More things I like about living here

Yes, it is time for a long overdue post.  I have been thinking a lot lately about living here in Germany, and honestly what I like about it.  When we first got back here this summer, I was SOOOO homesick - much worse than when we first moved here last year.  ( I guess there was so much to do then, and with no car, I spent a lot of time on the bus or tram going to and fro - which had its own element of "new" about it.)  But now, as we close in on another return to the US, and recognizing that after this trip, it will probably be a year before we go back, I am realizing all the things I really like like about living here. 

We may be at the half-way point of our time here (which I cannot believe), so I have also been thinking about what I will miss leaving here.

A few MORE things I like about living here:

1 - The bike paths - I can bike to the kids' school, no problem, and barely even touch the road.  And although we live in a big city, we really live in a small town within the city, very similar to Clemson.  But they have bike paths EVERYWHERE here.  It is soooo nice, and makes bike riding so much more enjoyable and actually functional.  I love biking to my book club, or a meeting at K5 (local coffee shop), or a school function, etc.  

Okay - so this is from our bike tour in Paris.  But who takes a picture when they are doing "every day" bike riding?  Plus, how cute is this kangaroo bike??

2 - The travel - Living here has given me the travel bug - not that I didn't have it before.  I just never acted on it before.  But we really feel this urgency to take advantage of our situation here and have seen some amazing things.  Hard to pinpoint my favorites, but I loved our recent excursion to Normandy and Paris.  I think when we move back to the States, I may need to roam around a bit more.

Zee is trying to wink here.

Burg Eltz - well preserved medieval castle in the Mosel valley region

At Arromanches in Normandy - part of the artificial barrier constructed that still stands constructed for WWII.

Mont St Michel in Normandy - amazing place to visit and totally worth the extra time.

Luke and Zee showing their manly calves, just like the Sun King did in his portrait.

3 - Opening my world view and that of my children - Never has the conflict in Israel/Palestine hit so close to home.  I have friends from Israel - who are intending to go back there very soon.  The Dutch are not some weird sect in Pennsylvania (which by the way - those are Pennsylvania Deutsch - GERMANS - not Dutch - just learned that moving here.  Feel free to laugh at my ignorance!), but friends I have made here.  I understand so much more about other cultures and my kids have truly broadened their minds to accept others in a way that no book could have done. (Although if you cannot live overseas, books are a GREAT start.)

4 - Public transportation - As I write this, I am still in my pajamas, but my kids are all safely off to school on the UBahn (like the subway trains, but this one is above ground).  That's right - I am drinking coffee, and typing away, and my boys all caught the tram to school.  LOVE IT!!!  (I have been known - more than once - to hit the carpool line at Clemson Elementary in the morning in pajamas, but I could hide in my big van.  Not so with my little red Opal Zafira here!)

I love this picture of my friend Colleen escorting Zee and her boys to school on the tram.    So grateful for her and her family and that they are such great neighbors!!

A Clarkson family Flat Stanley came to visit us!  Zee was showing him how to get on the tram.

You know you love it.  And it seats 7!  (Although it is a bit cramped then, right,  Papa??)

5 - Visitors coming - Honestly, it is such a joy to have people come and show them around our area, or the neighboring cities.  When Paul came, he surprised me by saying wherever I wanted to go, that sounded good to him.  So we went to Bonn to Beethoven's house!  No amount of bribery could have pulled my kids there (well, Silas would have gone for the math museum, but not for Beethoven's house).  And it was just a little over an hour train ride away - we were back just after school got out!  (As I type this, my cousin sleeps upstairs in Silas's room.  She is here for her fall break and I'm so excited to explore with her.  Wondering if I should wake her up??  :-) )

Brett moves to Germany for the year!

Paul and I visit Beethoven's house in Bonn.

Does this look like a German town or what?  Cute Bacharach along the Rhine - eating  döners with Nana and Papa.

Finally found this picture!!  Loved when Kelly and John came - and Harper!!

