins, jewelry, costumes etc. from the 17th to the 19th century Palatinate Electors who lived in Heidelberg at times. This was a great follow-up to our castle trip last weekend and Alex saw knights and princes everywhere. And I haven't even mentioned a large collection of paintings (which we skipped) and a lapidarium (which was closed) and a special exhibit on Japanese art (which we also skipped).

It was sort of difficult to explain at times that the Roman knights and the early modern princes were not exactly the same thing. Moreover, he kept insisting that all the 'olden times' lined up with when Abraham Lincoln was President. Hmmm. I need to do some more work here. I had to laugh, however, when were in a lavishly appointed Rococo dining room and he pointed to the crystal chandelier and said: "That's just like the lamp we have in Greencastle." Not quite.

In any event, it was EUR 1,80 well spent! We'll come back here for sure. Any of you want to join us?

Happy Birthday!

Today is my father's birthday. He will embarrassed to see this, but hopefully not mad.

I hope you will have a great day today, Papi. I hope the phone rings many times and you will talk to old and new friends all through the day. I hope you will have fun tonight at your party. I know that the company will be great and the food delicious.

I am sorry that we are so far away today, but I love talking/skyping with you and Mami almost every day and we look forward to our "visit" later today.

Here's a picture from this fall when we had an adventure in Indiana.

We hope that you will visit us soon in Heidelberg, so we can have new adventures.

We love you!

Almost a whole week

It's been almost a whole week since I last wrote. What's happened? Not much and yet a lot. We're beginning to have normal weeks with school, work, errands, but also fun.

For starters, it's still cold. And snowy. Here's the view from our balcony on Monday.

It's not that much snow, but if you have to walk everywhere, well, then the cold really does seep into you. And it's so overcast that the castle has been obscured behind heavy clouds.

On Monday we headed into the city after Kindergarten, because Alex has been complaining about the lack of a scarf. According to him, everybody has a scarf except for him and we needed to rectify the situation. After a lot of searching and choosing, he ended up with a rainbow scarf.

We rushed home on the bus and made it just in time to watch the inauguration festivities in Washington. Here's Alex and President Obama:

Here they are again. This time, Alex is trying on his new sleep sack. In Germany, kids are in sleep sacks much longer than in the US and so we got him and warm and big one. It should last him a while and he seems to love it.

Alex continues to have a lot of fun at school. Here's what he was doing on Tuesday when I picked him up. He was sitting with his teacher Achim and finishing a very neat kaleidoscope puzzle.

It took Alex a while to get the puzzle done and so I sat down at the table with them and chatted with the teacher a while. There's a great relaxed atmosphere at the school which was underscored to me (for some reason) by the fact that the teacher was drinking a cup of coffee and eating what looked like a chocolate croissant while watching over the kids. In fact, Alex is getting so comfortable at school that one of his teachers remarked to me this morning that he is quite stubborn. "When he has decided to do something it is hard to change his mind." Some of you (especially the New Pathways folks) will recognize that streak in him!

This week we also visited the public library again to exchange Alex's books. Even though we brought a few of his favorite books from home, he is increasingly interested in having me read to him exclusively in German and he is beginning to say a lot more things in German on his own. In the past, it has been clear that he's understood everything and he's always said certain phrases in German, but he's beginning to put sentences together and mimicking phrases heard at school from teachers and other kids. I'm thrilled and it happened so quickly! He's not even been going to school here for 3 weeks.

In the evening (after dinner and skyping with my parents) Alex always has his bath. Here he is enjoying the bubbles on a few different nights this week:

Finally, today, we met some other folks. It's been amazing to be able to spend time with the Föhr's and, of course, Alex has been making friends at school, but we hadn't really managed to meet new people (why is that so hard? or is it just me?). Well, the Welcome Center for International Scholars at Heidelberg University had organized a kids afternoon for today and I had signed us up. It took place in a nice meeting room in the building next to our apartment building. I didn't really know what to expect and was really excited to meet 2 other American families. (I know, we should be meeting Germans, but ...) The two husbands are both physicists or astrophysicists (whew) spending sabbatical/research time here, but have brought their families along. It was fun to compare notes, share ideas about things to do etc. The organized event was also really fun. They had prepared for us to stuff some apples with marzipan, jam, cinnamon, butter etc. and then put the apples in the oven to bake while we all headed out for a long walk in the Botanical Gardens that are right next to our building. (Dana, are you reading this?) The outdoor space was a little cold and dreary this kind of year, of course, but it turns out that there is a fantastic, beautiful, and large tropical greenhouse as well. We all traipsed through it and were enchanted by the tropical flowers and plants. Wow. We'll come back here for sure.

After our time in the greenhouse, we headed back to the warm and cozy room, had delicious, hot, sweet, and oozing baked apples and coffee, tea etc. The kids watched a short movie (Oh wie schön ist Panama - a German classic!) and the adults chatted and exchanged email addresses and cell phone numbers. I hope we will get together with these folks again soon.

