4th of July in Berlin?

Okay, so I am so behind on this thing that it's crazy.  We have been traveling gypsies and all computer time has been devoted to planning the next trip.  More on our trips in May and June to Provence, French Alps, Normandy, Bavaria, Munich, and Lake Constance later... probably much later!



On June 30th we welcomed Jay's colleague and his wife, Darrell and Sally Bock as they start their one year sabbatical here.  For a few weeks they will be our "across the hall neighbors" which will be fun.  It is great as we are passing along our accumulated worldly possessions to them including our car which makes things simpler for all of us.  This is their 4th sabbatical in Germany so they know more about life in Germany than we do!  But we've already initiated Sally to one of our spur of the moment outings (1 1/2 hr. train ride to Castle Sigmaringen).  In Germany, when the weather is good you go!!



On July 1 we took off on what we believe will be our last road trip of our year long adventure.  We headed diagonally across the nation of Germany toward Berlin.  Tübingen is in the southwest corner and Berlin is in the northeast corner so it would normally take around 6 1/2 hours without any major stops...bet you didn't think Germany was that big!  Anyway we stopped that day and night at Weimar, the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp and the Bauhaus School of design (think Knoll furniture - the company I used to work for).  After seeing Dachau in May we opted to let the girls sit this one out so the girls and I went to the Bauhaus Museum and some other historic sights in Weimar while Jay indulged his WW II interests.  What mostly interested the girls was the indoor pool waiting at the hotel (a rarity in Germany).  What they weren't expecting (nor Jay and I) was naked old people by the pool!!  Those East Germans love to hang out in the nude - guess they were repressed too long!

The next day we enjoyed a big breakfast buffet - German style.  Lots of cold meats, cheeses, cucumbers, liver spreads, fresh fruits, mueslix, sausages, soft boiled eggs, and the great bread.  Unlike an American buffet, no sweets except for jam!  They consume lots of fat (sausage, cream, all sorts of cheese) but go a little too light on the sugar for my taste!!  Afterwards we headed out only to get caught in some REALLY bad construction traffic jams (plural!!!)  We went 9 miles in an hour at one point.  We had heard nightmare stories but this one we lived!  Anyone who thinks the Autobahn is the ultimate freeway hasn't driven on one.  They really are congested and not all that smooth plus they are always under construction.  We'll take the French tollways any day!

Due to the delays we had to skip one of the towns we wanted to visit but managed to arrive at our friends, the Fricks, in time for dinner.  Jo was one of Jay's favorite students from DTS and is a native German.  Su, his wife is from Staten Island and they have 4 great kids between 5 and 13.  Needless to say, the girls were thrilled to have some kids who could speak Germenglish!!  They live at what used to be a Stasi secret police training camp!!  It has been turned into a Bible Institute and camp and was on a beautiful lake.  The place has been renovated (except for the network of bunkers built underneath - amazing) and we had two beautiful private rooms overlooking the lake (and more naked bathers!).  Although we wanted to see Berlin, the real reason we went was to see the Fricks - it was so great to see what God is doing through them in such a formerly dark part of the world.  They had amazing stories from the people who endured life in East Germany - it was a very repressive and depressing world.  Hard to imagine such little freedom.

The next day, the Fricks kindly invited the girls to stay and play so we headed into Berlin alone!!  It was the first time Jay and I got to do something alone since we arrived!  We took the train and headed straight into the middle of World Cup Soccer mania.  Germany was playing that day and it was pretty crazy.  One rarely sees the German flag except during World Cup, they don't even display their flag in the school!  People were dressed up in Red/Gold/Black everything and it was party city prior to the game.  Note the Beer Bike - a huge keg with 8 guys around it pedaling down the street - only in Germany!  During the game however we had the city to ourselves and it was hot - above 90!!  The streets were deserted but every time Germany scored you could hear it coming out of the bars and plazas where the screens were set up!



We enjoyed seeing where the Wall had been, Brandenburg Gate, the Pergamon Museum (incredible ancient history stuff), Berlin Dome (beautiful church) and the Checkpoint Charlie Museum (display of ways that people tried to escape East Germany).   It was such a treat to be able to actually read some signs in the museums and to walk quickly without having to worry about the girls!!  They had a lot more fun playing with the Frick kids on their zip line, lawn bowling, playing with Ed their bird and swimming in the lake. Of course painting their faces to cheer Germany on in the soccer match was also a main event!



