More on Skip's Trip

Skip's colleague and our friend Ren has a burning desire to be included in this blog. So here are a few more pics of Skip's "business trip" to the states.

Ren is the one pointing at you.

Halloween

Just a few pictures from Trunk or Treat. I understand several places in LR are doing that this year as well. We highly recommend it. Maddie had a blast and got lots of candy without having to trek from house to house. And people really went to town decorating their cars. Everyone but us, that is. I just couldn't spend money on Halloween decorations when Skip and I may have to buy coats because we still don't have our shipment from the US and it's getting cold! Okay, I could have bought decorations, but the coat thing is a good excuse.

Fortunately it wasn't too cold tonight.

Last Week

Last week, Skip had to return to the US for some very important training. Here is a picture of his time there, sharing a time-honored Arkansas tradition with one of his German colleagues.

Blog 101

It's come to my attention that some readers do not realize that you can click on a picture and view it in its original size. Also, any underlined word in the text is a link to a related site. Just click on it to learn more.

Shopping Frenzy

We made a bit of an error today. Shops in Germany, by law, are closed on Sunday. So after church today, we thought it would be nice to head into the Alstadt and have lunch. Only the restaurants are open, so it wouldn't be too crowded and we could have some practice navigating that area of town by car. We inadvertently chose one of the three to four Sundays of the year when shops CAN be open. It was wall to wall people.

We actually had lunch at the Carsch Haus, which is an upscale department store. They have an entire market area with all sorts of restaurants. We ate at a really good Indian place, but there was also Chinese, seafood, a champagne bar, a pub and a deli.

Now today Skip just had curry chicken, but he's really been making some unusual choices (at least by American standards) at restaurants lately. On Friday night, he had a pig's leg. Really. A roasted pig's leg. Another day this week, he ordered a mushroom pancake. And as a special treat today for breakfast, I fried him up a thick slice of leberkase topped with a fried egg. Leberkase is a pate made from pork or veal liver, pork belly, garlic and onions and shaped into a loaf and sliced. I knew he wanted to get back to his German roots, but I didn't realize it would be a culinary journey.

Halloween in Germany

okay, it's not Halloween yet, but we did get to go to a Halloween party put on by the American Women's Club.

Halloween is funny here because it's not really a German thing, but people seem to have adopted it. There is a big Halloween bash planned in downtown Duesseldorf and all the area zoos will be having different events--kind of like our Boo at the Zoo. It's a great excuse for Germans to party because November 1 is All Soul's Day and a holiday. Nobody has to get up to go to school or work!

The British ex-pats here do Halloween except the costumes are always spooky. Never cute. Can you guess who the American kid is in this picture?

I was working at one of the games at the party with an English woman and she described the candy corn we were giving away as a prize as "some bizarre American Halloween candy." Guess Candy corn is not big in the UK.

There were prizes given away for the best costumes. This was my pick. I guess even witches sometimes need maternity clothes!

More to come about Halloween. I'm carving pumpkins on Monday for the prep and first grade classroom tables. They had to get the American moms to do it because the English, Dutch, German, Japanese and Korean moms have never done it before!

3 R's--Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Just in case you're finding it too time consuming to recycle because it involves having two different receptacles for trash, let me offer a little lesson on the German way of disposing of waste.

I have FIVE different receptacles in my home and really should get a sixth.

One is for organic matter. Egg shells, vegetable and fruit peels, etc. What cannot go in here is cooked food. This bin mercifully seals airtight until time to dispose of it.

One is for items that have the Green Point symbol on them. These are things like cans, milk containers, ice cream boxes, etc. These cannot be thrown in with the regular trash.

One is for stuff that doesn't fall into any other mandated category. And oddly enough, there is quite a bit of this.

The above items can be taken to large receptacles at the end of our little street and put in the appropriate bins. But that's not all there is.

Another bin is for paper and cardboard items that are not Green Point but can still not be included with the regular trash. And then there are glass bottles that are non-returnable. They have to be taken and put into the appropriate bins according to whether they are green, clear or brown glass. It's actually kind of fun to smash them into the bins. So far I do not have a separate container for these as we don't generate too many of them. There is not a receptacle for these items at the end of our drive, so they have to be walked or driven to the appropriate depository.

My fifth bin is for deposit bottles that can be returned for money.


This is yet another reason why most German women do not have jobs outside the home. Sorting and depositing trash takes up too much time. I guess being kind to the earth takes more effort than I realized. And all of the effort it takes to get rid of the garbage makes you more inclined to reduce and re-use.

