Lis and Tyler in Germany

We took a little weekend trip to Rothenburg in our jazzy new BMW. It seems to be a good old car–fast and reliable. The funny thing about the autobahn is that the flow of traffic is sometimes going (Moms: close your eyes) 100 MPH, and since the cars and roads and drivers are all built for it and used to it, it doesn’t feel all that fast. Our 1991 handles it like a champ.

Rothenburg is an old, old town, with its first known dwellers dating back to 960. There is a wall and a moat surrounding the city, and tons of old buildings and interesting sites. We went into the city’s old dungeon and saw torture devices that were actually used, prison cells where people died, and the rooms that were used during WWII during the air raids. Because the city is built on a hill, water supply was a problem during the middle ages. Fountains were built all around the city to provide drinking water and water for putting out fires. There are these huge, elaborate, beautiful fountains around every corner. It’s crazy to think of people having built these fountains, some of them 8 meters deep, holding 100,000 liters (however much that is…) of water, with none of the tools and machines we would use to build such a thing these days. I continue to find myself marveling at the construction in all of these ancient towns.

Lonely Planet says, “Resist the temptation to try a Schneeball, a crumbly ball of bland dough with the taste and consistency of chalk–surely one of Europe’s worst ‘local specialties’.” Now, is there anyone reading that would be able to NOT try a Schneeball? With an introduction like that, we had to know what they were like–first hand. And thank goodness we ignored the advice of our trusty travel guide…these chalky balls (well described) are delicious! We had two. And could have more. I think I’ll write Lonely Planet.

We have some major accomplishments to report:

1. We are the proud bearers of SOFA stamps, which will allow us to extend our stay in Germany.  Because I wasn’t able to get a Visa through my job (I’m too old), we had to get creative.  After many, many ideas and road blocks and MUCH ado, Tyler secured a job at the army base.  This provides us with permission to stay in Germany as long as he’s working there, and then when he quits it’s as if we’ve just arrived and we have another 90 days as tourists.

 2.  Tyler has a new job!  And a sweet uniform to go with.  Today is his first day of work.  I wanted to take a picture of him on his way in, but he wouldn’t allow it.  For some reason he’s not particularly proud to be the newest food service worker at the Ramstein Bowling Alley

3. We own a BMW!  We have to pass a driving test on Wednesday before we can drive, so we’ll close the deal then, but we picked it out and shook on it, so things should go through.

the fine print: it’s a 1991, and a bit of a beater.  But it has get-up-and-go and we’re hoping it will be reliable in getting us from here to there.

 This may not seem like much, but accomplishing any one of these things here is quite a feat.  The military seems to be full of hoops to jump through, rules, and an amazing number of catch-22’s.  For example, to work on the base you must have an ID card (for which you must provide them with a complete record of your history, including a list every single place you’ve lived in the last seven years and two people, with middle names, addresses and phone numbers, for EACH location, who can varify that you lived there) and SOFA stamp.  To get an ID card and SOFA stamp, you must have a job.  As soon as you get a SOFA stamp, you cannot drive any car anywhere in Germany until you’ve passed the base’s driving test, which you can’t take until you have an ID card.  So, here’s the rediculous situation you inevitably find yourself in: To get a job, you need an ID card, to get an ID card, you need a job.  Then, if you pass that first test, you finally have a new job to which you cannot get yourself.  Neither Tyler or I can drive, so Miriam or Thomas has to drive Tyler to and from work until he can get his license on Wednesday.  BUT, they are Germans and must be accompanied by their “sponsor” (an American with an ID card) the entire time they’re on the base.  So sure, they could bring Tyler to work, but then wouldn’t be able to leave the base legally without him escorting them out.  What is a guy to do? I could go on and on with examples, but it makes my head spin just to try to explain it.  It seems impossible, but it’s actually the way it works (or doesn’t…).

New discovery: I LOVE Turkish food.  All of my favorite things combined in a bunch of different delicious recipes.  Think Greek, only fresher and with more salads (although I’ve never had Greek food in Greece).  Garbanzo beans, tomatoes, cucumber, yogurt, other beans, really good rice (and I know good rice), fresh herbs (especially mint), fresh bread, beets, corn…I could go on. 

