Horsemanship Camp

Charlotte loves animals.  Stuffed or living breathing things.  We can’t pass a worm or a caterpillar without stopping to relocate it.  She picked up an enormous grasshopper at Elisabeth’s school last week and walked for two blocks with that thing crawling all over her arm.  She talks to Willy the Cat like he is her best friend.  So since the girls have today and tomorrow off from school, I looked into a horseback riding camp that they could go to.  I found one at Stonelea Farm in Aldie, VA – which was about a 30 minute drive from our house.

They had a half day (3 hour) “horsemanship camp” where the kids learn not only a bit about riding horses, but also how to take care of them.  This second part, as it turns out, is critical.

The drive to Aldie was beautiful.  My trusty GPS told us to turn off of Route 50 and take some back roads.  Imagine the Swagger Wagon’s surprise when I was flying along at 45 mph and we hit not just unpaved road, but unpaved road with huge trenches and ridges in it!  The speed limit on the unpaved part is 25, but if you actually drive 25 down those roads you will certainly lose what would probably be critical parts to your car.  The slower speed was perfect, though, as we had the chance to view all of the beautiful little farms out there.  My favorite is Blue Hen Farm which has the most picturesque pond and alpacas (in addition to chickens, obviously).

The girls wearing their helmets and riding boots

True to form, we were the first people at the barn.  By at least 20 minutes.  I can’t help the habitual earliness.  We waited in the car because it is freeeezing here right now!!  Gradually a few more girls showed up until our entire group of 9 girls was there.  First, the camp counselors (who appear to be high school aged girls who ride at the farm) fitted the kids with riding boots and helmets.  And then the paparazzi started doing their jobs…

While the girls were getting fitted with their gear, I made friends with the horses in the pens nearest us.  This one is Ghost,

My buddy Ghost

who Charlotte ended up riding.  Ghost was my favorite.  As we were standing around he kept sticking his head out as if asking us to come pat him.  He loved getting pats and much like Ginny the Wonder Lab, Ghost would wedge his enormous snout under your arm so that you’d pat him some more.  I left for a bit and came back with coffee, which Ghost promptly tried to take away from me.

This one is Angel and get this… she is a real Chincoteague pony!!!  She’s fuzzy like a stuffed animal, which I didn’t know horses could be.  She’s also probably small enough to fit in the Swagger Wagon…  I thought about it.

Angel is a real live Chincoteague pony!! (They already had a Misty at the farm, so she is Angel)

Needless to say, the girls were in heaven.  I think they were too excited, or cold, to speak for the first half hour.  But they got them right into brushing and grooming the horses.  I mean, for Charlotte, this was as close to heaven as it gets.  A real, live horse that she gets to BRUSH?  If she could only dress it in Build-A-Bear clothes….  You could see it in her eyes, she truly loved brushing that horse.

We weren’t sure how Elisabeth would like the horses.  A few months ago the girls had the opportunity to feed carrots to horses and only Charlotte was brave enough.  Elisabeth enjoys most everything, but doesn’t have the deep love for animals that Charlotte has.  Well, Elisabeth liked it.  She really, really liked it.  But here’s what I love about having two different kids:  Elisabeth can recite to you the names of each of the camp counselors, each of the horses, all of the equipment they used, and even the horse anatomy including the name of the bone that connects the horse’s tail to its body.  Charlotte, on the other hand, can’t tell you even the name of the one camp counselor that was assigned to her, but she will tell you each and every move the horse made and why it either annoyed her or made her laugh.

After grooming the horses, they each got to ride for almost an hour.  Each girl had a horse and a counselor all to themselves.  Charlotte rode Ghost and Elisabeth rode….Merlin.  How fitting for my Magic Tree House Harry Potter-loving kid!  First they learned how to walk the horse around the ring and then they climbed on and learned basic horse maneuvers.  They steered a horse through a basic obstacle course (in and out of 6 or so poles).  They also learned “jump position” but did not actually jump, much to this Mommy’s relief!

