Made it to Berlin
You will never believe it, but we are actually here! We left the mossy palace of Annaberg and took a train to Erfurt (well actually it was two rental cars, one taxi and three trains which was an extremely difficult trip for us, but would bore you to death). We had our first casualty when we realized that we'd left our beloved camera at the train station in Bonn. We've called and gotten a case number, but it is pretty certain by now that it is lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry. Everywhere we go, Rob and I say "Oh, I wish we had the camera!" But I still say, better to have forgotten the camera than a kid.
When we got to Erfurt, BYU had very kindly rented us a BMW SUV and it was SaWEEET! It had a six CD changer and we didn't even have a single CD to play in it (so I went home and burned one from iTunes -- "I love technology . . ."). It came with a telephone we never did find, and a GPS 'other woman' navigational system which had a map too. And I discovered that it had a sunroof -- which almost made up for the camera right there!
Our place was really cute too, with a spiral staircase and loft bedroom and I was so relieved to have a bathtub to scrub the kids off in. We dragged them all to the downtown at night and were not out even 10 seconds before Sebastian tripped over Maddie's shoe and had an imprint of an Erfurt cobblestone on his forehead.
Kind of a tangent here, but we are all banged up after this trip. In addition to Erfurt, Sebastian has scars on his elbow and thigh from a bad fall on the Burg in Salzburg. He got a bloody lip in Bonn and lots of bruises from Vienna to Munich. Will took a bad fall in Bacharach and really scraped up his hip and his elbow just before the Rhine cruise. Maddie scraped up her knee early on and then opened it up again in Erfurt. Even Rob and I have spots on ankles and fingers from getting smashed by luggage as we make that mad dash to the trains and busses. Katie has some great bruises from her big black suitcase too. They never tell you these things in the travel brochures -- have you noticed?
Back to Erfurt, on Thursday we took an absolutely GORGEOUS drive from Erfurt to Eisenach, getting off the highway and taking the old Radiator Springs kinds of roads. Eastern Germany has a great legacy of planting trees close together all along the roads and it was just amazing. I felt like Batman, whooshing down tree-lined streets in the fall. Except that Batman probably doesn't have a mix with zydecko, bollywood and Queen in his CD player. I have become resigned to the fact that my European sountrack will never turn out as I would envision it, and that my children's peace and happiness is paramount on these trips.
We got to the Wartburg and then realized (once we saw how high up the mountain it was) that we were going to meet some pretty heavy resistance in the kid-to-castle department. Which we deftly sidestepped by saying "hey! who wants to ride a donkey up the hill?!" Maddie rode Moritz and Will and Sebi were on Susi, and by the time they were done, we were almost at the entrance. The Wartburg is a really beautiful castle with an ugly name. It has been around for 800 years, and is noted for peaceful events, like Goethe's collection of medieval artifacts, Listz's performances and redecorating ideas, and Martin Luther's translation of the New Testament (which was only his day job. At night, he pretended he was a knight and was hanging out with a pretty rowdy bunch of guys, so as to not arouse suspicion). Of course, the Wartburg was only too happy to have us take pictures, but we had no camera. The kids did tolerably well through the tour and we bribed them with more sugar afterward.
Friday we managed to return the beloved BMW (driving one really makes you feel like a million bucks -- now I see why they drive they way they do), and catch our train to Berlin. We came into the new Hauptbahnhof which is an amazing, surreal, movie-like structure where you peer over the railing and see thousands of people moving in all directions simultaneously. It reminded me of the end of Monsters Inc. where there are doors flying in every direction. Will wanted to ride an escalator, and I said "NO! Absolutely not! I can see 14 escalators from where I'm standing and I would never see you again! I got you all this way to Berlin, and for what? Not just so I can lose you!" Poor kid.
I had a hard time getting into our apartment here, but met one of our neighbors, who just kept speaking German to me (of all things!) and let us into her house and gave the kids cookies and lemonade. She lives downstairs from us and has three kids too: girl, 10 and boys 8 and 7. We finally got in and just in time to have Katie and kids show up and miraculously find us. Then Rob came back from the emergency room, where he went with one of the students (all in a day's work for Rob).
We all took off down the street to go shopping at about 5:30pm and Katie and the kids and I made it to a store where my family was out of control (it was again like one of those sweepstakes winner kind of buy-anything-you-can-in-five-minutes trips) and we lost Rob and then found him again at his favorite Doener Kebap place, where we also ran into two more students and the woman that Rob baptized about 20 years ago. Because how big is Berlin, really? Or maybe Rob has just told everyone about these Doeners! They were as good as I remembered, and the wasps thought so too.