The next day we convinced the Fricks to join us in Wittenberg where Martin Luther lived.  This was a big treat for all of us.  The kids were content to hang out with one another eating ice cream, Su and I had some time for some girl talk and Jay and Jo enjoyed seeing the Luther sites together.  The town was beautiful.  It was the only German town I have seen that had straight streets rather than angled every which way.  It was hard to say goodbye to the Fricks - we had such a wonderful time with them.  We hope to get back to visit them again.



In just  two weeks we'll be home!  Party is over, packing has begun although Jay left for a conference in Cambridge England for a few days!  Hope to see many of you soon!

End of April - Enjoying Spring

Checking out the tadpoles in the forest

Now that the weather has improved (no more SNOW!!), we're trying to check off some "must see" items locally as well as just enjoying the beautiful weather itself.  We started this past week by joining our new American friends, Gabe and Cynthia, at a tadpole pool they had discovered and wanted to share.  Of course, there were millions of tadpoles and we managed to get very muddy.  Gabe managed to be the first to slide through the mud into the water but Dayna wasn't far behind losing her balance.  I'm just glad for the utility sink in the apartment's laundry room!! That's what childhood is for!

Dayna zippin' along

On Wednesday, Arny and the Icelanders, (sounds like a rock group!) joined us on an excursion to Castle Litchenstein about 40 minutes from here.  Since it was in the 70's we HAD to get ice cream with them to help them cool down!  We tease them that they'd never survive a Dallas summer!  The castle is perched on a cliff and was easily defended because of that.  It's amazing that there are so many castles here - they are everywhere.  This location also had an "Adventure Park" where you put on a helmet and harness and swing through the trees with pulleys and all kinds of contraptions.  We had to add that to our "must do" list!  Anyone want to come and join us??  Since we didn't have the 3 hours to do the Adventure Park we opted for the playground with it's own zip line.  For some reason I bottomed out when I tried it!!  The kids had a ball though!

Thursday we rode our bikes back to the tadpole pool to show Arny and the gang.  This time Dayna spotted a real, live adult frog!!  It was an instant hit as they had never seen a frog in the wild before.  Iceland doesn't have many animals so they got to hold a frog for the first time ever (after only a few squeals and a little hesitation)!!  It was so much fun to share that with them.  There are so many things we take for granted!!  It has been so interesting to compare our lives with theirs.  There are a lot of similarities but there are also a lot of differences too.  I wouldn't trade this opportunity for anything and it has really opened the girls' eyes to see that the whole world isn't like the U.S.!

Views from my bike route

Friday I took off down the road on my bike to capture some pictures
of the apple, cherry and pear trees in blossom.  The view just a mile
down the road overlooking the Schwabian Alb mountains in the distance,
the orchards and the town of Hagelloch in the foreground are awesome.  I
can't imagine that I will ever live in a more beautiful place.  That
afternoon was Dayna's opportunity to take Flat Kayla downtown and do a
photo shoot.  She took the above picture under the title along the
Neckar River.  I complain about all the pictures she takes but she
really seems to have an eye for composition and SHE (unlike me) uses all
the digital functions on her camera!!!  Why are kids so intuitive with
electronics???  Not fair!

Saturday, we took another trip with the Icelanders.  I can't say "the "Petersons" because in Iceland they all have different last names (father's first name followed by son or dottir (daughter)) and our new American friends to the Wilhema Zoo in Stuttgart.  We opted to take the train which would have been a lot easier had it not been a national holiday (Labor Day) with weird schedules.  Jay thought the setting and layout of the zoo was the best he's ever seen.  It was built by King Wilhem in the mid- 1800's as a private retreat.  It's also a botanical garden so it's really a beautiful place.  The girls especially enjoyed the polar bears playing in the water and the baby apes who were hilarious.  Jay and I especially liked the Tom Turkey who was showing off.  I had never seen one fan out his feathers before - it was quite a production.  We are so glad to have such wonderful people surrounding us.  The kids did great even though it was an 11 hour day.  Things are always more of an adventure when they are shared!

Mid-April Happenings

Dayna and Alexander - flower boy

I'm trying to get caught up!!  The weeks after getting back to Italy were hectic but fun filled.  The girls got settled back into school and we ended the first week with a birthday party for Dayna with 15 friends.  Fortunately the weather was beautiful so we managed to have it outside.  It could've been disastrous as that many kids in our tiny living area would have been chaos had it rained.  The kids played on our playground and we played egg and dress up relay races and strung some beads.  I couldn't understand a word the kids said to me nor could they understand me but with the help of a few friends and Karissa we got through it.  We had a blast and Dayna got her first bouquet of flowers from a boy (a Russian no less)!  Grandma Treece came to the rescue with jelly beans, a Betty Crocker cake mix, candles and cupcake papers!