6 - History surrounding me - I love history.  I actually lamented when they removed the Calhoun House from the tour I gave at Clemson University.  It was my favorite part.  And now I live within walking/biking distance of 2 castles, one a pink palace with a moat, and one a crumbling ruin along the Rhein.  I am hoping to take my cousin (here visiting while she studies abroad in Athens) to tour our historic little town of Kaiserswerth where Florence Nightingale began her training, where the Holy Roman Emperor Barbarossa slept, where battles were waged and fought over this small little, but vital piece of the region.  And that is just where I LIVE.  That speaks nothing of Rome, Paris, Normandy, Bruges, Amsterdam, and all the history that I have been able to SEE.  I had no concept of what Corrie Ten Boom's "Hiding Place" was.  But now, I completely understand.  I even saw where the rations were hidden that gave them away.  What a blessing for someone who loves history.  What a privilege to see Flanders Field, and be moved by the events of WWI like I never could have before visiting the fields and Tyne Cot cemetery.  Or seeing the vast beaches of Normandy, and truly being amazed by what those boys did.  I have forgotten pages and pages of event details I learned in the past, but these images with smells, sounds, and space are more firmly planted in my mind.

Historic Kaiserswerth and the castle ruins on the Rhine

Normandy - gun batteries set up by the Germans - this one was actually  badly damaged by the Allied Forces.

7 - The beer - never have liked it before Germany.  ;-)

8 - The people - I have gotten to know so many people here, through the International School the boys attend, and through having great neighbors.  And I have so enjoyed the community this school creates - we are all mostly expats, and almost every family has one stay-at-home parent.  I think a lot of people here didn't have that opportunity before moving here because both parents worked or they were from larger cities, etc.  Of course, Clemson is similar in this respect - or at least with that small-town community feel.  And if you have experienced church at DCF, then you also have experienced that community sense.  But it is nice to find something similar here and meet people from all over the world in the process.

This is almost just like an earlier post I did about things I like about living here.  But I wanted to at least update the blog a bit now.  I am going to go back and insert some pictures.  This is so word-heavy, I don't even want to re-read it.  

Peace of Christ to you all this day.

**UPDATE:  Thanks to some help from friends, I was able to add a few more pictures.  I have to figure out this Picasa thing a bit better.  So I can add more pictures to future blogs.

Not a travel post...Music in Germany

I've been thinking about blogging about music for a while, but have decided instead of a massively long post, I will only share a few things.  Believe it or not, the radio stations here play most of the same pop tunes/rap/rock/alt rock you here in the US.  But they also have European music mixed in with the American stuff.  There are several stations that play older music (Pet Shop Boys, anyone?) mixed with the new stuff.  There are also a few funky stations that play music from all over the world, similar to listening to NPR's world music show - but all the time.  

Something to note and learned the hard way here:  most of the stations do not play the "clean" version of songs.  So when we first moved here, we really needed to hear some fun songs from the US.  Cee Lo Green's "Forget You" was popular last summer, and we were all nostalgic for that fun time in the car with the Fowler kids when I made them all sing, with the windows down, at the top of their lungs to keep the car moving!  (Okay - well, maybe I was just nostalgic for that!)  It comes on the radio, and suddenly, right at the chorus, the words were the original version...loud..."F*** you, and f*** her, too."  Nice.  Let's just say, lesson learned.  It is not that I strongly object to language in music.  But I do strongly object to my then 5 year old repeating it, or saying it to someone.  ;-)  

Here is a sampling of what I heard in the course of one day on the radio (the day in question was May 4th, 2012.)

• I'm an Englishman in New York
• Release Me
• I'm Your Antihero
• There She Goes (Taio Cruz)
• Easy Lover (they enjoy Phil Collins and Genesis here)
• Today I don't feel like doing anything
• Levels - Avici
• Under Pressure
• Pictures of You
• We Don't Need No Education
• Forget You
• Someone Like You (Adele)
• Everybody Wants to Rule the World
• I Will Wait (Mumford and Sons)
• Chiddy Bang (Ray Charles)
• Tage Wie Diese (HUGELY popular German song - seriously, sung at bars, dance clubs, is it their theme song??)
• Maybe (Sick Puppies)
• Please Don't Go Girl
• Rock Me, Amadeus
• Gewinner (Clueso)
• M & F (Die Artze)

Pretty eclectic mix, eh?

I didn't include my new favorite that I discovered, however, because I hope you will go to the link just above:  Katzenjammer - seriously great girl band.  Love them!  Katzenjammer is a German word for that crying, wailing sound that cats do.  But these girls can do it all.  They all play multiple instruments, they all sing.  They do a cover of "Land of Confusion," but my favorite is "I Will Dance."  A Norwegian girls' band - I would never have discovered them were it not for German radio.  Really, though - check them out!!  Their acoustic unplugged stuff is amazing.  They are actually in London when we are going.  Tickets please?  :)  Keep listening after "I Will Dance."  "Cherry Pie," "A Bar in Amsterdam," really, anything they do.   I hope you enjoy them.