First the girls learned to walk the horses around

 

Elisabeth gets to know her horse, Merlin

 

No fear, she just climbed right up!

The “grand finale” of the horse riding was a one on one session with the owner of the farm where she helped them learn to trot.  For the uninitiated, this is where the rider stands up and sits down in rhythm with the horse’s trot.  Each girl managed to do a pretty good job.

Each girl also hated the trotting part.  “Its hard…”  “It hurt.”  But they also said that they eventually want to make a horse jump, so I explained that you have to do  that whole trotting bit if you want to jump the horse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the girls were riding, I also made friends with another horse named Katie.  Katie was busy eating a fence post when I went over to see her.  She came over to check me out, sniffed my void-of-food hands and literally snorted and turned her nose up.  I like Katie.  Then she started whinnying loudly at which point a horse across the field whinnied back!  These two went on for a bit, as if gossiping about my lack of snacks.  Katie had no interest in me from that point on.

Katie, looking displeased at my lack of a snack for her.

The second and critical part of the camp was learning about horse anatomy and horse care.  The girls had to put bedding in a stall by first using a pitch fork to put it into a wheelbarrow and then wheeling it to the stable.  And what was most definitely not the highlight of their day… they had to go around the ring that wasn’t in use and scoop horse poop!  For this I would like to extend a hearty thanks to Lucia, the owner.  I was a little scared that I would hear nothing but “I want a horse!!!!” the entire way home and for the next year.  Well, what I heard on the way home instead was…. “I want a horse!!!  hmmm but you have to scoop the poop.  EEEWWWWWWW”  It was a very valuable lesson for the girls, and probably more valuable for me, monetarily speaking.

The camp ended after the girls got to groom another horse.  I could barely wait to get them into the minivan to find out what they really thought of horses and riding.  Much to my surprise, Elisabeth seems to be the one who enjoyed it most.  Charlotte loved the interaction with the horses, but I’m not sure she loved it any more than interacting with cats or butterflies.  Elisabeth, however, has said many times today “I WISH I could get horseback riding lessons.”

Elisabeth learning to trot.

When we called my mother to tell her about the horseback riding, she said “oh, your mommy should buy you a horse.”    I’m still plotting my revenge for this, but rest assured it will be good.

As the day has worn on, Charlotte is getting more animated telling us about her experiences.  She thinks Ghost is crazy like she is.  Apparently once you feed him a carrot, he thinks everything is a carrot and nibbles on everything.  He also made her mad by continually jerking his head and pulling the reins out of her hands.  Charlotte doesn’t like to be inconvenienced like that.

Ghost took some convincing to move, which Charlotte has told me about more than a few times.

It was a very fun day.  I am considering signing them up for a spring break camp.  At least that way I can go back and visit Ghost and Angel and Katie myself….

 

The 23rd Psalm

Well it has been quite awhile since I’ve written anything here.  It seems like our trip to Europe was approximately six months ago.  Since we returned, Doug had appendicitis (2 days after returning), an ensuing appendectomy, and our poor old dog Maggie had all but three of her remaining (few) teeth removed.  Doug is doing much better now, 10 days post surgery.  He is still sore and tired, but that is getting better every day.  And yes, we daily give thanks that he did not have to have an appendectomy in Germany for many reasons, including the lack of child care there, the inability to understand anything, and the severe crimp it would have placed on our weinerschnitzel habit.

Maggie has had a very hard recovery but I think that as of today she is doing much better.  We’ve spent two sleepless nights with her, but last night everyone got some sleep.  I’m very hopeful that this upcoming week everyone gets to keep all of their body parts.  It only seems fair.  I also think we deserve another trip to Europe since, well, this last one got all muddied in the afterglow by these series of unfortunate events (I really don’t like those Lemony Snicket books, but sometimes life mirrors them).

Anyway, one of my new years resolutions was to go to church half of all Sundays.  At this point we’re going to have to go all of all remaining Sundays to meet that, I think.  Maybe we can miss a few here and there, but well… my point is we haven’t been faithful churchgoers as of yet.