Tomorrow is Friday already. Time to plan fun things to do for the weekend. Stay tuned.

Sledding and Schloss

The weekend started pretty uneventfully. After a lazy morning on Saturday, we met Sherry and Annika and went shopping. Our first stop was the open-air market where we got the obligatory weekly spinach and tomatoes, but I also picked up a kohlrabi (yum!) and even some fresh blueberries (clearly not locally grown, but oh well). We headed on to the butcher, because Alex who does not usually like sausages, had announced that he wanted me to buy him some. Well, when we got there, he - very sensibly - picked out turkey wieners. As we headed to the grocery store for the last things, Alex and Annika started making plans for after lunch: we would go sledding. It's certainly cold enough and though there is not a huge amount of snow on the ground, we hoped it would be enough for sledding.

It was. Alex and I headed over to Annika's around 2 and we immediately went out - two great wooden sleds in tow. She knew exactly where to go and after a 15-minute walk we were there: at a little hill on the banks of the Neckar. It wasn't very steep, but it was perfect. Here they are all bundled up on one of the sleds just before heading down the hill.

Alex, who had never been sledding before immediately took to it. After seeing him throw himself into it, I was glad that we were at a modest hill and not a more dangerous one, because he clearly would have hurtled down whatever hill appeared before him. Annika was wonderful with him. She showed him how to do it, where to sit on the sled, etc. She pushed him to get off to good starts, she rode together with him, showed him her little tricks, and even tirelessly helped him pull the sled(s) back up the little hill countless times. They had so much fun! And so did I, just watching them laugh and tumble, and slide down the hill over and over and over. At one point, they got into a little good-natured snowball fight and it was fun to see them just enjoy each other and the snow around them.

After it got too cold (and it was frigid, my friends!) even for them, we headed home to a steaming hot cup of tea and some pastries I had thankfully bought this morning before the bakery closed.

Sunday morning started with another trip to the gym to watch Annika's basketball team, but unfortunately, the other team had canceled at the last minute. They were to come in from Mannheim (ca. 20 miles away) and the roads were apparently too icy to drive. The kids and coaches decided to split into 2 groups and play against each other (there's probably a sports term for this, but I don't know what it is) and it was just as fun for us to watch them play each other. They were well-matched!

After the game, Alex and I took a longish walk and then several buses (have I mentioned that it is really cold here?) to get to the bottom of the hill that has the castle on it. Since we can see the castle from our balcony, I simply could not string him along any more - even with the cold weather. The whole excursion was a lot of fun, but also a trip down memory lane, because the last time we were here (summer of 2010) our dear friend Jeannette was with us (and she's currently somewhere in New Mexico as far as I know).

Well, the Schloss (castle) adventure began with a trip on the Bergbahn which is a short, but no less dramatic ride on a funicular which crawls up the steep hill. To say that Alex was delighted is a major understatement.

To take it to the Schloss requires only one stop, but since our ticket included the full length of the tracks, we initially took the Bahn to its highest point and looked around. Here's the impressive station at the top, outside and in:

Here's the view down the hill:

And here we are enjoying the ride:

Halfway back down the hill, we finally arrived at the castle. Though it is mostly (or at least partially) in ruins and I also decided not to take the 1-hr guided tour (we'll save that for another day), we had a blast and the "olden times" came fully to life for Alex. We imagined knights everywhere protecting the castle and it's inhabitants from various "bad guys" and just enjoyed wandering around the grounds.

Here is Alex in front of the outer gate and we are both full of anticipation.

Here are the knights and lions guarding the bridge tower. I should note that every time we saw a carved lion (and there were dozens of them), Alex compared their likeness to Mufasa (one of the main characters in the Lion King). The various worlds, medieval and modern, real and imagined coexist so easily in the mind of a 4-year old.

And here's the door of the bridge tower. Or at least part of it. At first Alex was a bit timid to pose for this picture until I figured out that he was scared the door would close and he would be trapped behind it, so I assured him this would not happen.

Here is the fabulous inner courtyard where we later saw a guy dressed in Renaissance garb. Alex was convinced that he was one of the knights who still lives here.

Since I had opted out of the official tour for today, we had to make do with the only indoor space available (to warm up a little and also to look around) and that was the German Apothecary Museum. Weird, but true. We looked at a lot of old flasks etc. and here is Alex on the stairs leading down to an old laboratory.

It had a special exhibit on the history of alchemy and chemistry with lots of evocative instruments and it would have been great fun to share the moment with our friend Hilary, chemist extraordinaire. Here's just a taste of what we saw. I have to say, I've long been grateful for the advances of modern science and medicine and definitely not nostalgic for the "olden times" but that impression was only strengthened after seeing all this medical and scientific equipment.

The visit to the Schloss would not have been complete without a beautiful piece of Blueberry Torte in one of its medieval cellars.

And a wooden sword for the newly-minted knight standing guard on a park bench outside the main castle.

