Playing catch up

So we've been feeling guilty that Dominic's "countries visited" list is going to be much shorter than his brothers. We decided to make the trek to Liechtenstein since none of us had been there and then dip into Switzerland and Austria to help clear our consciouses a bit and make room for more important parent guilt like the fact that I let him fall out of his Bumbo last week (he's fine).

After one night in Konstanz, Germany we were on to the beautiful city of Zurich, which we hadn't been to before and then drove to Vaduz, Liechtenstein where we met up with our good friends the Smiths and Bradleys who had abandoned us here in Germany for the pasta, wine, tiramisu of Italy. It was so good to see them and have everyone back together.

After our night in Vaduz we drove North on Germany's Romantic Road and stopped in some really beautiful little towns. As we strolled down the street with the adults oblivious to the scenery all around Luc said, "hey isn't that the building on the front of your Germany book?" Low and behold it was the EXACT building and neither Kenny nor I would have even paid attention if Luc hadn't pointed it out.

One souvenir we returned home with is Jack's black eye which we have no idea how or when he got. It happed our night in Vaduz, but no one heard him hit anything or cry. It's even worse than the pictures look and I was a bit embarrassed to bring him to school today.

Wonderful Mother's Day (Muttertag) weekend

What a great Mother's Day weekend! It was both the American and German Mother's Day (or Muttertag in german) AND it was a three day weekend because of a church holiday. We headed to Dresden because we hadn't been there and had heard it was a worthwhile stop. Dresden was bombed flat at the end of WWII and has been completely rebuilt using the original city plan. It's a really beautiful, walkable and picturesque city. From there we headed to Bamberg with a lunch stop in Zwickau. Zwickau had another beautiful city center with outdoor cafes and Bamberg has been named one of Germany's most beautiful town's. I would agree with that title.

I made the speed on the slide show pretty fast. If you want to slow it down and see the captions I put on the pictures, hold your cursor over the picture.

Easter Egg Market

Sunday was absolutely beautiful here so we headed about an hour north to an Easter egg market at a palace in Schwetzingen. The eggs are unbelievable, gorgeous works of art. The are made from any kind of egg you can think of - chicken, goose, duck, ostrich. The most expensive one I saw was 1200 Euro (about $1800). Here are pictures of a few. I was really impressed with the ones made to look like porcelain Faberge eggs. I ended up buying one of these that were decorated in gold leaf and garnets:

Freinsheim vineyard walk/fest

This weekend we met our friends Christer and Christine in the town of Freinsheim in the Deutsche Weinstrasse, which is one of the big grape growing areas of Germany. It's about 45 minutes from our house and I guess about twice yearly they have a walk through the vineyards where there are about 11-12 tents set up from different wineries where you can taste wine, buy food, etc. We had a really nice, albeit cold, day and it was a great time. Most of these pictures were taken by Luc since the camera was really keeping him entertained while Mommy and Daddy tasted wine.

Luc did pretty good taking this picture of Jack and I:And while he was trying to get a group shot a bunch of German people jumped in the back of this picture:This was an honest to goodness dye job and fashion statement we saw:

Nurnberg

Kenny and I have been to Nurnberg a couple of times before and we are always surprised at what a cool city it is. We spent one night there and wandered the town and then went to the Nazi documentation center. It's a really good museum that traces how Nazism got started and took hold in Germany. After Nurnberg we headed home where the boys had more presents to open. It was a long, drawn out holiday for them and they loved every minute of it.

Trip to the Serengeti Park

Last April we went to a theme park in Northern Germany called "The Serengiti Park." It was one of my favorite things we've done here and we decided to make another journey up there this spring so we could hit the best time for babies. You drive through the animal park in your own car and "at your own risk." The animals come right up to your car and you can pet most of them. The only time you can't have your windows down is in the lion and tiger enclosures. Still, the only thing between you and the lions/tigers is your car. Giraffes have become my new favorite animal and I have to say the monkeys scared me a little. They were very aggressive, but most had itty-bitty babies clinging to their chests.

