The Professor and Mary Ann

2011 Christmas Update

2011-12-24T15:37:00.000-08:00

For anyone who didn't get a hard copy, this is what we sent out this year (with a bonus picture for my blog readers!):

Greetings from the McFarlands! We hope this letter finds you all well and ready for a long winter’s nap. We’ve had a full year of fun and adventures, visiting Goblin Valley and Capitol Reef over spring break, leading a study abroad to Berlin and Tübingen over the summer, and jaunting out to California to see Mary Ann’s brother John marry Clarissa Lyons over Labor Day. We’re happily settling in for the holidays here, with plans of sitting by the fire and not much else. Here is what we have been doing:

Maddie (13) is in her second year attending an accelerated program at the high school here. She says “Just because I’m a nerd doesn’t mean I have no social life!” She lives, eats, drinks and breathes ballroom dance. She has found her niche on the swim team, doing distance freestyle events and is close to making a state cut. She still loves Shakespeare, and got to see All’s Well That Ends Well with her papa at the Globe Theatre inLondon. Asked if she could sum it up, she said "Girl loves boy. Boy doesn't love her back. Oy gevalt!" Maddie has a new dream job. She wants to play Countess Anna at Burg Hohenzollern where she gets to dress up in a white wig and take children on the kids' tour of the castle.

Will (11) is in his second year in his aunt Betsy’s class at school. He loves having her as his teacher and is counting down the days until she returns from maternity leave. He just graduated from cub scouts to boy scouts and can’t wait to go camping. He tolerates school, denigrates swim team and funnels all of his spare resources to Legos, Wii games and Nerf wars. He mostly wanted to play Garage Band and Photo Booth this summer, but he found to his surprise that he actually enjoyed the DDR museum, the Lichtenstein castle filled with armor and weapons, and swimming in the Bodensee. He renamed our much-touted app for public restrooms all over the world the "iPee". Will was a BYU Quidditch player for Halloween -- yet another costume of his own invention.

Sebastian (7) is in his second year of a Mandarin immersion program. While it isn’t easy, he impresses the rest of us no end when we get to hear him speak it. If we try to read the pinyin, he just shakes his head. He is also Maddie’s tutor and secret weapon since she started taking Mandarin this year. Sebi switched over to the pianoand tries desperately to keep up with all of the books his siblings read. Right now he’s plowing through Percy Jackson. This summer Sebastian enjoyed making a custom chocolate bar at the Ritter Sport store, and gleaning blackberries by the S-bahn trains, but his favorite part was having his best friend Tomas come to Berlin to visit.

Joss (3) is still the McFarland dictator. He dictates the CD in the car, the volume of the house, mealtimes, naptimes and bedtimes. His taste in music has evolved from the “Tiki Tiki Tiki Room” to “Good Morning Baltimore” from Hairspray. He calls mama “mudder” and papa “poppy”. We try not to let on how funny he is, but near his birthday, Rob set down his breakfast eggs and said “Now what do we say? . . .” Joss replied “Waateber. Where is the freakin’ keppitch?” He took his first swimming lessons this summer and is now enrolled at a local preschool, run by a woman he refers to as “Mister Kaffee”.

Mary Ann is happy to be nearly through 2011. She made several sweaters for babies of family and friends, and tried her hand at making a quilt this year. She has begun to jog with Rob in the mornings and so far has a pulled muscle and plantar fasciitis to show for it. She saw lots of marvelous things this summer and was most happy to introduce her kids to London, see the Green Vault in Dresden, and go to the Black Forest andHeidelberg.

Rob has had a hugely productive year, teaching five classes and writing an online course in the spring, recruiting for and directing a study abroad over the summer, and sending out his first manuscript to find a publisher this fall. Once again he boldly went where no one had gone before with a group of 32 students. He continues to garden and jog, write poetry and attend Sundance and keeps the primary presidency in stitches with his antics as the primary chorister.

We feel so fortunate to have had a year full of blessings and activities, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, security, peace and health. We wish a similar 2012 for all of you. We love you and you enrich our lives with your friendship and love.

Advent 2011

2011-12-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

We've been busy around here for Advent. Rob had three musical numbers at church. Maddie had a ballroom concert and two choir concerts. We had ward friends over for soup and cookie decorating. We attended the Adventsingen of the German department (held this year in the DeJong concert hall in the absence of the Provo Tabernacle). Maddie and Rob dressed up in their TrachtenMode again for the ward Christmas breakfast and Maddie found to her dismay that her dirndl was not even close to fitting. I did a quick and dirty alteration (my mother is never allowed to see it), but in the end she wore a very pretty one borrowed from the Isaaks. Sebastian had a Christmas program too, and they sang all of those chinese classics like We Wish You A Merry Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and ~~Fa-ra-ra-ra-rah~~ I mean Silent Night.

In addition, just before Thanksgiving Grandpa was hired up in Salt Lake by one of his favorite clients. This has meant that we're all getting spoiled by him at restaurants near and far (and exotic grocery trips full of junque food). He has also donated his time and talents to fixing things around our house, and there are a lot of them. He decluttered my hard drive so that it quit giving me dire warnings, fixed this shower door, a toilet seat and two doorknobs and gave us sage advice on varied and sundry car issues. Invaluable.

St. Niklaus came on December 6th with peppermint lotion and Ritter Sport chocolate and hats. I know there are more winsome and twinkling pictures of Niklaus celebrations elsewhere, but around here we are just happy that no one has any foot fungus in their shoes.

We ate traditional Leyden cookies which were packed up specially for Utah. It has to take hundreds of hours to make these. Each tin has dozens of cookies of different kinds, and each cookie is very work intensive -- I've tried to recreate two and they take time!

Grandma taught Maddie how to bead the traditional Shumway family stockings and she was great at it! She finished the a large portion of the bow on that candy cane.

I got Grandpa to help me assemble a new toy kitchen for the nursery at church. It was well-crafted but time consuming to put together. This picture shows one of Grandpa's tips: he uses a muffin tin to keep track of all the little nuts, bolts, screws and thingamagidgets that come with a job like this.

The grandparents also stayed with the boys on Sunday morning so that we could go to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas concert with Nathan Gunn and Jane Seymour with Maddie. Will was going to come too, but he was sick in the night. So just the three of us went and had a good time and actually smooth going for once. Nathan Gunn's voice was magnificent and Maddie fell in love with Jane Seymour.

Tuesday night Rob and I went back up to SLC with the Buskirks to attend the carol service at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. I've fallen completely for this event. The choir is accomplished [and cute!] the music is beautiful and it is so Christmasy with the congregation standing and joining in. After all of this, I was still wishing it was one more week until Christmas, but we were all ready. Then on the 22nd, our friends came from out of town and we all [all!] stayed up until midnight. It was so good to see them! I think I should get credit for New Years though, and I'll go to bed at 9:30pm on the 31st.

