August 28 - September 2

It's Wednesday already and we've been home since Monday evening. Yesterday was a pretty straight forward day: J went into the Max Planck Institute to touch base with the folks he'll be working with starting next week. I did a shopping run with the car one more time--picking up some larger items that would be difficult to move with a bicycle. The girls enjoyed lounging around and watching TV in German after the previous days of travel and sightseeing, but in the afternoon I kicked them out to find some place to get an Eis (they love this, of course).

Today J and I biked to a café he'd scouted out online: Café Baader for a morning "date". I had a soy cappuccino and he had one with milk and we talked about the philosopher he's reading and the Viennese School and the 12-tone system of Arnold Schoenberg (don't ask me to explain, but it relates to the article he's finishing!). All of this was especially interesting given our recent trip to Vienna.

The heart was the soy cappuccino and the leaf was the regular milk. Baader Cafe is supposedly one of the best places for breakfast in all of Munich! It had quite the atmosphere.

J had brought his Surface along and stayed to write while I returned to the apartment to get the rental car. I was able to return it to the airport without incident and then figured out how to take the S-bahn (regional Munich train system) back to the city where I got a bus from the Hauptbahnhof to our neighborhood.

This afternoon GE and I took a walk to her school, following the route she'll take once school starts on September 10th. The door to the building was standing open and we could hear people talking upstairs, so I gambled and went in to see if the Direktorin (principal) was in. She was! I was able to establish who we were and expressed our hope for a spot for GE in the fourth grade Ganztags (whole day) class. She seemed to think that was a possibility but we would have to come back next week when the Sekretariat (school office) is open so she can see how many are in that section. She also seemed very warm and understanding of our situation and that we hope GE can immerse herself in the German language and quickly get her language skills up to speed again.

After supper the girls and I walked all around the buildings in our complex. I wanted to see where the girls might be allowed to safely play outside without me having to be with them. We established some boundaries and guidelines and I left HR and GE outside to play. ME took her bike out for a solo ride (something she's enjoyed doing since getting her bike last week). Tomorrow will be the first day completely without a car. I haven't actually needed to use it that much other than our trip to Austria and a few shopping runs, so I know I won't miss it much. Still feels like a major shift to go to no car.

Thursday, August 30

Storms moved in last night and it was cool and rainy when we woke up. Feels more like Germany than the weather we'd been having--hot and sunny! This morning the girls and I walked down the street to the Münchener Stadtbibliothek (Munich public library). We got library cards and the girls selected DVDs and books in German. ME was frustrated because her German hasn't quite caught up to her level of interest--i.e. the books she wants to read are still too hard for her to understand. It'll come soon though! I've already started dreaming in German again. HR was able to understand the librarian's instructions on how to use the self-checkout machines without me translating. And GE is starting to use little phrases and words that's remembering. Can't wait for school to start to watch their German develop again...

After lunch J and I picked out another café to try out--he's searching for a "3rd space" to work from when he can't work from home and doesn't want to go all the way in to the MPI. This has typically been a coffee house where there's free wi-fi. I'd walked past a "Rösterei" multiple times and noticed that it was a coffee house. Figured out that they roast their own, thus the sign hanging outside. It's actually called gangundgäbe. We got a little table and ordered small cappuccinos (mine with soy milk). I brought my Kindle and read while J worked on some ideas as he read Wittgenstein's Vienna and periodically interrupted my reading with musings out loud.

On the way home I picked up HR's bike from the repair shop where it was getting some minor work done to make it ready for riding to school every day. Pretty quiet and uneventful day!

Tomorrow we leave for Kronau near Heidelberg to visit our former exchange student and her family...

Friday, August 31

A couple of years ago, we hosted a German high school exchange student for a year in our home. We had done this previously, in 2010-2011. Both times we were lucky to host really wonderful girls from Germany. We plan to visit JS, our first exchange student in October, but AS lives closer to Munich, so we got in touch and arranged to visit this weekend before school starts. Since we'd returned the rental car, we booked tickets with the Deutsche Bahn and rode the train for 3 hours instead of driving. It worked out great! The girls enjoyed having more room than in a car and had been looking forward to the experience of taking a "real" train (not just a subway train) cross country.

First train ride (in her memory)!

We had short transfer times, so we missed our connection in Heidelberg to the regional train to Kronau, but those run every 30 minutes and are transferable, so we just waited for the next train and hoped on it instead. AS's parents were very warm and welcoming. They have a lovely home in the little village of Kronau, about a 20 minute train ride from Heidelberg.

We visited and settled in, enjoying a simple dinner together and chatting until evening. AS took ME with her to a friends' house and they stayed out rather late, but the rest of us hit the sack around 9 p.m.! Speaking and thinking in German is tiring still... Another month at least, I think, before that passes.