But we did go today!  Both girls decided they would rather go to Sunday School than sit in church with us, which who can blame them – they have snacks and crafts in Sunday School!  I, predictably, got us there 15 minutes too early – which is different from 15 minutes early.  We were 25 minutes early.  I have issues with timeliness.  I think this is to counterbalance my sister.  We sat in the car for 10 minutes until it was respectable to go inside.

I took Elisabeth up to her class, where as you can expect with us being so early, no one was there yet except for the teachers.  One is an older woman and the other is somewhat younger.  Both seemed very sweet.  But Elisabeth was a bit apprehensive and asked me to stay with her until someone else came, which of course I was glad to do.  As we stood there, the older teacher marches up to Elisabeth and sweetly says “So…. do you know the 23rd Psalm?  We’ve memorized it, we’ve been working on it for the entire year.”  Elisabeth’s eyes were as big as saucers because this one doesn’t ever like to be behind the 8 ball.  In a very quiet voice she said, “no…..”

The other teacher sensed that asking a 7 year old who has never been to this Sunday School class before if she knows an entire Psalm (much less what a Psalm even is) is just maybe not the best ice breaker.  She came over and asked Elisabeth how her week was, and all about school, then told her they’d work on the Psalm together and she thought she could learn a little bit today and then maybe the rest of it another day.

I never had any fear that Elisabeth would be able to memorize the Psalm but it was a little funny (to me, at least) that this lady might expect a 7 year old to have memorized an entire Psalm.  And as you might expect, Elisabeth had half of it memorized before leaving the church.  We’ve been working on it all day.

She keeps confusing these two lines:  “he maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters.”  Sometimes he’s leading her to lie down in the still waters, which we have to explain is what would put her squarely in the valley of the shadow of death.  Luckily she finds this amusing, because it is sure as heck amusing us.

I asked her if the teachers went over what these words actually mean with her, but they didn’t.  She doesn’t know if they talked about it when the kids were learning the Psalm initially, but I think they must have.  It is quite the Psalm – packed with the things literary references are made of and quotes that you often find cross-stitched on pillows.*

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. 3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

She’s very motivated to learn this Psalm.  Primarily because they told her they’d be reciting it in front of the entire church, and if there’s one thing she loves, it is a stage.  Preferably with a microphone.  So we will make an encore performance next week, and apparently every week until at a minimum she gets to stand up and recite the 23rd Psalm to the entire congregation.

And now, he maketh me to lie down in a big, soft, king sized bed.

* – excuse my irreverence.  I, of course, find the Psalms amazing.  How people who lived back then and faced the devastation that they faced could find it within themselves to give thanks for much of anything amazes me.  And the words are truly beautiful.  But to find so many cross-stitchable quotes in one Psalm is pretty funny.

Day 16 – Our Last Day

Our last dinner in Europe, at our favorite beer garden - Hirschgarten in Munich.

I feel somewhat sad that this is my last “vacation day” blog post!  I plan to write a recap, but it won’t be quite the same for me.  I think that all of us agree we aren’t quite ready to re-enter the regular schedule – this has been such a welcome and needed break (even though we’re coming home more fatigued than when we left!).

I’m going to call today the first day we were actually miserable because of the weather.  We are so fortunate to have had unbelievable weather for 95% of our trip.  It was record setting warmth and sunshine in England, France and Switzerland.  It got cooler in Austria and today was just downright cold.  And wet.  If you combine that with the fatigue and the colds that Doug, Charlotte, and Elisabeth have – it wasn’t a terribly pleasant day.  But we really wanted to go see what the old part of Munich is about.