We found ourselves with a few days off in a row, and decided to go somewhere.  Being a long weekend (because of yet another public holiday), most trips were expensive and/or booked.  We found an amazing last minute deal at a resort near Antalya, Turkey.  Airfare, train tickets to and from the airport,  and four nights at an all-inclusive resort for 229 Euros per person.  We didn’t think we’d see much of Turkey, but figured we might as well go relax in the sun at the beach and by the pool for that price.  As it turns out, you can’t really go to Turkey without experiencing Turkey.  It is another world.  Nobody spoke English, even the people at the airport, the travel agency and the hotel reception desk.  We were the first Americans ever to stay at the hotel, and the first Americans many of the employees had ever met.  They were surprisingly thrilled to meet us, and were honored that we’d come to Turkey.  The 45 minute bus ride from the airport to the hotel was perhaps my favorite part of the trip.  We rode through villages and farms, saw women working the fields with kids on their backs and old men sitting in front of their stores smoking and talking about the weather, the current neighborhood scandal, the Americans in town or whatever other gossip they could dig up.  We saw a bike towing a cart full of milk jugs–straight from the cow’s utters to the customers, I assume.  I’m not talking milk jugs as we’d think of the milkman delivering.  I’m talking about huge, uncovered jugs which I’m sure each buyer pours from.  We went to a market, which was more touristy than I’d hoped, but which did sell spices, scarves, knock-off clothing, purses and watches, handicrafts and Turkish costumes.  And we took a boat ride through the amazingly beautiful ”Green Canyon.”

 Overall, it was a good, relaxing, learning experience.  I have to say that it felt like we were a million miles away.  I’ve always appreciated that we speak English, and that we are very catered to when we travel.  But I have a whole new understanding of how lucky we are after having traveled in Turkey.  Phone was impossible, internet was hit and miss, and there were huge language barriers which made simple things impossible.  I was trying to make a call from the room, and was told how to reserve a rental car.  “Call”, “car”…I get the similarity, but one does not serve the other’s purpose.

 And, for those of you following, I ran (okay, jogged) for 30 minutes straight while we were there!  Tyler (always the practical one) wasn’t too keen on me going for a run, scantily clad and unaccompanied, through the villages of Turkey, so I ran on the treadmill at the hotel.  It was actually kind of fun to see how far I was going (and when it’s in kilometers, it’s really good for your ego) and how fast.  If only I can keep this up.  The other day I was thinking of how great it would be to run in the Ski to Sea race next year…

I’m sitting down to write this post with a hot cup of delicious coffee, thanks to my sweet friend Katie who heard my cries and sent Starbucks and a french press.  Oh how I love a hot cup of coffee.  And while I am not “addicted”, per se, I do miss the wild and crazy abundance of coffee shops that surrounded us in Seattle.  “Coffee to go” is a brand new thing here and, funny enough, McDonalds is the company picking up the trend.  They have McCafes, the first of which we saw in France, but now we’ve seen a couple go up here in Germany.  They look like a McStarbucks.  They have a dessert case, a huge menu on a board behind the counter with a million ways to order your caffeine, nice chairs and tables, a surprisingly nice ambiance.  But, being the snob I am, I haven’t even tried the McCafe coffee.

Yesterday we went to France for water again, and it reminded me of what a great time Tyler and I had there and what an amazing country it is.  You cross the boarder from Germany to France and things change immediately.  The buildings and store fronts are more quaint, you buy mustard in beautiful little glass containers (I can’t even use the word jars), your bread comes with a little square of paper around the center, not a bag, there are teeny tiny cars everywhere and, of course, the language.  It’s still funny to me that you cross the boarder and the language changes.

Tyler and I took the train to Paris and took the metro from the train station to the Latin Quarter, where our hotel was.  I will always remember coming up from the subway right into the middle of Paris.  We stayed at my grandma and Hans’ favorite hotel, Hotel Bresil, which is ideally located and fairly inexpensive.  In the morning we’d get a crepe and walk through the Luxembourg gardens or sit at an outdoor cafe and have the petit déjeuner (baguette and/or croissant, butter, jam, coffee or tea).  Then we’d hit the ground running.  We saw a ton of Paris in just a few days.  One day we walked Avenue Champs Elysses, the famous shopping district, to the Arc de Triomphe, then caught a tour boat on the Seine and stopped at the Eiffel Tower.  We went to a grocery store and bought bread and cheese (a huge round of brie–in a perfect little package, of course–for a buck) and then took it to a bench in the park below the tower.  It’s funny, tourists were swarming right under the Eiffel Tower, waiting to go up, taking pictures, finding their group…but just a few hundred feet away was this very nice, very empty park.