Gingerbread 2011: the Pious Edition

2011-12-09T14:02:00.000-08:00

This year for our gingerbread house, I checked three books out of the library and looked for ideas. And for future years and generations, here's a good rule to live by: "if you ain't baking' it, you don't get to vote on it." Without this rule we ended up choosing a church and I said some truly unholy words while the candy rose window wouldn't cooperate three times.

This is always the point where I contemplate running out and buying a kit. Then I look down and see that I'm covered in molasses and powdered sugar and surrender. In the end, it has always turned out just fine:
We had a good time, but the kids were playing happily downstairs and we didn't want ~~their pestering hands~~ to bother them, so Rob and I did a lot of the decorating. Sebastian put on the roof, Joss placed the shrubs, and Maddie decorated the trees with coconut and candies.
This is the only fuzzy shot we got of the Isaaks' magnificent manor house, which was based on an actual British estate complete with dozens of windows. Curtis decided where certain candies went, particularly on the roofline, from years of experience at picking them off when his mom was looking the other way.
Here's one of my favorite parts of this year's design: the parish cemetery with Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano tombstones. Not our idea, though Maddie's memorial wreath was her own addition.
This is another favorite: the Hershey's Kiss church bell (also borrowed from one of the books).
And finally, a shot of the windows. We set it up as high as we could, but it was still within the reach of Jossmonster and it was only a matter of days before he'd eaten the yogurt pretzel fence and some tree decorations off of the front side only. C'est la vie!

Thanksgiving!

2011-11-25T18:34:00.000-08:00

This is my favorite picture from Thanksgiving this year. It reminds me that this was a great year because of the McKids. They are all growing up so fast and Jessie is already in college, but they are so much fun together and such good kids. They are smart and witty and entertaining and kind. And we're still all quoting David's "I'll take some, coach, if it's all the same to you", though none of us has his comic timing.

It was also a great year because of the food and all the family we had to help prepare it. This was the first year Rob and I got to host for the McFarland family. We had everyone but the Beans, who stayed up in Idaho. With all the other cooks, I actually did a lot less than last year, and the food was spectacular. Maddie and Rob get a special mention as our pie specialists. They have decided to take that on and have been practicing whenever they find fruit for a filling. There was a smashing lemon meringue along with the more typical pumpkin, apple, chocolate and mincemeat (OK, not typical, but traditional), and they made little Mr. Kipling-style tarts in muffin tins.

Jessie and the olives

The kids' table. Joss is just a blur next to Adam, who had split his eyebrow and gotten stitches. Sebi and Hannah sit in the foreground.

And the tryptophan-induced nap.

We eventually got up and wobbled about the neighborhood in the evening. It was a good time all around!

Sweaters

2011-11-17T18:16:00.000-08:00

My sister-in-law Betsy just her first baby, a boy named Eli. I started this sweater while she was in labor and finished it when he was a week old. Then I decided it needed a hat, so that took a couple more days . . .

And these are for two cute brothers, Declan and Malcolm, sons of friends of ours. They wore them to their sister's baptism and they looked so cute, but I realized I could have done better sizing down the 3 month old size. And TJ will notice that I took her suggestion on the hem at the bottom!

Three More Reasons I Don't Homeschool

2011-11-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

Joss "reading" his halloween card: "Which kind of candy is your favorite, and DAMMMNATION, and which kind of candy is your favorite, and DAMMMNATION, and which kind of candy is your favorite, and DAMMNATION (repeat another 4-5 times), in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

Will and I had a very confusing conversation until figured out that he thought "flamboyant" meant both buoyant and flammable. Pretty understandable, but he kept talking about these flamboyant bombs floating around at sea and I just couldn't catch the vision.

Joss had his Halloween party at preschool and came home with a pumpkinload of goodies. He pulled out a little rubbery skeleton and said "Mama, do you think skeletons are spooky?" I, sensing the opportunity for a little teaching, said "No, I think skeletons are great! I have a skeleton and you have a skeleton and everybody has a skeleton inside of them to help them stand up and move around. Isn't that good?"
Joss turned around, pulled down his pants, mooned me and said "Can you see it in there?"

Halloween 2011

2011-11-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

This year when we got home, we found that for the first time, we were successfully growing pumpkins. And that there were exactly four. By Halloween, they were all orange and we harvested them and carved them, lit them and stuck them on the front porch.

They were just as slimy as ever.

Will decided that he wanted to be a BYU quid ditch player for Halloween. We had gone to D.I. (local thrift shop) and let the kids go wild finding things for their costumes a week or so before, but by the evening of the 30th, Will still just had a navy bathrobe. Rob made his awesome Firebolt broomstick with an old broom and clippings from our fruit trees. I downloaded a new varsity font, printed everything onto iron-on paper, ironed it onto white fabric and then sewed it onto the robe.

[I'm messing around with all of the cool new effects on Picasa. This one is neon and is one of Will's favorites.] He was happy with the results. Phew!

Launching himself into the game.

Mercifully Maddie found a dress and only required a shopping trip to finish off her costume.

Here she's a princess and I've made her photo 60's style.

Sebastian decided he wanted to be a punk rocker after Mark put the song "Punk Rock Girl" onto a CD for Will. [OK, I'm really liking the pencil sketch! I was going to start drawing again, but why? This is great!]

We found a denim jacket, the guitar and the boots at D.I. Sebastian was not into the patent leather high boots, but his parents both told him that was exactly what he needed. Then we downloaded album art from punk bands and a british flag and ironed and sewed those on too.

The whole crew.

These two decided to take Joss out trick-or-treating.

Sebastian had to be talked into going out at all. He had hated the costume at school and wet down his stiff red hair in the morning. Such a shame because he looked great! Finally we called up and arranged a trick-or-treat date with Tomas and Curtis. And then he was fine with it. Apparently there are more punk conversant people up north of us.
Joss was a "scary fledermaus" and since that is one of only two German words that he says, we never did tell him what he was in English. He eventually figured it out since everyone else called him a bat. He loved this costume and even at Christmas when his siblings went to find costumes for the nativity play, he wanted to be the scary bat. I'll leave you to decide where the bat comes into the story of the first Christmas . . .
And here is a closeup of some of the bands we turned into patches and put on Sebi's jacket. His brother and sister have both worn it to school since Halloween, and Maddie claims she wants to be a punk rocker next year, so perhaps the investment of time will be worth it.

Squaw Peak Leaf Peeping

2011-10-16T07:20:00.000-07:00

Rob insisted one Saturday that we get out and see the leaves before they all turned brown and blew away.

He was right -- it was well worth the time.

We drove up Squaw Peak which I hadn't done in 17 years (sometimes I wonder if I actually live here, or if I just visit local schools and grocery stores).

We had a picnic courtesy of In-N-Out that made everyone happy.

I found the vignette feature on Picasa.

Joss monkeyed around and the rest of us tried to keep him from falling off the trail.

And we took a lovely walk out in the leaves. You've got to give them a good send-off since they won't be back for another 11 months.

Quips from the Natives

2011-09-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

The Skype generation discovers General Conference.

Joss to Elder Richard G. Scott: Hello? . . . Hello? . . . You talk to me? . . . Hello?