Saturday, September 1

We got up for an early breakfast so we could head to Heidelberg with the train and a bus from the train station to the Altstadt. I'd only seen pictures of and heard of Heidelberg before. MK has been there (staying with family friends in summer 2016). We purchased tickets for a tour guide but had some time to kill before it started, so wandered around the grounds outside, taking pictures.

Almost missed this guy standing down an alley stuffing his pipe. Glad he didn't look up...

The central market getting set up for shoppers.

Climbing the hill to the Schloss--not quite as many "stories" as the Hohefestung Salzburg, but close!

The gate into the gardens.

The tower is what's left of a guard tower that doubled as the jail and was known as "Selten Leer" (Rarely Empty).

View of the city from the garden walls. The Neckar river flows through Heidelberg and into the Rhein.

Schloss Heidelberg stands in partial ruin, with only a few rooms restored to resemble what they may have looked like when they were inhabited in the 1200-1300's. The castle was also struck by lightning twice in 1537 and 1764, causing fires and major damage! What are the odds? Only minimal damage occurred during the WW's. (In fact Hitler wanted to restore the Schloss and had one of the giant banquet rooms re-paneled for his own use.) The castle changed hands multiple times. The most interesting exchanges occurred after the Reformation when Frederich V was elected Kurfürst (Elected "King") of the region. He was Protestant, married an English Protestant bride, but was only in power for a year or so before his Catholic cousin took power (start of the Thirty Years War). There followed a back and forth that lead the church in the center of town to build a wall down the center of the church! One side for the Protestants and one side for the Catholics because the people were so tired of having to change their religious practices! This was the same time that many Protestants from this region immigrated to America so they could follow their own religious practices and were there called the "Dutch"... Sound familiar, Mennonite friends/family?

Entering the castle grounds through the sandstone gateway.

A couple just married in the white antique car was leaving as we came into the central castle grounds for our tour.

Some tours are given by guides in Renaissance dress!

A model of what the castle originally looked like before being partially destroyed in multiple sieges and from fires caused by lightning strikes.

Where they kept the wild animals (lions!).

The statues of the various Kurfürsten (Elected "Kings") of the Heidelberg region (Palatinate). The statues were also an example of how perspective was beginning to be applied to sculptures--their hips and thighs are oversized in order to show how strong they were if you were standing below and gazing up.

The opposing building had Renaissance statues depicting gods and characters from mythology.

JS with the Littles

The chapel from above.

Organ! It's still used for concerts, weddings, and such.

The HUGE wine Fass (barrel on tap) in the cellar under the banquet hall of the Schloss. There was a special pump that brought the wine up for guests during banquets and celebrations.

We ate lunch down in the Altstadt and sat outside. The kids had Schnitzel and Goulash with Spätzle while J and I had salads with chicken prepared in a local art. J and JS (our host) ordered Weissbier vom Fass (Wheat beer on tap).

After lunch we wandered through the Altstadt looking for Trachtenmode (tradition clothing) shops. We brought the Dirndln, originally for MK and ME, which we had purchased in Limburg while we were living in Bonn. They now fit HR and GE! But ME and I needed the traditional dresses for Oktoberfest. We tried a few in one shop and then decided to go to the Galeria Kaufhof where there is more selection and range of prices. We each tried multiple dress and blouse combinations until we found ones that fit well.
AS was really helpful to have along since she knows what traditional fit is supposed to look like and what blouses matched with which dresses. It took longer than I thought it would, but was worth the time and effort (and it was pretty fun!). When we got home she put hers on too and we took some pictures...

These two have been like sisters every since AS moved in with us as an exchange student.

 

After dinner we played Kniffel (which I think is very similar to the dice game Farkle but with slightly different scoring rules) together. I scored a statistically impossible Kniffel (all 5 dice with the same number) on my last turn with only the Kniffel field left to fill in and won! We wooped and hollered...

Sunday, September 2

We slept in and then enjoyed a traditional German breakfast all together before AS left with ME to go watch her friend compete in a mini-triathlon. While they were gone, the little girls, J and I went with AS's parents to the local Kur Park (literally "Cure" park) surrounding a hot baths and rehabilitation clinic to take a leisurely walk on the paths and explore the playgrounds. Then we headed home for a late lunch, packed up our stuff, and got the train home. We hope AS and her parents visit us in München for Oktoberfest and will try to carve out another weekend or time to visit them again in Kronau. For now, we are once again so grateful for the hospitality and warmth extended to us by our former exchange students and their families. It is such a blessing to have had them as part of our lives.

Muskrats?! Eating on the lawn next to a pond in the park.

The very cool new sand and water play space along the creek.