Stuff From Home

Skip made it back after being in the states for almost a week with a suitcase full of goodies from home. Cornbread mix, chili mix, baking soda and powder, children's Tylenol and cough syrup (hope we won't need it!). He also hauled back two 10 by 16 cookie sheets, but he could have saved the room. They are too big for the oven. Yes, that would be 16 inches. Too wide and too deep. Won't fit either way. Mercifully, I found this out poping in some ready-made waffles for Maddie and not after I had made a huge batch of cookies!

We also got some movies and TV series on DVD. I don't have to watch television all the time, but I do like to watch it SOME time and there is nothing I can watch here--especially since Skip is out of town so much. Maddie gets some English and German cartoons, Skip gets all sorts of sports, but all I can get is BBC Prime, and even though it's English, I can't understand what they're saying.

side note: I do have to say I like the fact that you don't have to be pretty to be on television in Europe. The people who play cops on BBC and German channels look like they could be cops--not underwear models. Kind of refreshing, really.

Anyway, I'm afraid my true colors are coming out. Church on Sunday morning at the English-speaking Anglican church didn't do much to help me cope with being a stranger in a strange land, but the episodes of Grey's Anatomy that Katie Kasten taped and transferred to DVD for me did wonders for my overall attitude.

Never take for granted

your ability to decide to go somewhere and be able to do so without getting lost at least once (and more likely several times) or possibly having to give up the idea altogether because your desired destination is impossible to locate.

Yet another life lesson one learns from living in a foreign land.

Pics from the Duisberg Zoo

Even a better zoo than Cologne with an even more spectacular playground.

Testing

Having trouble posting. Just testing

The food IS different here

Okay, I really didn't realize how different the food is here until today at Wal-Mart. There was a guy just inside the door with a hot dog cart selling "American Hot Dogs." On our way out, Maddie asked if she could have one. She's not a big hot dog eater, so I asked if she was sure and she insisted. She ate all but two bites of a FOOT LONG hot dog with a bun and ketchup. She kept saying, this is a great hot dog, Mommy. She has decided that hot dogs are the Friday Special at Wal-Mart and that we can get one there every week. Hope she's right! She hasn't eaten that much of a meat product since we got here.

Just some of the food differences between America and Germany:

They often serve mayo with french fries.

Curry is the condiment of the hour. Curry powder, curry wurst, curry sauce. Heinz even makes a curry sauce in a bottle that looks like ketchup.

They like to plop a sunny side up egg on top of things that really don't call for it.

You can't buy popcorn shrimp in the frozen food section of the grocery store. This was a previous staple of Maddie's diet.

Vinegar is big.

Produce, except in large grocery stores, is ridiculously and wonderfully fresh. Maddie eats at least an apple a day and so far, the old adage has held true.

Mexican food is VERY hard to come by.

McDonald's fries their fries in something other than vegetable oil. In fact, just about all restaurants are frying in something other than vegetable oil. Not sure if it's peanut oil or animal fat, but it's heavy!

The Atkins diet must have flopped here big time. Nobody could give up the great bread you can find here.

This is kind of a food thing that I just realized today. Duesseldorf reminds me a lot of Boston. And in Boston, people were almost permanently attached to cup of coffee wherever they went. In Duesseldorf, you almost never see anyone walking around with a cup of coffee. You sit down to have coffee. However, you see people all the time walking around with ice cream cones. When we lived in Boston, it was just the opposite. People walked all over with cups of coffee, but the outside of ice cream parlors was always crowded with people who were sitting down to eat their ice cream. Don't know what it all means. Just found it interesting.

Anyway, I'm going to go make my kid a breakfast-for-dinner meal of American pancakes (that's the name of the mix) and bacon. The bacon here is so salty that I can't eat it, but Maddie and Skip seem to like it.

Cologne Zoo

Just a few pics of the zoo and the zoo playground at Cologne. Great zoo. Lots of indoor exhibits to escape the rain and a chance to be really close to the animals in the outdoor exhibits as well. First time I ever heard the noise a hippo makes. It's not pretty.

Cologne

Maddie and I headed out into the unknown today and took the train to Cologne. We had not a clue as to what we were doing, but seemed to make out okay. Nothing like going to a large foreign city with your five-year-old for the day! Compared to Duesseldorf, Cologne isn't that pretty, but there were some really cool things to see and do.