We are so glad to be here and be able to settle down and it was an extra treat to get some of our luggage so that we could be reunited with more of our belongings. Sebastian has been laying out train tracks for Thomas the Tank Engine constantly since I opened the suitcase. Well, that's more than enough for now. I'll see if I can't post some more recent pictures in a while.
When we got to Erfurt, BYU had very kindly rented us a BMW SUV and it was SaWEEET! It had a six CD changer and we didn't even have a single CD to play in it (so I went home and burned one from iTunes -- "I love technology . . ."). It came with a telephone we never did find, and a GPS 'other woman' navigational system which had a map too. And I discovered that it had a sunroof -- which almost made up for the camera right there!
Our place was really cute too, with a spiral staircase and loft bedroom and I was so relieved to have a bathtub to scrub the kids off in. We dragged them all to the downtown at night and were not out even 10 seconds before Sebastian tripped over Maddie's shoe and had an imprint of an Erfurt cobblestone on his forehead.
Kind of a tangent here, but we are all banged up after this trip. In addition to Erfurt, Sebastian has scars on his elbow and thigh from a bad fall on the Burg in Salzburg. He got a bloody lip in Bonn and lots of bruises from Vienna to Munich. Will took a bad fall in Bacharach and really scraped up his hip and his elbow just before the Rhine cruise. Maddie scraped up her knee early on and then opened it up again in Erfurt. Even Rob and I have spots on ankles and fingers from getting smashed by luggage as we make that mad dash to the trains and busses. Katie has some great bruises from her big black suitcase too. They never tell you these things in the travel brochures -- have you noticed?
Back to Erfurt, on Thursday we took an absolutely GORGEOUS drive from Erfurt to Eisenach, getting off the highway and taking the old Radiator Springs kinds of roads. Eastern Germany has a great legacy of planting trees close together all along the roads and it was just amazing. I felt like Batman, whooshing down tree-lined streets in the fall. Except that Batman probably doesn't have a mix with zydecko, bollywood and Queen in his CD player. I have become resigned to the fact that my European sountrack will never turn out as I would envision it, and that my children's peace and happiness is paramount on these trips.
We got to the Wartburg and then realized (once we saw how high up the mountain it was) that we were going to meet some pretty heavy resistance in the kid-to-castle department. Which we deftly sidestepped by saying "hey! who wants to ride a donkey up the hill?!" Maddie rode Moritz and Will and Sebi were on Susi, and by the time they were done, we were almost at the entrance. The Wartburg is a really beautiful castle with an ugly name. It has been around for 800 years, and is noted for peaceful events, like Goethe's collection of medieval artifacts, Listz's performances and redecorating ideas, and Martin Luther's translation of the New Testament (which was only his day job. At night, he pretended he was a knight and was hanging out with a pretty rowdy bunch of guys, so as to not arouse suspicion). Of course, the Wartburg was only too happy to have us take pictures, but we had no camera. The kids did tolerably well through the tour and we bribed them with more sugar afterward.
Friday we managed to return the beloved BMW (driving one really makes you feel like a million bucks -- now I see why they drive they way they do), and catch our train to Berlin. We came into the new Hauptbahnhof which is an amazing, surreal, movie-like structure where you peer over the railing and see thousands of people moving in all directions simultaneously. It reminded me of the end of Monsters Inc. where there are doors flying in every direction. Will wanted to ride an escalator, and I said "NO! Absolutely not! I can see 14 escalators from where I'm standing and I would never see you again! I got you all this way to Berlin, and for what? Not just so I can lose you!" Poor kid.
I had a hard time getting into our apartment here, but met one of our neighbors, who just kept speaking German to me (of all things!) and let us into her house and gave the kids cookies and lemonade. She lives downstairs from us and has three kids too: girl, 10 and boys 8 and 7. We finally got in and just in time to have Katie and kids show up and miraculously find us. Then Rob came back from the emergency room, where he went with one of the students (all in a day's work for Rob).
We all took off down the street to go shopping at about 5:30pm and Katie and the kids and I made it to a store where my family was out of control (it was again like one of those sweepstakes winner kind of buy-anything-you-can-in-five-minutes trips) and we lost Rob and then found him again at his favorite Doener Kebap place, where we also ran into two more students and the woman that Rob baptized about 20 years ago. Because how big is Berlin, really? Or maybe Rob has just told everyone about these Doeners! They were as good as I remembered, and the wasps thought so too.
We are so glad to be here and be able to settle down and it was an extra treat to get some of our luggage so that we could be reunited with more of our belongings. Sebastian has been laying out train tracks for Thomas the Tank Engine constantly since I opened the suitcase. Well, that's more than enough for now. I'll see if I can't post some more recent pictures in a while.
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