Click on the video above.  You too, Mom!  :-)

(This post was edited to be more clear - sorry for the confusion.)

Better late than never - Spring Break in Rome

Yes, I know - ridiculous that I am finally NOW getting to a blog about our Spring Break in Rome.  But I feel like the end of the school year snuck up on me, Nana and Papa's visit was right after Rome, then we were off to the US.  Now that the boys are back in school, I am returning to my normal schedule, which does mean some free time to blog, etc.  

I LOVED Rome.  We went during Holy Week.  I know what you are thinking, crazy, right?  Wasn't it crowded (maybe, I didn't feel crowded), wasn't the traffic insane (yes, but it ALWAYS is in cities in Italy), wouldn't it have been cheaper at another time (undoubtedly, yes)?  However, I wouldn't trade the week we had for another time.  We had amazing weather (low 70's and sunshine during the day, low 60's in the evenings) and there is a mystical quality to visiting Rome during Holy Week.  We observed a Palm Sunday processional through the streets from our balcony and heard the cantering in Italian.  We visited Vatican City on the Wednesday of the Papal Audience and entered St. Peter's Basilica to the faint echo (and eventually the loud reverberation) of a brass quartet playing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah.  I was moved to tears.  And the Italians - oh the Italians!  They were so friendly, so welcoming, so warm, so relaxed (except in their vehicles!)  It was such a nice change of pace for us.  We love Germany, and the Germans, but as I have mentioned, they enjoy their rules, their regulations, and have more difficulty with the flexibility of time.  Me - I LOVE flexibility in time.  So that made this week in Rome so nice.  The Italians loved our boys (especially Zechariah, whom they would pet and oooo and aaah over and exclaim what a pretty German boy he was - even after we would tell them AMERICANO!)  The boys enjoyed the gelatos and pizzas(the secret to a good vacation anywhere is ice cream), and we really enjoyed getting to see history and how it unfolded before our eyes.

A few tips for fellow travelers:  1-We spent a whole week there and most certainly could go back.  There is NO WAY you can see all of Rome.  So don't even try.  Just enjoy and be grateful for what you do see.

2 - Our LARGE family of 5 cannot fit in hotel rooms here.  So the cheapest route for us is through apartment rentals on HomeAway.com.  We have used it several times here (Bruges, Berlin, Rome, and now for Barcelona).  We have yet to have a bad experience.

3 - We didn't push the boys.  We just saw what they could, and took rests in the apartment when they needed to - it made for a happier family and less stressed parents.

4 - Pizza and gelatos - so cheap and so good!!

5 - Rick Steve's Audio Europe offers free audio guides through your ipod/iphone.  It was excellent for Rome, better than the audio guides at the Colosseum and the Forum. Zee and Silas really enjoyed the audio guides, too!  We also used his guidebook on my iPad and iPhone - the iPhone was much easier to carry around! 

6 - A neat website I found was http://romerevealed.typepad.com/rome-revealed/

She was very helpful and even pointed out some really neat tourist spots that I wouldn't have known about.

7 - The Rome2Go App, also for your phone, had some great maps that were much easier to tote around. (Cost was .99) Sadly, I FORGOT I had this app one night when we were trying to find a restaurant and were turned around.  So then it wasn't very handy - or maybe I wasn't very handy.

8 - Another app, free, was for Italian phrases.  Also VERY handy and we certainly used it!

It really was amazing, for lovers of history like Stuart, Silas and myself to be a part of this city.  And I think Zechariah is coming around to loving history himself - he really did enjoy Rick Steve's audio guides!  (Luke is not much of a traveler - so we may need a water park on our next adventure!)  We enjoyed living among the Italians for the week, in our apartment building with the super old elevator, all the nice people greeting us, morning and night.  The gelato shop below our apartment knew us by the end of the week.  Our second night in the city we happened upon a grand opening of a tiny pizza shop and they invited us in, fed us, insisted on it, in fact!  And we all just smiled and ate - no common language, but food, smiles, welcome.  It reminded me that some times, even here in Germany, all I need to share is food, smiles, and welcome - those things really are universal.

Some photos for you to peruse:

Palm Sunday processional from our balcony.

Seriously - we cannot get a decent family shot, or even semi-family (Silas was photographer!)