We gave the in-house breakfast a try this morning.  It was nice.  Germany is a very friendly place in that every time someone new comes into the dining room, they say good morning to everyone else.  At the beer garden last night, the guys at the table next to us wished us a very fond and lengthy farewell of which I only understood 2 words – “auf wiedersehen.”  It just feels like a warm place, until of course you’re in the very small grocery store getting bowled over and elbowed by little old ladies…

Back to the breakfast, though.   When we walked into the breakfast hall this morning, the server came over and brightly said something that sounded exactly like this:  “bringenkoffen?”  Yes, please.  Bring the coffee.  I love German, so easy to understand sometimes!  Elisabeth found the packaged pain au chocolates that we’ve had at other places on this trip.  She had 2 packages and Charlotte had one.  I had really good yogurt – mango, 1.5% fat – with vanilla granola.  Charlotte had every fruit imaginable and Doug sampled a bit of everything.  A very nice lady chatted us up for awhile at the granola/cereal/jam table.  I wish we understood anything she said.  Everyone here speaks German to us initially, which either means we look German (which would make sense because we both have lots of German in our blood) or we are looking less and less like tourists as the days go on.  The latter is doubtful because I have a Nikon permanently attached to my chest and we carry an enormous backpack everywhere.  But anyway, it feels nice to have people speak to us in German first even if it scares the bejeezus out of us and we have to say that we don’t speak German.

As we left breakfast, Doug stopped to chat with Jan – hotelier extraordinaire – and asked him to make us reservations at our beer garden again for tonight.  Jan was more than happy to oblige and also sold us our tram ticket so that we could get into the heart of Munich.  We packed up our stuff and got every piece of warm clothing we brought and headed out to Romanplatz to catch our tram.  It couldn’t be easier, take the #16 to the town center.

As we arrived at Romanplatz, the tram was waiting.  So we got on and at the stop before it was time to get off I told the kids to get ready, we were the next stop.  But the tram did not stop where I thought it would.  Nor the next stop.  Or the one after that.  It was at this point we realized our #16 tram morphed into a #18 tram.  Not helpful.  I’m sure if I was paying attention to the audio recordings, I would have heard, “number16steinerconvertingeinertonumber18steiner danka.”  But I was not paying attention.  We immediately got off, looked at our map and realized we could pretty easily just walk to Mariensplatz which is where the famous Munich old town is.  I wanted to get to the Glockenspiel by 11 so we could see the hullaballoo.

Charlotte was cold, and her legs hurt, and her finger hurt, and to top it all off her feet hurt.  So Doug promised her that if she

The gateway that we had to walk through to get into Old Town Munich.

wouldn’t complain, he’d reward her with picking her up and carrying her when she least expected it.  This worked for most of the walk over to the Glockenspiel.  The main walk to the big square is pedestrian only, which is really great when you’re walking with kids.  There were tons and tons of people out today, despite the awful weather.  Many of these people were dressed in Munich soccer jerseys since there was a match today against Augsburg at 3:30 local time.  I cannot believe how many people sat through cold rain to watch a football match!

About halfway down the main pedestrian walkway we encountered protesters.  We suspect they were calling the president of Germany a liar, because of the Pinocchio depiction, and it had something to do with radical and mainstream Islam, but we’re not sure which side of things the protestors fell on.  They had a megaphone and were giving speeches.  The counter protestors where blowing high pitched whistles.  And about 5 Polizei stood on hand to make sure nothing got out of hand.  The high pitched whistles could be heard up and down the entire walkway, so I now support whichever position the Pinocchio people advocate.  The next 10 minutes were spent repeatedly trying to explain to Charlotte the purpose of a protest.  I fear for what we’ve instilled in her.  I will be purchasing a high pitched whistle upon my return to the States.

One of the things we’ve noticed about Germany and Austria is that people really decorate for Easter.  It is a big deal here.  The most popular decoration is to get pussywillow branches and tie them together, usually with some sort of flowers, and put them outside.  People have multiple bunches of branches/flowers tied around fence posts, doors, etc.  And from the pussywillow they hang Easter eggs.  Most of the vegetable stands at the markets have dishes with really amazingly brightly colored boiled eggs.  And of course all of the storefronts have Easter decorations.  They have the same stuff we do:  baby chicks, rabbits, and other spring time things.  In stores, people say “happy holidays” when you leave, which I’ve never heard at Easter time in the States.  It has been fun to be here during a holiday.  I’ve heard Munich is amazing at Christmas.  We’ll have to come back sometime for that.