Maddie: Can I has scriptures?

Joss: Can I do yoga?

Rob: Who would you like to meet in the afterlife? Mimi?

MA: Grandpa Oscar.

Rob: Madeline Kahn.

Will: 'Someone broke my igneous rocks.' 'I feel your pain, man. I hate it when my igneous rocks are even touched.' *

Joss: Papa, can we go to the zoo? Can we go to a schloss?

Rob, giving a lecture on social class in his turn-of-the-century Vienna writing seminar: So what are some indicators that someone is of another social stratum?

crickets

finally somewhere out of the back: Someone uses the word 'stratum'?

Rob and MA waking up. Joss comes in

Mama: Joss, why don't you go out and jump on the trampoline?

Papa: That's a good idea Joss.

Joss, settling in, intending to go nowhere: Hey, I love you guys!

Maddie: Hold still or I'm going to give you fifty lashes!

Joss: I don't want eyelashes!

Heather A.: I just think that Joss is magical.

Rob: Yes, but it's a dark magic.

* From What's Up Doc which stars Madeline Kahn as Miss Eunice Burns.

Wedding!

2011-09-05T17:52:00.000-07:00

Over Labor Day weekend we had a whirlwind trip out to Berkeley for John and Clarissa's wedding. It was held at the Berkeley City Club, another beautiful Julia Morgan building. It was an intimate, personal ceremony and we were glad we got to be there to see it. Aside from that, we played hard, we ate well, and we fell apart before the dancing began! Here is more of the occasion in pictures:

bride and groom with nieces and nephews

reading an e.e. cummings poem during the ceremony

Shumway siblings

McFarlands were here

oooh! nice eyebrow! Joss banged it into the door of the rental car that afternoon and it would not stop bleeding.

the cousins snuck off for some pictures in the courtyard

flower girls dance with the bride

parents of the groom give a toast

during Clarissa's mother Barbara's toast

Sebastian talking to Grandpa

Each table was themed with a spot from Manhattan

Milkshakes used for toasts (John's friend Will said the next morning: "So it really is true -- you can have fun without drinking!")

Karen, Maddie and Rosemary

The Trip Home: A Report Card

2011-08-22T02:01:00.000-07:00

Our Itinerary: Stuttgart to Atlanta and Atlanta to Salt Lake. It was a good schedule, flying out at 11:00am and getting in at 9:00pm on the same day (flying back across 8 time zones too, so about 23 hours of travel door to door).

German taxi driver: A+. cheerful, knowledgeable, efficient and with candy for the kids
Stuttgart airport: C-. inefficient, poorly-designed, and not very helpful; had to show our passports 5 times in 5 different places. took 1 1/2 hours to process us from curb to gate. ugh.
Delta: B-. The flight attendants all looked "rid hard & put away wet" and the bare bones service just can't keep up with their [government subsidized] European counterparts with their dewy-skinned attendants, steaming towels, toys for the kids, and gourmet meals instead of astronaut food served in foil pouches. They got us there and did it on time, but it feels more and more like riding on a bus with a lot of rules.
German Family With Four Kids Who Sat Next To Us On The Flight: A++. Enjoy your time in the US. Hope everybody doesn't stare at you. Now move on -- you're making us look bad!
Atlanta airport: A. Clean, air-conditioned, and efficient. Managed to process our whole family through passport control, baggage claim, customs, baggage re-check and re-security in half the time of Stuttgart and even managed to make us laugh. Better than JFK, Dulles, Vienna, & Heathrow. Detroit and Atlanta are my new favorite airports.
Joss: B+. better than expected. played the iPad 70% of the time, slept about 15%.
MaddieWillSebi: A-. entertained themselves well even without personal screens and only started bashing each other and crying at the 20 hour mark.
Salt Lake Airport: A. Home! Full of big families, restrooms and drinking fountains! Yay! The only thing you could have done better was to lose our luggage (that is now our dream -- we make it and the suitcases don't -- then they have to deliver it to us! Ahhhh . . .).
SLC shuttle driver: C+. und ve vill gib him za EZ Bake Oven Avard for funcktioning on only ein lightbulb, very dim. But I guess one lightbulb is all you need to get us from SLC to Provo.
Our Renters: A+. the house is in great shape and the pets are happy
Our yardcare specialist: A. everything is green and huge and we have already harvested tomatoes, onions, zucchini, beets, basil and a wheelbarrow full of weeds
Jet lag: B-. Worse than usual; we're good at the staying up part, but still lacking in the sleeping part. I can't help noticing how much more I get done in a day when I wake up at 2:00am. If only I didn't walk into doorjambs.
Culture shock: B. Disposals, yay. Trampoline, yay. Mexican food, yay. Wii, yay. Friends, YAY! Family, YAY! "Pajama jeans, the pajamas you live in, the jeans you can sleep in." Whaaaaat?

Oh, crud. I'm home.

Stocherkahn Ride in the Neckar

2011-08-21T06:31:00.000-07:00

On our last day in Tübingen, we decided to go on a stocherkahn up the Neckar.

The seats are made by these three boards -- one across and two on the sides.

Just what the professor needed.

University students hanging out

Maddie tried out the stocherkahn

So did Sebastian, but it's a pretty high stakes game with the river so full of boats.

Joss wanted to stick his fingers in the water and "make bubbles".

Our great guide Felix. He gave us the wine, women, and Hölderlin tour of Tübingen.

Goodbye Tübingen!

Schwäbisch Hall

2011-08-20T08:57:00.000-07:00

The kids went back to their day camp on Monday and Rob, Joss and I headed up to Schwäbisch Hall for another meeting with an internship provider. My mom has liked doors since she first came to Europe, and we've followed her lead and taken a lot of pictures of doors. I think this one is the Door With The Mostest 2011.

This is where Rob stayed when he came in 2005. He said you could drop a ball at one end of the room and it would roll to the other, it was so off kilter. As I recall, I had three kids in Vienna while he was away visiting his interns. I bought myself a great pair of shoes as payment.

This is where they have summer performances. Rob got to see one while he was here in 2005, but I am just imagining actors falling down the stairs in mid-dance.

Original Bratz dolls? Who knew?

I have heard that when Rob's mother came to pick him up, she had only one german word under her belt: niedlich, which means cute. She could have gotten pretty far here on niedlich. It was all niedlich.

Niedlich

Teeny tiny alley good only for drug deals. And being niedlich.

Joss got to pretend he was an only child and do things that he never gets to do.

Every time we turned around there was another picturesque view. Niedlich, niedlich, niedlich.

We crossed several covered bridges and made our way to the other side of the river. Sooo niedlich.

The Würth museum there had an outdoor installation by Niki St. Phalle and it was a Joss magnet because, as he said, they all had hidey holes.

Dragon

Rob and I had actually seen a couple of her pieces in Balboa Park in San Diego in 2007. We wished the kids had been with us for 20 minutes to enjoy them; we got our wish today!