The views were spectacular (in the distance you can even see our building and I would mark it, if I had the faintest idea how to do that on a photo),

and fun was had by all!

Unexpected Gifts

Today, both Alex and I were recipients of unexpected gifts. Early this morning the doorbell rang and a DHL guy brought us two packages. And when I say us, I mean Alex. I guess these were belated birthday presents, though unexpected and very much appreciated. My brother Lukas sent a second Playmobil toy, this time a very cool collapsible plane, but Alex is playing with it as if it were a rocket. Very cool. The second box was from my parents and included some Abraham Lincoln stuff (including a refrigerator magnet which is now on one of our radiators, because that's the only magnetic surface I could find and a page from the Washington Post with several pictures and a story about the Lincoln Memorial), and a great Melissa and Doug spelling game (clearly, I'm not the only one thinking about Alex's ability to practice recognizing and using the letters of the alphabet). Lots of fun was had with all these new things and though we started with a very modest amount of toys a mere 19 days ago, Alex is beginning to have quite a stash here. We cannot continue to acquire toys at this rate - or else we'll have to have a yard sale at the end of all this.

The second, and possibly even better unexpected gift (or rather, long-term loan) is a super comfy chair from my friends. Those of you who read this blog regularly have become aware of my recent obsession with finding a good spot to settle down in my apartment and so far nothing had worked satisfactorily. Well, today, the situation was dramatically improved. Sherry remembered that she had an super comfy super deluxe folding chair stashed away somewhere that she only uses in the summer (to sit outside and grade papers...), so I retrieved it today and have been luxuriating in it ever since. It's no real solution for working on the computer (though she had excellent suggestions for nearby cafes and libraries I shall try in the not so distant future), but it's fabulous for reading! Thanks, Sherry. It has dramatically increased my quality of life. As you can see, Alex loves it as well.

And, yes, it's big enough for both of us to comfortably fit and snuggle.

Snow and Water

We woke up to snow this morning. Not just a little dusting, but real snow and the grey telltale sky that promised it would snow most of the day. When we stepped out on our little 8th floor balcony (in the dark) we realized that it was also really cold. Ugh! We nevertheless got ourselves ready and bundled up and headed out. We only had one quick stop at the bakery downstairs to get Alex's afternoon snack: soft salty pretzel. This has become a thing now, I'm afraid. On our walk, Alex frolicked in the snow all the way to school - to the point where his pants were pretty much completely wet by the time we entered the building. He seems to be impervious to the frigid temperatures. Here's a picture from our morning walk. It's about 8:10 am and, as you can see, it's still quite dark. You can also see that he's wandered quite far away from the actual path that had been cleared by university groundskeepers earlier in the morning.

Annika, the younger daughter of our friends in Heidelberg had gone to the same preschool (Kindergarten) when she was Alex's age and she has been eager to go back to visit. So, I arranged to meet her and one of her friends there at 3:30 pm, today's designated pick-up time. (At some point I hope to be able to leave Alex there all day, but we've been slowly lengthening his days.) The girls were already there when I showed up in the afternoon, inspecting all the rooms and chatting to the teachers. It was so fun to see these 11-year olds there talking about how old they were, but also remembering how much fun they had at the enchanted place. I got to chatting with one of Alex's teachers and she told me that a 6-year old girl called Ayla has sort of taken him under her wing. Apparently Alex goes wherever Ayla goes.

The three groups at the school are all age-mixed with 3-6 year old kids. Indeed, though Alex's preschool is called a Kindergarten, there actually is no such thing as American Kindergarten in Germany. Instead, all kids stay at preschool until they are 6 (or thereabouts) and ready to enter first grade. What's more, lots of attention gets paid to the fact that children do not have to worry about anything "academic" until they get to 1st grade. So, while they learn a lot about animals or whatever, there is absolutely no teaching of letters, or reading, or writing. As far as I can tell, Alex may be the only kid in his group who can write and read his name. I think I mentioned earlier that the kids' cubbies etc. are all marked by symbols (Alex has a bicycle) and not their written names. And this is not just this particular preschool. I guess my brother and I were also raised in this system and learned to read and write just fine, so maybe we worry too much about these things so early in the US. I don't know. I'm glad Alex has lots of time just to play (and, after all, he's learning to function in a second language), but I wonder if he'll be considered to be behind his peers when we get back to Indiana. Time will tell.

After school, we marched through the snow to the bus and took it to a local pool. At first the idea to go to a pool in frigid winter weather seemed weird, but it turned out to be totally fun. Annika and her friend played with Alex in the water like crazy. Even though they had spent a whole hour outside at school in frigid temperatures earlier in the day, he still had tons of energy to burn off. And, I have to admit, since my wretched chair situation has not been improved (thanks for all the feedback from friends in the past 24 hrs - clearly, I am not alone facing this kind of situation), I also loved lounging around in the warm (30 degrees celsius) water. Stepping back out in the cold was another story, but a bubbling homemade pizza warmed us right back up once we got home.