Luke did have SOME fun.

His favorite thing:  finding Harry Potter characters in the busts and statues - this is Voldemort.

View from the Palatine Hill (located next to the Forum, across the street from the Colosseum)

He loved the audio guides!

Seriously - we were trying.  Students from Ga Tech took this one.

My poor Luke - so tired of touring - Day 1!!!

Stuart led the family in a game of charades here at the Pantheon.  Fun Break - excellent Daddy!

My Boys!

In Vatican City - smallest country in the world!

Italian food - enough said.

Clean plates.  Expensive water.

Barcaccia Fountain at the base of the Spanish Steps

Spanish steps - Tigers in ROME!

Trevi Fountain - Tigers in Rome!

So crowded at night - I took this shot without looking, just holding the camera over my head.

 I have entirely too many pictures to share, but this at least gives you a taste.   Next blog - either music or trip through Germany with Nana and Papa. And feel free to share Rome tips/tour guides/etc for anyone else who may happen upon this!  

A little blah...

Don't think I have forgotten about this blog - I have a lot of updating to do.  (Least of which includes Nana and Papa's visit here, our trip around Germany, our trip to ROME, our trip back to the US) but since returning from the States, I've just been feeling blah.  I would love to put all of this on my jet-lag, but I cannot.  I think it stems from several things.  I was SUPER homesick for a few days when we first returned to Germany.  I don't know if I have ever really been homesick.  But we had such a great, relaxing, just BE time with family and friends, I just really felt it.  Now, on top of jet lag and homesickness, add a dose of one of my dearest friends here leaving to go back to the States in 2 weeks.  Yes...a serious case of the blahs.  


But I am attempting to get back on my feet.  And tonight, this is one little clip that helped me do so.  I don't know if you feel the joy in music like I do, but this lifted my spirits and focused my attention where it should be.  Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee!


http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=GBaHPND2QJg&feature=youtu.be

Of Hounds and Horses...or Von Hunden und Pferden

This could possibly be my shortest post ever, but I must get this off my mind.  There are many things I have had to adjust to here, and some are things I think are actually good (stores closed on Sundays being an example).  However, I will not EVER be able to accommodate in my mind one thing about their dogs and horses here.  Okay - so they LOVE their dogs and horses here.  I recognized this when we moved here and I had to step aside on the sidewalk for the horses.  Then I read In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen, and he mentioned it as significant in 1930's Germany.  But it goes back further than that.  There is even a Wikipedia entry on all the dog breeds that have originated in Germany.  Really, they LOVE them.  Here's the thing:  they love them so much, they allow them to, ummm, how to say this delicately, basically poo all over the sidewalks and then do not clean it up.  Now, some times, they do clean up the horse stuff, but they never clean up after their dogs.  It is considered natural (which, of course, it is) and part of the environment.  Which makes every step you take on a sidewalk an often perilous journey.  Now consider following a 6 year old who is often so caught up in is own imagination, he has no notion of where his feet are moving.  


Now I know why they remove their shoes upon entering a house.  Super important when you consider where those shoes have likely stepped.  


I have accepted this as something I cannot change, but it does NOT mean I will ever like this.  like, EVER.  


This post will be without pictures for self-explanatory reasons.  ;-)

Finally - ski week at home and in Brugge.

World's. Worst. Blogger.  Sorry.  My kids are better at keeping up with this than I am.  However, I am now filling Spring Break with the valuable pursuit of letting you know what we were up to Ski Week.  We actually spent most of it at home.  Silas had just downloaded the iMovie app.  Here are the results via YouTube.  (By the way, Silas did EVERY BIT of this movie.  I did not help ANY.  For that matter, I hindered their progress - the black portion of the video is when I wouldn't let them listen to the song on my computer because I was using it.  He got impatient and just finished it as is!  He LOVES Apple products.)

The music was obviously not original and thanks to LMFAO and their Party Rock Anthem for two days of entertainment for my boys!

We spent the long weekend in Brugge, Belgium.  Brugge/Bruges ( pronounced Brug-ge by the Dutch, Brujj by the French and Americans) is really a medieval Dutch city in Belgium (who knew they spoke so many languages in that country??).

  Loved the city.  Incredibly cute, fun, good chocolate, and easily walk-able. Sadly, I cannot post the chocolate picture I took because it is very PG-13.  That's right - PG-13 chocolate.  Only in Europe and maybe seedy stores in the States!  

Street musician - quite good.