In the belly of the bear. After all of this climbing, we decided we were ready for lunch. We'd been choosy about a restaurant and then found out that it was 2:00pm and that everything closes in Schwäbisch Hall at 2:00pm. We walked back to the other side and found a place called Olli's

We chose well.

Very, very well.

Rob loved these colors together

And I loved these colors. Sehr niedlich. Joss was beginning to melt, so we made our way back to the car. We took a scenic route home through the Schwäbisch forest which was lovely. Then Helga the GPS frau, who had been acting weird all day, took us all the way to Esslingen instead of back home. I worked her over and told her who was in charge, but we ended up seeing Stuttgart's wine country too.

Heidelberg & Speyer

2011-08-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

We got up in our quaint hotel and came downstairs to perhaps the most sensational breakfast we've ever had, and that is saying something. But we've never had a candlelit breakfast before, or one with personal jars of fruit salad and bottles of juice.

Rob and I had looked at the menu at the Weisser Bock, but the fixed price menu was waaaaay above our budget. Too bad, because it was all Spanish-German, and we are Spanish-German foodies if ever there were some. So at least we got the swank breakfast offerings.

The kids enjoyed it, but they probably would have picked Krispy Kremes or Count Chocula over the cold cuts and croissants and muesli if given the choice. We went to church at the LDS ward and had a good time. We came back with all of the students to this restaurant Rob had picked out the day before called Perkeo on the Haupstrasse:

Perkeo was a jester with a legendary drinking ability.

We had our own room and we got to order our own thing (usually for budgeting and serving ease, we all get the same thing). We had a calm, leisurely lunch.

I had a salad which is what I've needed after all of the pork and potatoes we've been eating! Maddie took Joss out to walk up and down the street while we settled the bill. The waitress asked what kind of a group we were. I suspect that in Heidelberg, renowned for students and drinking, a group of 30 ordering alkoholfrei was pretty noteworthy.

When Maddie and Joss returned sopping wet we realized that it was raining outside. Also that all of our umbrellas were in our luggage, a solid 8 blocks away. So we all got soaked getting to our luggage, then we split up trying to get our car, only the people at the parking lot didn't have the keys, so we all got even wetter and it took us another two hours to get the car, settle the bills at the hotel and the hostel and leave Heidelberg. They were not our best two hours; we shall leave it there.

But because we're gluttons for punishment, we decided to stop by Speyer. It was only 25 minutes away and had . . .

. . . everybody say it with me now, a rare three-aisle romanesque church! Only our third in a week!

To be fair, though, the Speyer cathedral is the most important of the three and by far the largest.

Sheer age and size impress -- this thing was started in 1021 and took 50 years to complete.

Speyer is where the Catholic parliaments were held for centuries and where in 1529 the mother of all protests (the one that spawned Protestantism) took place.

Sebi and Rob explored the crypt where emperors, kings and a whole slew of bishops are buried.

Outside there was a huge party going on. I have to say that Speyer had great street musicians: a guy on a xylophone playing Bach and Haydn, and a quintet playing La Cucaracha.

Joss was sleeping in the car, Maddie was reading the iPad, and we had these two with us. We bought them ice cream cones and sat them on these stairs while we tried to look around the Speyer altstadt.

There was too much party. As a woman in Reichenau said "That's a lot of mutton" and it was. Tourists are the very dumbest creatures, waddling down the street and bleating to each other.

But it was nice to see Speyer, the cathedral, and here we are -- our one drive by of the Rhine this trip. We drove home in a blaze of sibling-smacking screeching unhappiness, but the kids were as quiet as mice once we got back to their Tübingen house.

Heidelberg

2011-08-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

Since I've already 'fessed up to my traveler's gout, it should come as no surprise that I wasn't ready after a day like the Bodensee to come home and pack up for an overnighter to Heidelberg. We thought about sending the students off by themselves. Rob thought (as he often does, I suspect) about leaving me and Joss home. We thought about catching the next plane home. In the end it was less trouble to follow the plan. So we packed our toothbrushes and our electronics and headed out to Heidelberg.

We arrived just in time to catch the students coming off the train and get them situated with maps and transportation cards. Then we met them at the hostel and got them checked in. By this time Joss was begging to go to the hotel and take a nap -- not normal at all. We finally made our way to the Weisser Bock, which is right in the altstadt above a restaurant.

When my parents came and toured Europe, my father said he was "quainted out" after staying in so many pokey old hotels. This one had great rooms, but it was a little strange to get to. We had to take the elevator up, then go downstairs, then back up another flight. Pretty quaint.

But as I said, the rooms were big and comfortable and the showerheads came far above your head. Here Joss is listening to the Tiki Tiki Tiki Room for the ninety-leventh time.

And the kids were across the hall in their own suite. For the first time on the trip Maddie got her own room. And now you can see who didn't put on any sunscreen on Friday. Joss went down for a nap and the kids wanted to watch TV, so Rob and I went out to explore.

We headed straight to the alte brucke with its renaissance city gate. It was buzzing with tourists from all over, at least for about 20 yards.

But admittedly it does have a great view of the schloss. Then it cleared right out across the bridge. By the time we got to the other side, there were only Germans.

We took a road called the Schlangenweg (snake walk) and it was both steep and snaky. We wanted to get up to the Philosophenweg or philosopher's walk.

Once there, we found wild blackberries and the professor had to reach over and try one.

We also saw magnificent views of the city. I don't know that it made me philosophical, but it did make me impressed with the philosophers -- they must have been in great shape, because that was no mere walk! One of our students was a missionary here, and he told us that up on the top of the mountain by the ruins is a great place to play capture the flag. Put it on your itinerary, people. Capture the flag in Heidelberg.

The professor being philosophical in the philosophers garden at the end of the walk. They have a great microclimate here that lets them grow all kinds of good things and we admired lots of exotic plants.

We wandered back over to the other side and up the high street. But it was filled with the most clueless kind of tourist and so we struck off a block here and a block there. We found the Jesuit church.

I really liked their drive-through candle lighting door -- for those times when you've got someone on your mind but you don't have time to go attend a service.

They were having a wedding inside.

Then we stopped by this church which used to have a wall separating the catholics (in front) and the lutherans (in back). The wall came down, but the catholics moved over to the jesuit church.

This is the house of the golden knight, a renaissance party which was built for a huguenot fabric merchant.

And this is, uh, the Kornmarkt and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it was where they used to sell corn. No idea. At this point it was time to wake up Joss, so we headed back to the hotel where the kids were still very happy doing nothing.

We convinced them to come out for some burgers and fries at the Hard Rock Cafe. Because it's Heidelberg, you know, that hot spot of rock n' roll.

The kids liked it and the music was louder than even Joss. It was a successful meal, and I'm glad that we haven't had to resort to McDonalds as a bribe even once on this trip. Hard Rock will suffice, I think.

After dinner we walked back up to the Kornmarkt where we caught the funicular.

We learned the hard way at Neuschwanstein in 2006 that if there is transportation offered up a mountain, you should take it. Also, it always helps to use Alternative Modes of Transportation when pulling reluctant children around.