The main train station in Cologne lets you off right in front of the Cologne Cathedral. The big claim to fame of this humongous church is that it holds the relics (or the bones) of the three Wisemen. The best part is that the reason these relics came to be in Germany is that somebody way back when STOLE them. Guess they're not going to be returned anytime soon. Maddie was more disturbed than impressed to find out that the bones of the three Wise Men were being housed at the church. Here's a link to find out more about the Cologne Cathedral.

Then from the Cathedral, we took the Shocko-Express to the Chocolate Museum. Wow! There was everything you ever needed to know about chocolate--including a walk in a created rainforest to experience the climate and the vegetation where cocoa beans grow. There was also a whole section that showed you how they make specialty chocolates today, and then of course a large chocolate gift store at the end of the tour.




Then back to the Cathedral where we caught the zoo express to go to the Cologne Zoo. Just a note on these very inexpensive little shuttles. They were the bumpiest rides I've ever experienced and I may need to seek chiropractic care. But anyway, the zoo was fabulous and it was worth the price of admission just for the zoo playground. Germany just has the BEST playgrounds. I'll include pics from the zoo in a separate post.

By the way, this was the year to come to Germany. Until Maddie turns six, almost everything is free to her--the train ticket, the cathedral tour, the chocolate museum--all free for kids under 6. I only had to pay for her a small amount for the jarring shuttle rides and zoo entrance. We need to all we can this year. Next year, she's going to be expensive!

When it was time to come home, we headed for the Cologne train station and as we were waiting for our train ran into Maddie's friend Meg with her Mom and Dad. They, too, had been in Cologne today and we rode the train back together and had dinner at an Italian place in Duesseldorf's Alstadt.

Big, long day. Please, please, let Maddie sleep late tomorrow.

Fall Break

The fall break portion of the blog is also for Skip who is in "the states" this week for training and to pick up some much needed items for us back in Germany. Our shipment of stuff will probably not be here in time for Halloween which means I needed another Tinker Bell costume for Maddie. Mom was great and got the last one at Target!

Yesterday Maddie and I hit the Aqua Zoo in Duesseldorf where, naturally, her favorite thing was the playground.

Afterwards, we hit Apfelparadies, a local fruit and vegetable stand for yet more apples. They're one of the few things that Maddie will eat here on a consistent basis.


Today we went to Schloss Burg with Maddie's friends Meg and her parents Steve and Anne. The village, as Anne said, was quite "twee".

We were able to tour the castle, take a ride on a ski lift to the bottom of the village, eat lunch that a goat dropped in on and enjoy a beautiful sunny day (which don't come often enough here!)

Things I Have Learned Thus Far

In Germany:

Strawberry Shortcake is Emily Erdberen

Mister Clean is Meister Proper

Barbie is Barbie

Bob the Builder is Bob Baumeister

If you turn the radio to a pop music station, chances are within any 30 minute time period you will hear a Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song.

Coffee does not come with free refills.

The Swiffer (both wet and dry) is a daily necessity here.

Sometimes people here sound like they are angry with you, but really, they’re just speaking German.

Because Germans so appreciate visual beauty, there are beautiful things everywhere. From flowers to tablecloths to dishes to artwork.

No matter where you go in Germany, there is a playground nearby.

Germans can linger for three hours over a simple dinner in a restaurant, but once they get behind the wheel of a car, you don’t want to be the person who slows them down.

Weekend Stuff

Friday is market day in Kaiserswerth. Every Friday from about 7 a.m. until noon, sellers set up booths of veggies, cheese, bread, meat and even fish. There's an even bigger market every day in downtown Duesseldorf in the Alstadt (old town).

Saturday, we went to Schloss Dyck which is a castle not too far from Duesseldorf. Not the best pick for Maddie since this castle's big claim to fame is it's gardens. She got kind of bored until we found the play area.















We're supposed to go to a German-American Day celebration today and I'm supposed to bring some kind of finger food. Since I haven't figured out how to bake in Germany yet (baking soda doesn't exist, the baking powder works differently and the flour has numbers like 450 or 550 and I don't know which to use for what), I decided to make deviled eggs. Seemed like a no brainer. Germans love eggs. If you're not careful, you're as likely as not to get an order in a restaurant served to you with a big ol' fried egg on top of it.

However, the deviled egg plan has not turned out so great. The tube mayo that they sell here made the mixture a really weird consistency and then I couldn't even cover it up with paprika since "paprika" in Germany is a bell pepper, so I have no idea to buy to get what would be paprika in the states. Next time I'll shell out the extra bucks for the imported Hellmans!