Candy making - really cool.

Bruges is a cool city surrounded by water and with canals running through it.

SOOOOOO GOOOD!!

Yum.  But I'm a little tired.

SOOOOO good - Belgian waffles on the street.

Good Times!!

Zee's favorite part of EVERYWHERE we've been.  Favorite part of Bruges, favorite part of Rome, Amsterdam, Belgium....

Me and the Man in front of  the Provincial Hof

The boys in the Bruges square

Michaelangelo's Madonna and Child in Church of our Lady

Confessionals in Church of our Lady

Church of our Lady

 Also, we took a great tour out of the city with Quasimoto tours seeing WWI battlefields and the rebuilt city of Ypres - pronounced eepers - (completely destroyed during WWI, under construction during WWII, so some of it was re-destroyed then).  They rebuilt it to look similar to its original walled city look - and the original wall IS actually still there, with a nice moat around the city.  The WWI tour was eye-opening.  I feel like I don't remember much from studying WWI, but feel so much closer to understanding it by walking in those fields.  An 11 km area - literally 1/2 million men died over 4 years battling over this small space.   It was sad to take note of the graves of men buried where they died.  Germans, English, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Belgian, etc. (Side note:  There is going to be a Masterpiece Theatre based on the book Birdsong by Sebastian Faulk about WWI - with a romance thrown in, of course.  I think it starts April 22nd.  And who didn't love Downton Abbey - got me interested in WWI again.)  The area is beautiful again, but scattered over it are graveyards, Hill 60 with its craters and dug out bunkers, and shells, mortar, even bodies still being discovered.  There was so much muck and mud that it was impossible to dig it all up then.  So farmers still turn things up and have to be extra careful when they plow their fields.  The most recent casualties from WWI were 2003 for 2 soldiers attempting to dismantle a WWI shell found in the fields of Ypres and 2007 for  2 treasure seekers who found a similar shell that went off and killed them both.  Mind boggling, war is.  (I did not mean to sound like Yoda there.  But I'm not going back and changing it.)

One of 4 German cemeteries the Belgian government allowed Germany to pay for and maintain in the Ypres region.

Local farmers find old shells like this all the time, not to mention shrapnel, etc.  They actually gave us all shrapnel from WWI.

Remembering the Canadians who served and died here.  This is on the site of the first chemical warfare battle.

MMM...Belgian biscuit.

In front of one of the bunkers left standing in Tyne Cot cemetery.

Tyne Cot - largest cemetery for Commonwealth Forces in the world, for any war.

Yet another cemetery in the area - literally were hundreds of cemeteries post WWI.  They have since been consolidated, but there are still a LOT of them.  On our tour, one family came to locate a family member's grave.

I will leave you with several other random pictures of the place where we stayed.  I am a big fan of Homeaway.com.  With our large family (really, anything beyond 4 is big here - and requires 2 hotel rooms), we find it much more economical - not to mention more kid-friendly - to stay in apartments/homes.  This was a real winner, as you can see from the photos!  :)

I'm sure you know this game.

Smaller rooster in front with the black tail feathers was TOTALLY the boss - BIG TIME.  Ruled the roost!

We stayed on a farm with plenty of bikes and things to ride on, trampoline, playground, swimming pool, not to mention donkeys and horses, sheep, chicken, rabbits, etc!

Do Stuart and I look worn out?  Just a bit?

I must go and book our next trip to Burg Eltz, Heidelberg, and Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  Nana and Papa will join us for this excursion during the next long weekend (we have a lot of Holy Days off in the next few weeks - shouldn't the time after Easter be filled with celebration?)  They fly over the pond for their very first time into Amsterdam next Wednesday.  We are sooo excited to have our first official visitors from the States!!  :)


One final note: every time we visit somewhere, a place where history is so prevalent, where you can SEE the presence of the past, I get overwhelmed.  By what and who came before us.  By the events that transpired in this spot where we stand.  By the history that envelopes us as we walk the streets.  I feel incredibly blessed to be able to bear witness to these places, these events, these people - to see where they lived, where they worshiped, where they died.  God continues to breathe life into me through these experiences.  At times that means a joyful feeling of wonder.  Other times I weep over what transpired.  And I am so grateful to get to be a part of this.  And even on lonely days, when I miss my dear friends from the States, I still reflect on how blessed I am  - to have a dear husband, and 3 rambunctious boys, a sweet community here, and the opportunity of a life-time.