The only other excitement was another trip to a German doctor. We've all been fighting one cold after another and Friday night Kenny spent most of the night in pain from an ear infection. In the morning we had our hotel try to find an English speaking doctor he could see. The doctor was great, but Kenny's ear infection had caused his eardrum to burst. He's been on antibiotics, but is flying to the States tomorrow morning, so hopefully it will go OK.

Amusement park, Hildesheim and Hameln

Attached to the Serengeti park is a fairly big amusement park with lots of rides that are good for little kids. In normal European fashion a lot of the rides are self serve. There are no attendants, you just hop on and push a "start" button. The boys had a ball and we loved it too because there were no lines, it was small enough to not be overwhelming and yet, kept the boys thoroughly happy for a few hours. On this trip we also spent one night in Hildesheim (has a beautiful little square), Hameln (where the Brothers Grimm came up with the Pied Piper), and Fulda (a really pretty town with a beautiful Baroque church).

First stop - Augsburg

The first stop on our trip was Augsburg, Germany. We figured it was a good place to spend the night since it was about four hours from home and only about 45 minutes from Munich where Kenny was attending a trade show. We'd been there before, but it has a really neat main square and I was impressed by the Fuggerei the last time we were there. I'd never hear of Fuggerei before, but we learned that it is one of the earliest welfare settlements in the world. It was established in the 16th century and still houses several hundred people. The rent is about 1 Euro/year, plus utilities and three daily prayers.

After walking the town and touring the Fuggerei we headed into Munich to pick up Kenny. Here are a few pictures. The marks on Jack's knees are from him kneeling on that chair while eating a huge ice cream sundae.

Ulm, Germany

After staying in Salzburg for two nights, we headed back to Germany and spent one night in Ulm on the way home. The highlight there was a climb to the top of their cathedral (Munster). It has the tallest spire in the world and the boys made it to the top climbing almost 800 steps with very little help. Jack had to be carried part of the way down and about 2/3 of the way up, we discovered that Luc is scared of heights. As long as he didn't get close to the edge and look down he was fine. As soon as he looked down he would slump to the floor and start yelling for us to hold his hand. Funny for me, not so much for him.

Easter egg festival - Mannheim

I've been wanting to check out an Easter egg festival for the past month, but it seemed we were always busy or there wasn't one close by. This past weekend it turned out there was one at a Mannheim park (about an hour away) and Sunday was a gorgeous day. We got there around noon and there was already a line to pay to get into the park. The park was incredible with a river running through it with boat rides, a penguin exhibit, tons of different bird cages, one bird cage that you could go in and get right up next to the biggest parrots I've ever seen, flamingos and other different birds roaming the grounds. And just like the zoos here, safety and potential lawsuits don't seem to be of concern because most of the time you could get right up to the cages and put your hand through to try and touch the animals if you were a very ornery 2-year-old. Every so often you would come up on an outdoor restaurant or beer/wine stand. The spring bulbs were in full bloom, which were beautiful, but I still haven't quite recovered from my allergies. Last summer was the worst I've ever remembered and it's shaping up to be a very sneezy spring for me. We didn't make it through the whole park, but we'll definitely go back.

There were birds sitting on nests literally everywhere you looked. The boys loved checking out this one that they could get up close to.

There was a big owl exhibit and this was one of the more exotic ones I've seen. They seem so intense.

We spent lots and lots and lots of time smelling the flowers.

Eating lunch outside over looking the river and boats.

And the whole reason we went to the festival.....eggs! I guess the art of blowing and decorating eggs is really big in Europe and especially in Eastern Europe. I thought they were beautiful and couldn't believe all the different ways people decorated them. There were painted ones, decoupaged ones, ones with lace tatted over them, carved ones, glass blown ones, calligraphy eggs, anything you could imagine. And they used all different species of eggs. I ended up getting three. The top ones are from a swan and goose. I'm not sure what the bottom one is. The top left one is the swan egg and the underlying green color is the natural color of the egg. I'm going to use them as Christmas ornaments....when the boys get older.