I had very low expectations of the castle and very low expectations of me, so I was pleased as punch to have made it up here. It was glorious.

This view, of blue sky through the windows of the palace, is one that tourists and writers and students and poets can't get enough of.

And I had to say, it was pretty sublime. Here's a dragon drain with eyelashes. Where else can you find eyelashes on your drainpipes, I ask you?

Here's the whole family in Heidelberg. If you thought it was actually gonna happen, you were more optimistic than we were!

Roses bloom beneath our feet. All the earth's a garden sweet. Or so I hear.

Divine.

This was the way down. Now you see why we took the funicular -- we would never have made it to the top otherwise.

For dessert we bought the kids Schneeballen -- huge spheres of mushed up cookies with filling and frosting.

Will had eaten them back in 2006 at the Christmas markets.

They were well-received, but then it started raining and we walked back to our hotel, thankful it was just a few minutes away.

Everyone got bathed and watched the Asterix and Obelisk movie on TV. We did it! We made here!

The Bodensee & Traveler's Gout

2011-08-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

First, a confession: about a week before we leave one of these trips, I get a case of what I'll call Traveler's Gout. I've seen so much stuff that I can't keep it straight any more. I've eaten so much street food and sweet food and rich food and pig that I'm actually craving green beans and lentils. My interior monologue goes something like "blah, blah, blah, Baroque, blah, blah, blah, neoclassical, yadda, yadda, palace, blah, blah, blah." I start to dream about my disposal and not spending huge amounts of time sorting my trash. It is a combination of fatigue and sour grapes that we're leaving and dread of the packing and trip home. So everything from here on out should be taken with a grain of salt.

Friday morning we were invited to tag along with the students on their trip down to the Bodensee. This is the lake that borders Germany, Austria and Switzerland and we heard that the weather would be awful next week, so we rearranged our schedules and left at 7:00 in the morning so that we could have breakfast here on Reichenau with a view of the lake on all four sides.

I've run out of adjectives, but it was divine.

The kids ran around and mingled with students or hid behind crosses.

Here are some of our students eating the wonderful breakfast.

Then Joss came over and sat down in my lap, told me he didn't feel good and proceeded to throw up on me. It was just like in Parenthood. Except that there Steve Martin was at home and could toss everything into the washer. I'd brought extra clothes for the kids, but I had not packed extra clothes for me.

Nevertheless, with a little deep breathing, a little Tide stick, a little washing of hands and Joss and a lot of looking at the view we moved on.

Maddie and I nominate this for the setting of the next Nanny McPhee movie. Perfect, no?

We followed the students over to the Reichenau munster where they were being taken to see a rare three-aisle romanesque church. Except that they'd all just seen our pictures from Alpirsbach on their final exam the night before.

Romanesque church with the oldest wood ceiling in all of Germany, blah, blah, blah. It was really nice, but I was across the street looking at a frog and some koi fish with Joss. When they came out, Rob wanted to go to the next church on the island where the students were getting a tour of some rare frescoes.

The kids staged a mutiny. They wanted to go swimming. Rob wanted frescoes. I threw in my lot against everyone. If I'd thought about it, what I really wanted was a shower and a change of clothes, but that would have been unlikely in any scenario.

Rob asked a woman at a fruit stand where to go swimming, and this is just one reason I love him -- he finds the local hangout and we try it and we're the only American family there. This was a campground filled with mostly Germans in tents, trailers and campers doing their thing. They come for a week or two and they hang out all day on the side of the lake playing cards, doing crossword puzzles, reading their books and hanging out. It looked really really enticing to us since we are at the end of two months of intense travel. Also one of my favorite moments: woman comes out of her camper and mows the 10" strip of lawn on the side of her campsite. That's right, folks, you don't escape yardcare even on your vacation! I want to know if she actually brought the lawnmower with her or if you can check it out at the front desk.

The other reason this place was great is that it was free. No parking fees and even the bathrooms were free. Yeah, haven't I mentioned that? You have to pay to use the restrooms in Europe. The going rate is 50 euro cents (about 70 US cents). Between that and buying water, sometimes I feel like we spend all of our per diem on water and restrooms.

We decided to rent one of these babies. That is not us, but I wanted to you see the sleek design and functionality of our vehicle.

Maddie is ever our most-intrepid swimmer, but she found to her dismay that she is way out of shape after her swim team hiatus.

Even Joss went down the slide. And please note that this time we managed to get a life jacket on Joss.

He was acting tired after the cold lake swimming, but pretty normal.

They did have fun jumping and sliding and 'bizzing' off the boat. (where you hang on and catch a ride)

Even Rob made sure that he got under Lake Constance. I stayed on the boat. I had done really well getting in up to my knees since it was so clear I could see all the little fishies. I love fishies, I do, but I love them more behind glass or with a nice dill sauce. I live in mortal terror of them coming up to me and giving me fishy kisses.

Our friend Janet recently went to a spa where the little fishies eat dead skin off of your feet. This would be rare torture for me. Not that I couldn't use some work on my feet about now!

A family picture of sorts. We've gotten precious few this summer.

Joss only ate a few bites at lunch, ran into the water a little more and then crashed out here. It was, after all naptime in a more civilized world.

These two were in the water 'til the bitter end.

They were off wrestling each other for 3 1/2 hours out there. And later we found out who did not get any sunscreen put on!

Eventually we dried off, got back into the car and drove into Constanz (the Bodensee is called Lake Constance in English, and this is the largest town on the lake). It was like Toys R Us on Black Friday -- all the parking lots were full and the traffic was not moving. We ditched our GPS and miraculously got a parking space and took the kids in to see whatever there was to see.

Joss was obviously unwell and this wasn't a great plan.

We walked a few blocks and then found a shady bench under a tree. As soon as I laid him down, he fell asleep there, so we took turns -- one of us walked down the high street to the church while the other one read The Lost Hero aloud to the boys.

It was big. It was quiet. It was nice and cool inside. It was a cathedral.

It had knock your socks off doors.

It had a crypt that I could handle.

The hotel and restaurant Count Zeppelin.

And this was my favorite thing on the autobahn.

Time's Up!

2011-08-17T05:59:00.000-07:00

This dude is done. He's done with his stroller, his leash, his high chair, his bed, his car seat. He won't hold hands and he doesn't want to ride on your shoulders.

At the end of his tether. And someday (I can't imagine when) we will have forgotten how bad it actually was. We explained to him that we are packing up and heading home, to his house with his room and his toys and his pets and his yard and his trampoline etc.

But Joss is ready to jump off now. He points frantically at every airplane and tells us we need to catch it to go to Joss' home house. When we tell him we're going in a few days, he explodes at us and screams that we're wrong.

He hasn't been eating anything, then he demands different food at other times. He takes for-blasted-ever to go to sleep and then wakes up too early.

I think we'll call this stage "terrorfried". I thought that understanding would bring more mature behavior, but, no. He's as bad as we've ever seen him and we've explained everything we can think of. He is going to freak out when we get into two separate cars to go to the airport.