I think my favorite part of Paris was the walks at night over the bridges around Notre Dame.  We’d just walk and walk and then find somewhere to sit for dinner and then walk some more.  We’ll have to go back, there’s so much we didn’t do and so much I would love to do again.

As many of you may know, I have often SWORN that under no circumstances could I ever enjoy running.  I’ve tried it several times and every time I feel like I am going to die.  It hurts my knees, my ears, my head and neck, my poor lungs and heart…everything.  Even when I’ve been in fairly good shape.  But something had to be done because there’s no gym around and the rolls and cream are starting to show.  So a few days ago I googled “start running” and found some good tips for a beginning runner.  I set out for my running/walking intervals (1.5 minutes of running, 1 minute of walking for 30 minutes) and came back feeling  good.  And like I wanted to do it again someday, which is notably different than any other running experience I’ve had.  Since that first running experience and my decision to become a runner, a few really stressful things have come into my life.   I’ve just gone for two runs since then, but both times I could actually feel the run managing my stress.  What a great feeling.  So, today I was running (1.5 minutes at a time) and thinking about how glad I am to have this in my life now.  And I got to thinking about bigger, better runs and thought that perhaps I’d try to work up to a half-marathon (I know, it’s a big leap from only being able to run for 1.5 minutes at a time…).  You will never believe what happened.  I was running through the woods behind our house, where Tyler and I have been walking most days, and where I’ve gone for my previous two runs.  It’s beautiful and quiet and there’s a long path through the woods which is mostly flat (although slightly uphill on the way back, I swear) and I’ve never seen anyone else out there.  But today, as I was rounding the last bend and intersecting with another path, a group of 15-20 hikers came out of nowhere.  And they started to clap.  I turned around.  Nobody.  I assumed they must have mistaken me for the first runner to reach the finish line of a race I didn’t know about.  But when I’d past, they stopped clapping and continued on their walk.  I swear, sometimes there are some pretty huge signs that you’re doing the right thing.

I’m not going in order.  I’m just telling stories as they come.  We went to France before we went to Switzerland.  Using our Eurail pass, we could get on any  train in our designated countries for free (a couple of them required a supplemental fee).  Some required reservations, some did not and it was a bit hard to find out which were which, so we tried to make reservations when we could.  We spent our first hour in Paris standing in line to make our reservation from Nice to Switzerland.  By this time, we had pretty much concluded that when you were crossing a border you needed a reservation.  Finally we get our turn only to be informed that we must make said reservation in Nice.  A few days later in Nice, the line was so long that we thought we’d outsmart the system and find a phone number to call to make a reservation.  Tricky, eh?  So we asked around at the station (there are employees everywhere) and finally got a phone number and headed out.  I called the number from our hostel but we were disconnected several times.   And, I forgot to mention, each time we  tried to make this reservation, saying the name of our destination was tricky.  In English, which is the language we were using for these conversations, we say Switzerland.  But in Switzerland they have about 148902743812 different languages and, depending on the region, the country is called a number of things, such as Schweiz, Suisse, Svissera.  And sometimes I would be rudely corrected or I’d talk to someone who just had no clue what country I was trying to get to.  Anyway, despite the language difficulty, I tried the next day to make a reservation by phone, to no avail.  Oh well, we thought, we’ll just have to do without a reservation.  Or we’ll get to the train station early and make one that morning.

My grandma and Hans had met us in Nice and they took us to the train station.  Early.  There was no line and we were feeling confident.  “Two to Geneva, please.”  “Where?  Oh, Geneve?  Iz not possssssible.”   “Alright, how about a little later today.  Or a different route.  Or a different city in Switzerland.  Or if we leave from a different train station.”  “Iz not possssible.”  So we sat at a cafe in the train station so grandma and Hans could get their much needed morning cup of coffee and so that we could regroup.  We had to get going to Switzerland, we’d already cut that part of our trip short.  Also, we needed to start heading toward home.  One thing my mom always taught me was that if you don’t like the answer someone gives you, ask someone else (although, I just realized that this strategy was NOT recommended in our home.  Asking dad for something mom just said no about was looked down upon.  How’s that for a double standard?).  So I stood in line again and strategically got another person to help me.  This nice woman spent forever on her computer looking for a way to make this work for us.  Thanks, mom, for the tip.  We had a few more hours to spend in Provence with the grandparents and then we’d head out to Geneva.  Or Geneve.  Or whatever you want to call it.

