Europe - Phase 1 - Germany

After a long time we finally made it over to Europe again. There is just a difference between having to buy one or two tickets versus four. To sum it all up, it was great; better than I expected. A lot of planing went into the vacation, we had a busy trip, but we got a lot to see, and everyone had fun.

We arrived in Frankfurt on July 29th to very hot and humid weather. Living in the Pacific Northwest we are just not used to that. The humidity really took a toll on me. Our first real day I introduced the girls to Italian gelato and public swimming pools in Germany and they loved it. This open air pool has opened in Oggersheim when I was about 6 years old and I have spent many summers there. The only thing that has changed is, that the trees are 30 years older, they added a new swirly slide and a little kids play area. In the evening we had the first of many thunderstorms during this trip, which kept the girls up long into the night and made the transition with the jet-lag much easier.

The following day we drove to Bad Windsheim in Franconia to visit my friends Karin and Christian and their daughter Charlotte. It is the 5th year since Christian has been writing and producing an open air theater play at the "Freilandmuseum Bad Windsheim". The museum is an open air museum that has brought together old houses from all over Franconia. They show examples, how people lived and worked. The fields between buildings are farmed in a more traditional way and they have animals, that are closer to old breads than what we have today. The oldest house is from 1357 and came to the museum in the 1980s. Dendrochronology has identified the year the trees for the beams were cut, and tax records are complete and date back to the 14th century. At the end the house was the village pub and slated for tare down, but an inscription from the 18th century made them wait. Everyone was surprised to find the house much older. In the museum the inside is split up into how it was at the time of construction and in the 1950s. The picture shows the split. I could go on and on, I just love open air museums.

After a long hot day in the museum and a quick cool down at the local pool, my mom and I saw the play while Christian watched the girls. The play was called "Bombenstimmung" and dealt with terrorism in Germany in the 1970th. While giving plenty of food for thought, it definitely had comedic aspects in portraying the changes in rural live during this time period.

In Bad Windsheim we stayed the night at a B&B called the "Patoriushaus". Franz Daniel Pastorius, who came with William Penn to the new world and founded among many other things Germantown in Pennsylvania, grew up in Bad Windsheim and lived many years in this house. Marlene and Amelia loved staying in this old house, that was so different from other hotels they know.

The next day we went with Karin and Charlotte to the "Playmobil Funpark". This was the absolute high point for the girls during the trip. It is an amusement park built around playmobil toys. They don't have rides, it is more a collection of playgrounds with various themes, like pirates, castle, wild west, jungle, farm etc. The kids are challenged by climbing rope ladders and paddling rafts in the water, playing in the water and mud. There is plenty of actual playmobil to play with, too. This year they opened a large indoor area with cafeteria, stage and more play areas, which came very handy since we had more thunderstorms and needed a place inside. We were all very tired after a long day of playing, but our Friday afternoon 3 hour car ride home to Oggersheim was luckily more pleasant that we had expected.

We had a quiet weekend meeting with various sets of friends and family. Marlene had the chance of nearly beating uncle Helmut in playing the wii. It was fun seeing so many of you again, but sad as well, because it seems always too short and leaving me wishing for more. On Sunday afternoon the girls and I drove to Frankfurt. Jason's flight was arriving in the evening and so we spent the afternoon at the Senkenbergmuseum, a huge natural history museum. We saw plenty of dinosaur bones, crystals and all kinds of stuffed animals and birds. Since Marlene has been learning a lot about birds in school, we have started to go "birding", and so it was very interesting to see so many birds up close. In my innocence I thought that an afternoon in the museum might be a "cool" escape from the heat, but the absence of any kind of ventilation and air conditioning made the visit a challenge in endurance. The airport brought finally relieve and the girls were very happy to see their daddy again.

Monday and Tuesday were filled with more friends and revisiting our old stomping grounds, before getting ready for the next phase of the trip: Austria.