It looks like he's saying "I have had it up to here with you people!"

The feeling is mutual, buddy.

Horb: Ripe for a Travel Slogan

2011-08-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

This is Horb am Neckar. It isn't in any of our American guidebooks, but Rob and I drove over there on Thursday first, because Rob wanted to meet with an internship provider who works there; second, because he read about it in a book on witches that he did a review of. Horb was a hotbed of witch hunting. They grow grapes for wine in the area, and when there was some rapid climate change and years of bad grape harvests, odd women took the blame.

It is a steep, steep little city. Rob went off to his meeting and I looked around town. I was looking for the market square (above) and climbed a lot of stairs and hills before I found an elevator which carried me up another three levels. The best job here would be as an elevator installer/repairman, or perhaps someone who sells joint juice.

Right in the town square, this is called the chalk quarry, but it was not just for chalk. Truly creepy jail cells that still give off a bad vibe.

I made it to one of the three churches that I could see. This was next to the town square and so probably the oldest. It has a name but I've spaced it.

Originally romanesque in style (see exterior), it was redone in baroque (interior).

This tower was used as a lookout, then as a prison. Now the local mountain climbing club has offices here, which seems appropriate enough.

The Luciferturm where the witches were kept before they were burned.

So I was brainstorming some slogans for Horb, because you should know what you're getting into before you go, I think. Here is what I have so far:

Horb am Neckar: Good for the Gams

Horb am Neckar: a Nice Place to Live -- Unless You're a Witch

Horb am Neckar: a Stairmaster With a View

then Rob broke in with

Horb am Neckar will give you calves like Boris Becker

Whaddaya think? Will Horb hire us?

Ritter Sport and More

2011-08-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

Wednesday we had reservations for the kids to attend a Schoko Werkstatt and make a couple more custom Ritter Sport bars. We drove up to Waldenbuch to their quadratisch, practisch museum.

Joss and Rob and I shopped and walked around the grounds while the other three did their thing:

There they are in their lab coats learning the secrets.

"So this is where the magic happens," Rob said. "I'm going to snap a picture of the Oompa Loompas coming in off their smoking break."

At the end we got some pictures of them creating their own wrappers.

They did some funky stuff with dark, white and milk chocolate and then got whatever mix-ins they wanted. Maddie loved the plastic sealing machine.

Then Rob and I got a glimpse of the town as we were driving out and we stole 10 minutes of date time to go check it out.

This is the equivalent of the bishop's storehouse where all of the tithed goods would have been kept.

"Fremdenzimmer" is an old way of saying 'rooms for rent' and that is part of the hunting schloss and church behind.

Right on the market square

Then we went home for lunch in the backyard and Joss' nap. The kids got a chance to go play in the Steinlach again.

Will liked riding over the waterfall

Even Joss got in 20 minutes of play time

It had been a few days since we'd had good weather and calm water.

Then we were off to pick up Daniela for dinner. She was taking us someplace typically Tübingen, but we parked a ways back. A long, long way. We walked from town through most of a suburb and then off into the hinterlands and the boys were dragging (Sebi) and complaining (Will) and getting a ride on our shoulders (Fluff). Joss' latest thing is to pull out our hairs or even bite our hair while he's sitting up there. Lovely.

But it was lovely once we reached our destination. Weather and temperature were absolutely perfect. View was awesome.

I gave Daniela the quilt I'd made for her. I got the binding done while we were in Berlin and it has made it through the whole trip in a garbage sack waiting for this moment. She was overwhelmed. I was relieved. Now we have room to take home the chocolate we bought!

Schaufele (?) a typically Swabian dish.

A maultasche -- big ole' sausage & spinach ravioli like thing served in broth here. They also slice them up and scramble them with eggs. Sounds weird but it was really good.

It was gorgeous and everyone stuffed themselves.

There were geese on the farm and I had just finished Goose Chase that day. The kids had a good time visiting them. And a family of peacocks.

The view at sunset, and also the road we usually end up taking on our trips.

Thank you Daniela for such a memorable meal!

Ludwigsburg

2011-08-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, the three older kids went to a camp run by our friend Elke for the Lutheran church. While they were gone, we took advantage and dragged Joss to another palace. This one lies just outside of Stuttgart.

It is baroque and was built by a duke for his mistress. Evidently his wife lived in Stuttgart and he lived out here on a construction site until he died.

We got into a German tour and pulled out the iPad almost immediately for Joss. The guide talked really fast and moved us very quickly from room to room, so we'd pick up Joss and the iPad and just get him settled in a room only to have to heave him up again and go onto the next.

The throne room. Napoleon made the duke of Baden-Wurttenburg king, which lasted for three years.

The palace still has many of the original furnishings and fabrics. And do take a look down that hallway!

The queen's bedroom -- I think this was Charlotte Mathilde.

And her library. This is one of the starred sights in our guidebook, and so I'm going to stick in a picture. Now you've seen it.

The hall of portraits.

Original sets in the palace theater. It went out of fashion and they had lots of props and sets in storage, so they've gotten them out of mothballs. These appeared to be needlepointed.

This is the mirrored room, that was used as a bedroom, which I find both vain and impractical. Too many reflections and too much light.

This is the ceiling with a trompe d'oleil painting.

And a state room. By this time it was getting truly arduous to pick up Joss and move him on. I've only put in a fraction of the pictures we took, and we missed plenty of rooms because we were going at such a fast clip. It all made sense when I looked at the time and realized we'd been at it for an hour and a half! Then the guide said that we had walked almost a kilometer on the tour. I can believe it!

We ate lunch in the courtyard and then took this one home for a nap. We didn't get to see the extensive gardens around back, or either of the other castles, Favorite and Monrepos, but that place is just monstrous and it will have to wait!

A Schwarzwald Kind of Day

2011-08-13T11:05:00.000-07:00

On Monday we had a whole day with no meetings or activities. I checked the interwebs for prices and distances and presented to the family a Schwarzwald visit -- also known as the Black Forest. None of us had been, and we wanted to go to the Vogtbauernhof open air museum where they've moved a bunch of Black Forest farmhouses together so that you can see how people have lived here for 100's of years.

It was a fairly long ride, and very windy and scenic at the end, and not so easy to find, but we had our GPS named Helga, in honor of the Isaaks, and we found it eventually.

We went first to the woodworking shop. Each kid got to pick out something to make.

Then Herr Lehmann helped them to get it done. Here he and Joss are drilling a hole into a helicoptery thing.

This man was a treasure. Starting off the visit with power tools meant that the kids were excited for the rest of the day, and they were all justifiably proud of their cuckoo whistles and magic puzzles.

He let them burn whatever they wanted into the wood to decorate it.

I'm really glad I didn't know that this was the traditional Schwarzwald headdress, because I would have dragged my feet coming if I had. These preposterous pompoms started out as painted circles; then became woolen balls; then the balls got bigger and bigger and became more codified: unmarried women could wear the red hats after confirmation; after marriage they had to stick with the black.