Who knew? Even carved real eggs!

The next week I went with the ladies from our International Tea here in the apartment complex on an outing to a small town nearby that has an Easter Egg Museum.  Sounds kind of odd but the collection of  eggs was phenomenal.  It is quite an art in much of Europe and each country/area has their own techniques.  There were even cross stitched eggs - real ones!?? Some of them were amazingly intricate - not your plain old dyed in a coffee cup variety.  (Although we did get to introduce our Icelandic friends to that tradition before Easter!  They had never dyed eggs before!) 

Spring has sprung in Tubingen

The following weekend was crazy.  Karissa and I took Flat Ryan downtown for some pictures, her first gelato in Tuebingen for the year and gymnastics practice.  The gelato doesn't compare to Italy's but she sacrificed!  I walked around the old city during Karissa's practice and got some spring pictures of the downtown area - something I've never gotten to do by myself since Dayna was at her first German birthday party (Geburtstag Fest).  They hid a treasure chest in the woods and the kids had to find it with clues (no Chuck E Cheese here!).  It was so nice to see her so happy compared to earlier in the year when she "had no friends".

Enjoying the nature at the Botanischer

Look out Danica - here we come!

The next day we rode our bikes to the Botanischer Garten for some spring photos.  The flowers are gorgeous - I think spring is here!! The girls managed to discover hundreds of little tadpoles in the lily pond. Later that day the girls competed in their very first Pinewood
Derby with
their Awana club at church.  They started with a block of wood and we
had to design a race car.  It was a lot of fun and both girls did quite
well - each winning a few heats.  Dayna came in 3rd in her age group.

Game face!

The next day, Karissa competed in her first gymnastics competition.  Her little group came in 3rd and it was fun to see her with her game face on doing the short routines.  We finished the night back in Stuttgart at Awana.  The pace was a little "too American" for us!

April 11th Birthday in Italy (Part 6)

The birthday girl at Paestum

April 11th, Dayna's 7th birthday and Grandma and Grandpa Treece's 57th Anniversary!!  I got up early and headed out for a walk by myself.  Lemon and orange trees were loaded with fruit and flowers were beginning in window boxes.   The Italian way of life is so different - they eat their meals about 2 hours later than we do.  Dinner at 9:00 pm is the norm (after their "stroll").  Even the grocery closes from 2 until 4 for "lunch".  That said, the town was dead at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning or any morning for that matter.  The only thing happening was an early mass in a gorgeously decorated
small Catholic church sparsely filled with old people.  

Dayna started out the day with an Italian Donut (pretty American looking).  Today we were taking our last train ride, heading to Paestum, about an hour's ride south along the coast.  We took the local Circumvesuvia train to Pompeii where we walked through a volcano exhibit and then found our way through downtown modern Pompeii to a different train line.  This train line, the Trenitalia, was much nicer with upholstered seats and no graffiti!

                                                          The temple swallows Jay

The Flat Family in the Lonely Paestum station

Paestum was a Roman city and has 3 surviving temples that are on par with the Parthenon.  It was deserted after a major league malaria outbreak and the temples were not pilfered or demolished or covered by volcanic debris.  The pictures speak for themselves.  It is one of the best preserved Roman sites in the world without all the tourist crowds!!  It was like taking a walk in the countryside - the middle of nowhere and a gorgeous day.  The trees were blooming and we appreciated the green grass as opposed to the dusty ruins sites we visited earlier!  We enjoyed a picnic lunch and walked around the small site and its museum.  Our plan was to get home early and finish the birthday celebration.  There was just one little problem....the train we had planned on taking never came (seems it doesn't run on Sundays - ahhhh, when the schedule says it doesn't run on holidays that also means EVERY Sunday!).  It took us about an hour and the help of some Americans who read Italian to figure it out!!  We waited an hour and a half for the next one (of all places to have to wait - not a thing in site but a lonely train station!  Not even a gelato stand.)  Finally some other people started to show up and we ended up having a great visit with a couple from Ann Arbor Michigan while we waited.  We helped them make the connection at Pompeii by running a mile and standing in the door of the train until they could catch up!!  This whole trip was definitely tiring trip due to the crazy transporation system!!



We got back to Sorrento in time for our final Jhonny's pizza, gelato and oceanside sunset complete with birthday candles.  Don't worry, we celebrated again when we got back to Tubingen!