Burger King

On the last leg of our drive back home from Baden-Baden, Germany we stopped at a Burger King for a quick lunch. This was already a risky proposition because Luc had been puking all morning, but the rest of us needed a quick bite before the last push home. Well, if the smell of food and cigarette smoke didn't make Luc's stomach turn, the noise would have. They were doing a MAJOR remodel job on the place and didn't bother to close or even rope off the construction area. You literally had to step over all kinds of ladders, power tools, wood and debris to get to the bathrooms. There are obviously not many safety regulations or lawsuits in this country. Make sure your volume is up to get the full effect of our peaceful lunch. At one point I saw a boy about 6-8 years old pick up one of the construction guys plugged in circular saws...good thing his Mom spotted him because no one else seemed to notice.

Mainz Christmas Market

No rest and relaxation for us. After we got back from Italy on Sunday and Luc got rested up from his night of partying, we headed to Mainz, Germany for the Christmas market on Sunday. It was a clear, but very cold day. The town is really pretty, situated right on the Mainz river and has a beautiful cathedral and pedestrian shopping area that we want to go back and explore.

Kaiserslautern Christmas Market

I'm still not feeling quite up to par so we decided to just stick close to home and hit the Christmas Market in Kaiserslautern which is less than 10 miles from here. It was a cold, but dry day and then tomorrow we're off to Strasbourg, France to see how the French Christmas markets compare to Deutschland's.

There are always a bunch of street performers in the pedestrian zone and these guys were singing traditional Russian songs.

Usually there are a few kiddie rides (you can see one in the background) and although Luc is fascinated he doesn't want to ride them. Jack is also fascinated and being a little more adventurous than Luc I decided to put him on one at Oktoberfest - mistake! I could tell things were going wrong and only getting worse when the face he made as he went around went from concern, to fear, to panic. After about four rounds he looked like he was about to crawl out so they stopped the ride and handed him to me. I felt guilty for putting him on and even guiltier for laughing at him as he went around and around crying out for Mommy.

Sunday's market....Deidesheim, Germany

Today we headed to our third Christmas market which was in the middle of the German wine region. We had a beautiful day and this market was my favorite so far. Although there were all of the usual food and wine stands, there were also a lot more arts and crafts stands than usual. And the things they were selling were more unique than we've seen other places. The man in the picture on the left is carving wood and all the "clothing" you see hanging on the wall is carved out of wood. The metal sculptures below the boys are looking at were really cool. They are made to be put over lights and then they glow in different ways depending on what type of holes the artist made in them. And then the picture on the right is of more wood carvings. There were also a couple of glass blowers and that enthralled the boys.

Christmas Market #2 - Frankfurt

Here a a couple of shots of the many Gluhwein stands & these have to be some of the nastiest sandwiches I've ever seen. They are the ones on the right and they are a whole side of a fish, skin and all. And then I had to add one of the many, many meat stands.

I am on a quest this year to try & visit as many Christmas markets as possible. With Kenny's job you never know where we'll be living next year at this time, and since I love this tradition so much, I figured we'd better take advantage of it. I learned from my French teacher (who is German) that this is a tradition that started in this area of Europe. She said that Christmas markets are mostly found in this area of Germany, Austria and France where it borders Germany. You'll notice some recurring themes in my pictures, I'm sure. Lots of lights, meat & gluhwein. I'd never heard of gluhwein before we moved here, and it's not something you all are missing out on. In essence, the drink consists of wine & spices heated to just below boiling point before drinking. Kenny refers to it as "Hot" MadDog 20/20. The Germans seem to be able to take any food we consider delicious & put some type of spin on it to make it not so suitable to my palate (translation, 'nasty'). A little harsh, but come on people, other that spaetzle what other German foods do you crave? This is the main square in Frankfurt. I guess this is reminiscent of how it looked before it was bombed during WWII...mostly half-timbered houses. And one shot of Kenny with a very sleepy boy.