A Schwarzwalderin sells her cross stitched goods in one of the farmhouses.

The attics were often the kids' playrooms in the big farmhouses; called Rumpelzimmers.

This one had period toys and was another hit with the kids.

These two are called Black Forest Foxes because of their red coloring. They're named Max and Flicka. There were just a smattering of farm animals, but enough to keep Joss excited.

Joss becomes bashful when confronted with the object of his affection: a live cockaroody.

This is the Vogtbauernhof, the showpiece of the museum.

They did have enough cows that you could see how they were stabled in the various houses.

This is my nightmare job: cooking in an old, dark, dirty kitchen all day long. This woman did it pretty happily. I hope she has a white, modern kitchen at home. And that it's filled with take out menus.

Will tries to learn how to milk a cow. It was great practice, because nothing is going to kick you, but much harder than I thought it would be!

There was also a playground, and we let Joss and Sebastian play there while Rob, Maddie, Will and I took turns visiting some of the other houses. I had warned that people were going to get wet and sandy (because there was water and sand involved, and I've taken a McFarland or two to the playground . . .). When I returned from my visit, Joss was in a diaper and Sebastian was soaking wet. He spent the next hour saying "Mom knows the future" and walking gingerly in wet clothes. We decided to get some Black Forest cake.

And we ducked into a cafe just as this torrential downpour opened up on us!

Here it is, the Black Forest cake. When we asked where all of the cherry trees are, we were told by a native that it was invented outside of the area by a homesick cook from the Schwarzwald.

It was good, and we were so happy for a mid-afternoon snack! We went back to the car, and unbeknownst to the kids, I plotted a different route home.

We stopped in Alpirsbach because I knew the professor would want to see a rare three-aisled romanesque church.

I suppose as a tourist attraction it's rather subtle, but as a rest stop it was well-received.

Rob loved the church. It was attached to a monastery. And the monastery had a brewery. And the brewery had quite a smell to it which Sebastian found off-putting.

The kids lit candles for a couple of our students. One woman's father was in an accident with a fuel truck. Another one's fiancee was diagnosed with leukemia since we've been here.

Joss ran around the cloister repeatedly.

Original frescoes from the 12th century.

View of the church from the cloister

I was trying to get a picture of the Black Forest here, but there was always a clearing, so it never really looks as black and foreboding as it should. From above, the Schwarzwald looked pretty tame. But when you looked into it, you could see the fairy tales coming on.

We took one last stop in Freudenstadt

it claims to have the largest market square in Europe

I think it isn't really a market square if you have streets running through it and building in the middle. I will grant that it was a very pretty square. Then we turned our noses for home and called it a day.

A Bad, A Waterfall, and a Castle

2011-08-12T21:51:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we awoke to a house of peeping and muttering children. We had our brand new car and we wanted to make the most of a free Saturday, but the kids did not want to go. After throwing some ideas around, we decided to explore the Swabian Alb or Jura. We also decided to let Maddie stay at home by herself, which was the fondest wish of her heart. We drove off to Bad Urlach, which would be about like visiting Lindon (UT) or Richmond (CA). Except that its downtown is all half-timbered.

They were having their Saturday market and we bought some strawberries and apples and munched them happily.

Rob had also seen the church tower and we went on a quest to find it. The guidebook just talked about the main square, but we loved the Amanduskirche.

We also found a general store where we bought a playmobil figurine and we should have bought three.

The lion and the snake. Are those two Hogwarts houses?

We found a water wheel. It was in use until 1958 when the mill became the city museum. It was mesmerizing.

And so was the stream that fed it. We found several trout hanging around in it.

The Residenzschloss with the church tower behind. From the town, we drove out to a hike we'd heard about to the Urlacher waterfall.

The temperature was great and the hike was just right for the boys.

We spent 3/4 of our time walking alongside the stream as it came down. It was so clear!

I could have jumped in.

It was so green and gorgeous!

We made it to the top!

On the way back we gave in and let the boys get into the water.

OK, I did too, and it was cold! We dried off and walked back to the car where we ate our lunch by this strange little tiled pool. It was a place to cool off your muscles after hiking, and about a dozen or so Germans and our boys went walking around it. Once we dried off again, we got into the car and drove to Schloss Lichtenstein.

Once we arrived we found a playground

which is always an obligatory stop.

After a few more minutes of slides, swings, ziplines and seesaws, we made our way to the castle.

I was blown away.

We went on a half hour tour in German. Our guide was funny and her stories were funny but my German can't quite reach humor yet and I had to wait for some help. There were no photos allowed, but if you can't stand it, you can look at the inside in the schloss gallery on the website. It was also late in the day and so we reluctantly plugged Joss into the earphones and the iPad. The guide noticed it and told Rob she thought it was great "Oh, yes, it quieted him right down". Some other tourist said it was the best thing he'd seen that day.

There were some great rooms and a big armor collection that the boys loved. There was a small chapel at one end, and a drinking room at the other with a pulpit in it. One could tell hunting stories from the pulpit which, while they did not have to be true, did have to be entertaining.

Antlers and lobelia -- never would have put those two together myself, but they look great, don't they?

Joss was all about finding hidey holes and there were plenty for him.

And Rob and MA got in one more day of sightseeing with a reluctant brood. YAY! And that night Maddie said "I probably should have come with you . . ." True, but there's no way to know that until you stay home once.

Follow the White Wigs, or How to See Hohenzollern

2011-08-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

On Friday Rob went into Stuttgart and picked up our rental car. It was a brand new 7-passenger Ford Galaxy. We wanted to take the kids somewhere close, so we decided that Burg Hohenzollern would be our warm-up. Rob, Joss and I had come in 2009 and we knew where it was and what to expect. The kids were not excited. They want to play war games on the computer, watch the KiKa channel on TV and talk to their friends on Buzz.

We got lost, found our way, parked our car, took the shuttle bus, and climbed through three rings of fortifications just like last time.

It was about to rain just like last time.

We finally got to the courtyard and there were two tours leaving immediately: an english tour or a kids' tour. We didn't have time to ask anything about them, we just stood in the back of the kids' tour line, figuring that the kids might complain less if it were geared toward them.

The whole tour was about finding Princess Sophie Charlotte on her 10th birthday. We had two guides, Countess Anna and Willibald, a butler who took us back 300 years and got their charges ready for the festivities.

"Finally someone understands me!"

Next we moved into another room where they gave all of the kids either a fan or a wooden sword. Let's just repeat that. They handed out wooden swords to children in the palace. Some kid was waving his in front of a priceless painting. Rob and I were agog.

Maddie has a new dream job. She wants to come play Countess Anna at Burg Hohenzollern.

We found Princess Sophie Charlotte's secret chocolate stash in a hidden drawer in her room. And then proceeded to eat chocolate in the palace. Unbelievable!

Here is a good picture of Countess Anna and her hair. She had an entire Mardi Gras parade going on in that wig, and the care and keeping of one's hairpiece was my favorite part of the tour. Your wig had a flea trap inside it, renewed each day from the kitchen with a tiny rag covered in blood and honey. And each night you would put it into a birdcage where the birds would eat the fleas and any other critters that had gotten into it during the day. Eeeww!