Almost exactly 10 years ago, I took my first trip to Europe and stayed in Leeuwarden with my grandma and Hans.  I remember being completely overwhelmed by how quaint–and different–everything was.  I was ready to have a different impression the second time and to feel a little let-down.  Since then, I have done more traveling and seen more of the world, so I didn’t expect to be so impressed or quite as shocked.  But Holland really is that amazing.  It’s like a movie, or make-believe.  There are lambs on green dikes, bikes abound, flowers are everywhere (growing and in markets and people’s homes and being carried on bikes), canals run through the cities with cute little bridges around every corner.  There are cheese stands, local herring markets, people walking and riding through town to do their errands at a leisurely pace, going from one shop to the next instead of one big, florescent-lighted, overstocked supermarket.  Every morning at Hans’ we had fresh squeezed orange juice, a hard boiled egg in an egg cup, toast, cheese and coffee.  I loved our time there.

One day we went to Amsterdam, another we spent driving through the country from village to village.   In Cornyum, there is a darling little castle, which looks like it came straight out of a fairytale.  There were little flowers coming up in the grass all around it, and of course a little moat.  Hindeloopen may be my favorite of the places we went.  This little waterfront town is so full of canals that many people travel by boat.  Most of the houses face a road on one side and a canal on the other.  The houses are all beautiful with intricate designs, thatched or tiled roofs, lovely yards and of course little bridges leading to the other side of the canal.  Words really can’t capture this place.  You’ve got to go see it.

We returned on Wednesday night from our little jaunt around The Netherlands, France and Switzerland. While we were gone, spring came to Steinbach. The grass grew, the trees are in bloom, there are little flowers all around and the weather is amazing. It’s good to be home and it was neat to come home and have it feel like home. I don’t think either of us was expecting it to, and it was a pleasant surprise.

Since we weren’t able to write while we were away, we have tons of stories and pictures piled up. Perhaps I’ll do it in instillations. And hopefully there will be some entries from Tyler as well. Stay posted.

Our trip started with a rude awakening about how little Tyler and I know about traveling in Europe. We put off planning our trip thinking we’d just buy a Eurail pass and head out. We had a glorified idea of what this would look like…show up at a train station with our packs, see where we felt like going and hop aboard. Fun, right? Not so quick. Apparently the Eurail pass is not available to European citizens and is therefore not readily available for purchase here. After MUCH ado, and thanks to Miriam and some quick, fast German in a rather loud and serious tone, we were able to get our hands on a Eurail pass for two. At 4:30am we took at 60 Euro cab ride (no other way out of Steinbach at that hour…) to the train station and boarded our train to Holland. We transfered several times and were loving the scenery, feeling good about being on the road, and pretty cocky about how savvy we seemed to be with the stations and the changes and all. Not long after we left Zwolle, just one short stop away from FINALLY meeting grandma and Hans, we heard the announcer mentioning several cities, which we assumed were upcoming stops, none of which was “Leeuwarden,” which was our much awaited destination. Because of the language barrier, I hoped my body language was enough and with a puzzled look on my face I asked a fellow passenger “Leeuwarden???” Ummm…no. Luckily she spoke English and was able to explain that the train had split in Zwolle. One half had gone to Leeuwarden, but our half was not. WHAT? Seriously? Only certain seats are going the right way? But, we figured it out and got ourselves there. And only an hour late! And what a start to a fantastic visit worth every minute of stress getting there.

We’re planning our Easter vacation (yes, I realize it’s a week away) and would love to hear ideas and favorite places from any of you.  Friday we’ll head to Leeuwarden to spend 4-5 days with Evy and Hans, seeing the sights of The Netherlands, enjoying an Easter brunch with family (a condensed version), and drinking good coffee, which my grandma (Evy) is bringing straight from Bellingham.   After that, we have a week to spend any way we want to.  We put off planning it because we weren’t sure if Tyler would have a job by this time, in which case we would have had to come back home after Easter.  So now we’re less than a week away, with tons of options and no plan…please help!

We’ve been going on our “daily” walks around Steinbach and were enjoying the neighborhood, looking at houses and exploring our new home. But we ran out of Steinbach to explore after just a few days, and the same few streets were starting to get dull. I mentioned a few times that I wished there was just one long road that we could just keep walking on (all the roads out of town are narrow, sidewalk-less roads with cars wizzing past at breakneck speeds). Today we finally wandered in the right direction and found a path that seems to just keep going. It’s a farming road that leads to a dirt road/logging road/trail that goes through trees and farmland. While we were out today, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping and the wind was blowing. It was picture perfect…and right in our own backyard.