You Can't Beat 'Em

We tried to speed up our furnishing process by ordering our chouch and chair for the living room from IKEA--where the turnaround time is less than half of most furniture stores and so is the price. It was due to arrive next week, but we got a letter yesterday letting us know that our order had been "delayed" and it should arrive sometime on Week 51. That means the second to the last week of the year. The week of Christmas! which means we'll get our furniture AFTER we return from the states sometime in January.

The good news is that because the stuff we had shipped from home has gotten held up because of work permit stuff, they've decided to air ship it (rather than send it on the slow boat) once all the paper work has cleared. That will mean once it ships, it will be here in about a week to 10 days rather than 4 to 6 weeks.

Here's a picture of Maddie at our train stop. Maddie and I take the train to and from school each day. We get on at Muhlenacker and get off at Alte Landstrasse--just four stops. She still thinks it's fun every day--which either amuses or annoys the other commuters who are riding with us.


These are pictures of the playground at Maddie's school. We can stay as long as we want after school and play. When the weather is good, we usually stay about an hour before heading home.

Skip heads to the states for training next week, and he'll be taking one full suitcase and one empty one to fill up with stuff we can't get here in Germany like cornbread mix, baking soda, baking powder (in Germany, it's only single action, ours is double action), kosher salt, a Tinkerbell costume for Halloween, children's Tylenol, Delsyn (cough medicine), etc. We're not as bad as some people. There are folks here who have peanut butter and macaroni and cheese shipped over on a regular basis.

If you need anything from Germany, let us know before Monday. Skip's got a whole suitcase he can fill!

We have Chairs!

Sat at our own table to eat today. We have six chairs! I sat in all of them. Really good feeling. We also got two more kleidershranks (or closets) to give us somewhere to put stuff. We were skirting the law here today in moving the furniture from one house to another. Sundays are by LAW quiet hours here in Germany. You cannot mow your lawn or play loud music. All stores are closed except gas stations and a handful of small grocery-type convenience stores (they are exempt through some statute). It's funny to me that the government enforces Sabbath in a country where a very small percentage of the population actually attends church. It does make for peaceful Sundays--and very little traffic on the way to church.

We have a cable television package that doesn't give us much US TV to watch--Maddie can get Boomerang and I can get Fashion TV and E--Entertainment Television so I'll be able to keep up with the latest skirt lengths and what's up with the Olsen Twins. But Skip has this great sports package and actually got to watch the Arkansas Auburn game a day late.

Skip was really quite mean about the whole TV thing today. I've been trying to find something that I might enjoy watching and he called from downstairs, "Anne, in about 20 minutes, there's a program coming you're going to love!" All excited, I call down "What?" Would you believe we can't get Grey's Anatomy or Boston Legal, but we get Joel Osteen! There is no where to hide, is there?

Here's a couple more pics of Maddie with friends. The first one is with her friend Meg, from England, and the other one is her buddy Matthew. Matthew has three older sisters (one of whom is just one minute older), and he just loves girls! His mom, Joy, has loaned us some toys for Maddie to play with until our container with all of hers arrives. We have indeed met some very nice people here.

Finally some photos

Maddie has ice cream every day after school. There is a law in Germany that keeps down the price of basic staples. Milk, bread, ice cream and beer are all considered staples here. A once-scoop cone costs 60 Euro cents--about 80 cents in America money.








I took this one a couple of weeks ago. This is in the check-out line at Wal-Mart. Above the mints and gum are small bottles of liquor for sale. All are kinds that are thought to help in digestion. Any guesses on how long the picket lines would be if they started selling Jaegermeister in the US checkout lines?











Here is Maddie and Skip's cousin Ollie at the top of a castle tower in Heidenheim. They are looking over the town where Horst and Maja (Skip's parents) met. Maddie decided that the princess who once lived in the castle was very happy there.









One kind of funny that I heard about yesterday. All the moms who have kids at the International School see each other every morning and afternoon for drop off and pick up. Those of us who haven't been here long talk about how we're adjusting, how the kids are adjusting, what we can do to help the kids, etc. But yesterday was a first. Kelly hasn't been here much longer than I have. Her kids are fine. She's fine. The husband's job is going well. But the dog is really mad about being moved to Germany. He (or she) has destroyed 2 lunchboxes and a backpack. This is a really big problem because you can't find lunch boxes here because most German kids go home for lunch. Backpacks are hard to. The ones that German kids carry to school are kind of hard and shaped like a big rectangle and they don't fit in ISD lockers. I've looked and none of the information I've received gives any advice on how to help your dog with major life transitions.