Karissa's favorite Mosquito trucks and Fiats

The next day, Monday the 19th, we had to say goodbye to the cute little cars and the "mosquito trucks" - glorifed 3 wheel vehicles that buzz all over the narrow streets delivering things, picking up trash, making a horrible noise!  We were a little sad to leave our Italian home.  We caught the bus back to the Naples Airport for a crazy, curvy hour and fifteen minute drive.  We thought we were going to lose a couple of girls on the way!  They were glad to get back on flat, straight highways!!  From Naples we flew on Air Berlin directly back to Stuttgart and guess what?  Caught two buses to get back to Tubingen!!  Very exhausting, but very gratifying!

Goodbye to the beautiful coast and our Meta beach below

Capri (Sorrento Part 5)

View from the top of Monte Solaro - highest point on Capri

View of Sorrento from the Ferry

On Saturday we had reservations to go back to Pompeii and see some "by reservation only" sites.  After thinking about it, Jay and I decided that he should go alone.  The girls had been really tolerant of being drug around lots of piles of ancient ruins and we knew that we would all be happier in the end if we split up.  Karissa and I kind of wanted to go back to Pompeii (it is so huge and amazing) but we also thought it would be fun to head out to the island of Capri.  Unfortunately for us, Jay managed to "bump into" Mattia Bulindano who works for the site and is THE official Italian government guy who tours dignitaries (e.g. Bill Clinton)  through the site.  Jay was able to spend about 3 hours with him and a small group he was leading.  He saw some pretty amazing and "private" areas of the site which I'll share in the next posting.  To say the least he was thrilled - a true blessing from God that we never expected to happen.

Capri as we arrive, Monte Solaro in the background

Alas, we missed that incredible tour but the beauty of Capri more than made up for it.  We thought the Amalfi Coast was cool - Capri even silenced my chatty girls.  We caught a 30 minute ferry from the nearby port out to the island.  From there, we caught a 15 foot bus (big buses can't navigate the roads) up to the not so touristy town of Anacapri on the other side of the
island.  A little Italian Grandma helped us figure out the bus.  She must have said "Mamma Mia" twenty times to us while we were waiting for the bus-hilarious - and they really do use their hands to talk!  She was especially aghast when she saw the girls smearing lipstick all over their faces (stick sunscreen which she had never seen before!).

Karissa heading up to Monte Solaro

View from the lift of Ischia Island and Anacapri

Watching the bridal photos-what are they thinking right now?

Looking straight down at the boats, blue water and birds

Anacapri was a quaint little town that had a chairlift to the highest point on the island,  Monte Solaro at 1900 feet above sea level.  The views were the most beautiful I have ever seen.  The water was a beautiful color and there were thousands of seagulls swarming around the rocky cliffs below.  We took a million pictures, ate our lunch on some rocks overlooking the ocean (Karissa chose to eat hers in a tree she had climbed), swung in a swing, watched a bride and groom get their wedding pictures taken, picked wildflowers and just savored the view.  Dayna did not want to leave.  She fell in love with the place - who wouldn't?

View of Capri town from Villa San Michele

After the trip down the lift we wandered over to an old villa called Villa San Michele.  It was built around 1900, by Axel Munthe, a Swedish doctor and author, before Capri was such a tourist destination.  The views were fabulous and it made us all want an island retreat.  His gardens were fabulous, with millions of flowers and a bird sanctuary.  After that we took a bus down to the city of Capri.  It was totally touristy and was a real turn off.  A huge shopping destination with all of the famous designers from Ferragamo to Versace and others I've never heard of.  Needless to say, when we stopped for our gelato they asked us to leave the outdoor seating since it wasn't for "gelato only " customers!  We bolted and headed for a hiking trail - not our scene at all!

Arco Naturale

The trail took us over to Arco Naturale.  An incredible natural arch with a killer view down to the sea.  We blew back down to the harbor (again, through narrow pedestrian streets and stairs - don't know how these people would ever get a mattress delivered!) in order to catch our ferry.  As we ran up to the departing ferry we begged the crew to put the gangplank back down as the Coast Guard officer had told the wrong info about our ferry location.  I guess we looked pathetic and so they reluctantly backed up this huge ferry and put the plank down for us!!  What was I thinking????  Stuck on Capri overnight, not so bad.....suppose Jay would have been worried??  One day was not enough for Capri!  Dayna especially dreams of going back someday - maybe she'll have her wedding pictures taken on Monte Solaro??