Every room was a new activity and the best part of it from Rob and MA's point of view was the we got to break all of the rules! We went backwards through the palace, taking pictures inside and eating and swinging swords and wearing our shoes. We kept running into the regular tour groups who were shuffling reverently along in their felt scuffs and we felt bad for them. They couldn't possibly have had as much fun as we did. Here they are learning to write in old gothic script.

The kids all plopped down on the built in seats and set to work in front of a stunning view.

Then they got their letter sealed with wax by Willibald.

Joss dropped out at this point for some Angry Birds, but I had to put it away because other kids were coming over to gawp at the screen and I didn't want to distract everyone. Only Joss-man during naptime.

Our hunt led us back into this great hall. We were following a golden thread that came from Sophie Charlotte's dress through several rooms. Again, I wondered what the other tours must have thought of the random boxes left sitting out for the kids.

We learned to dance here and then proceeded to dance our way out of the hall right through another tour group.
They took us down to the casemates (the castle foundations) where they fed us biersuppe made of nonalcoholic beer. Will and I were big fans. I was not so excited about being in enclosed spaces with four dozen people.

He looks like he could get used to this kind of thing.

Willibald says "Talk to the hand".

He helps Sebi get ready for a relay.

Keep the onion on the wooden spoon.

It is a measure of the success of the tour that the kids were engaged and entertained for two hours while Anna and Willibald talked to them about everything from etiquette to somersalts. Another measure came a few days later when one of them told me that only royalty got four tines on their forks, but you needed at least three to prove you didn't worship the devil. After a tour it is customary to tip your guide a euro or two for their trouble. Rob gave the Countess and Willibald a fiver.

I'd love to say that we were smart and knowledgeable and we got to do this because of my excellent planning skills, but this one happened by pure, dumb luck. Once at home, I found a 'kids' tours of Hohenzollern' pamphlet and looked at the schedule: they only did this three times this month. What incredible good fortune!

Here we are waiting for the shuttle bus. Rob was teaching the kids how to make duck calls with a blade of grass. This guy joined in.

And so did his Oma and Opa! My favorites!

Schloss Hohentübingen or The Pictures I Don't Put In

2011-08-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that you can only watch Curse of the Were-Rabbit so many times before you do, in fact, go crazy and want to get out of the house. This is fortunate for us, because we're living in a gorgeous, quaint little town. We scraped the kids up off the floor and pulled them down the stairs and under a tunnel and over two bridges.

They responded by knocking each other around a lot. So as promised, here are some time out pictures.

We make them count in German (or Mandarin in Sebi's case). It certainly gets the Germans' attention.

We made it a little further up the hill . . .

. . . then had to stop for another time out.

Check out that sign by Maddie. It says "Dohoggeddiadiaemmerdohogged" which means something like 'get a seat wherever you can find one'.

Managed to get to the first gate of the castle.

That guy over the gate looks like he could ward off evil spirits, vampires, bats, the plague, and most visitors. He didn't scare the devils out of our kids, though.

That's a pretty typical picture.

Thankfully the castle was shot through with secret passages perfect for running and squealing in. And great for Mama to work on her deep breathing under the tiny tiny low ceilings again.

"You're so ambitious! So much fun! I can't believe how much you people go see!" Um, yeah. When one is in a particularly foul humor, Maddie calls it "wearing the horcrux".

We're hot, sweaty and we take turns wearing the horcrux. Except when we don't and we're all crabby at once.

We took a stop to jump a fence and pick blackberries, because that is pretty much the highlight of the summer for the kids. Next summer I'm going to look for internships for them in Salinas and Castroville picking artichokes and strawberries and lettuce mix.

On the steps at the top of the schloss courtyard after they were done counting the lizards sunning themselves up there. Another potential Christmas shot nixed by its subjects.

Now THIS is what our summer has really looked like!

And this. A lot of this. They're just tired and flopsy here. If this were a time out picture, their noses would be on the wall.

Also plenty of this: three kids waiting around while the adults try to coax Joss into reasonable behavior.

We finally stopped at a bakery which restored everyone's good spirits (why were we leaving the house just before lunch anyway?). They had a tiny play table where Joss happily sorted wooden blocks and played on an abacus. Yes, it's true. Our child is so desperate for toys that he actually played with an abacus.

A croissant, pizza, or quiche and giant juice boxes -- magic formula.

We walked down to find the ice cream place and check on the evening's reservation, and decided we'd better sample the offerings.

Bad parenting moment #36. Sebastian orders something called "Angel Blue" ice cream and after eating about half of it, he declares it to be inedible. Rob tries it and agrees with him, at which point he fishes out some more change and lets Sebi order another ice cream cone. What sort of precedent are we setting here?! Will finishes off the nasty blue cone.

We did actually go home and have dinner before we returned and met the students and ordered even more gelato. Rob decided to let them splurge on the really preposterous stuff with lots of exotic fruits and wild names. The gelato shaped like spaghetti and the one that looks like lasagne and the one like angel hair pasta . . .

It was a party.

Tübingen

2011-08-09T01:59:00.000-07:00

So here's a bit about Tübingen, because most Americans have never heard of it. It sits about 40 minutes south of Stuttgart, in Baden-Wurttemburg. It is the site of the Eberhard Karl University, and it definitely has a university vibe to it. To me, it feels like a mix of North Berkeley and Cambridge, with all of the "Free Tibet" and "Unplug It!" and "I'm A Natural Gas Automobile" signs and the river and the punters; there are probably closer approximations that I'm not familiar with.
It was untouched during WWII, so it's a rare chance to see some authentic older slices of city planning and architecture. This is the Holderlin tower. Used to be part of the city battlements, then was the home of the poet Holderlin who lived here and went crazy. I can't imagine that his problem was with the house or the view. I think it's practically impossible to improve upon either.

Rob wanted to bring the students here to see something completely different from Berlin, and his friend Daniela puts on a month long language academy here during August. Many of the students are happier in a smaller town -- Berlin was often too big and too much for them. Others are really taken with the university program; they've had dinners and parties and all kinds of activities from sightseeing trips to salsa and flamenco nights. So while it felt too short for our family in Berlin, I guess it has worked as we intended it for the students.

The city straddles the Neckar river. Once the boys saw it, they determined that they had to rent a paddleboat. (a paddleboat?! why not a stockerkahn that the place is famous for?! But never mind, we'll do what they want for a week. Or a day at least.)

Rob took Will and Sebastian out and they rented a paddleboat. They were running errands and making reservations before and after, but got caught in a downpour while they were out on the Neckar river. They stuck it out under a tree.

We've been doing a lot of nothing and it feels really nice. Joss has gone to the playground, splashed in the canal, had three meals and one nap a day. We're enjoying simple pleasures like finding your keys or two matching socks. Having the time to watch The Curse of The Were-Rabbit five times in five days.

It's a breathtaking place to catch our breath.