The Glockenspiel moving, but you can't really tell in the picture.

We got to the Glockenspiel with about 20 minutes to spare but there was already a crowd.  The Glockenspiel is a big clock that rings and does a sort of “cuckoo clock” show twice a day, at 11am and noon.  Hundreds of people watch it each time.  Now when I was sold a cuckoo clock experience, I wanted cute little fauna to pop out randomly and men dressed in lederhosen to drink beers.  That is decidedly not what happened at 11am.  It was a nice 10 minutes of bells and various things going around in a circle.  There were horses, princes, princesses, dancing men, and by far the most entertaining was the jousting.  The jousters went by twice and on the second time one got knocked off his horse resulting in much applause from the audience.  Apparently the characters depict the history of Germany in some way, but I did not get it.  It did end with men dancing around in circles.  Maybe that is historically accurate?

After the Glockenspiel, we went over to the Viktualsmarket which is a huge open air market.  Just the perfect activity for a rainy 40 degree day.  The girls didn’t last long, so Doug took them to a toy museum while I did a bit of shopping.  I wandered around the open air market for awhile then went to further explore Mariensplatz.  Mariensplatz is chock full of shops.  It is like Times Square and Tysons Corner mall wrapped into one.  It is a neat area, obviously filled with tourists but many, many locals too. I saw an older couple wearing lederhosen leisurely doing their veggie shopping.  It was so cute. And many of the shops I went into didn’t have workers who spoke English.

I met back up with Doug and the kids at 12:30.  They did not love the toy museum, which is in keeping with the reviews that I read.  But, it was warm and dry and not un-interesting from what I understand.  We then walked around for as little time as possible until we found food.  We wanted something quick for lunch and we found a stand up little quick service restaurant where the girls had roasted chicken legs, I had a brat sandwich, and Doug had some kind of ham/hotdog/weird lunch meat sandwich that almost everyone coming through the door also got.  The girls obviously could not reach the very high tables so we settled in the corner where we could set them in a windowsill.  Charlotte found her way into a little cubby, where she remained safely tucked away not bothering anyone except Elisabeth.

We didn’t have much more proverbial fuel in the tank by this point.  We were exhausted.  But we wanted to go to one of Germany’s famed toy stores, and lucky enough for us there was one on the way to the tram.  We spent about an hour in the two level store.  I found it amazing that many of their toys are actually made IN GERMANY.   Almost all of the stuffed animals were German.  And wow were they expensive!!  I picked up a little stuffed horse that was a mere $125 euros…  there were some more reasonably priced things, but by and large the stuffed animals were pricey.  But really cute and plush – so I guess it is a tradeoff.  They had an entire huge wall of puppets.  We could have spent a lot of time and money there.  Charlotte found heaven on the bottom level of the store which contains Legos, Playmobil, and tons of baby dolls.  You can even buy a baby bugaboo stroller.  The prices weren’t even marked.  I don’t take that as a good sign.

The girls spent a long time playing with wooden kinetic toys and then we had to tell them it was time to go out of the

The girls playing with wooden kinetic toys in the German toy store.

wonderful warm toy store and back out into the cold rain to find a tram home.   We went to the spot where we would have gotten off our # 16 tram if it hadn’t morphed into a #18 tram.  And we sat and waited.  There were some other folks there.  And then gradually those folks left.  And then it dawned on us that all of that German on the loud speaker might be important.  And those bright yellow signs that are posted on the post next to us might hold a clue to all of this.

As best as we could translate, the 16 line is having some work done so we have to catch it at the Hauptbanhof which is a mere 10 minutes away.  This explains the 16-18morphen from the morning, and also explains why we didn’t see one tram go by in 15 minutes of waiting at the correct stop.  The trip to the other stop was fine – we were largely under a cover and then a tram was waiting to take us back to our hotel stop.

When we got off of the tram, we ducked into a grocery store to buy snacks for our looooong trip home tomorrow (over 11.5 hours of travel not including any time before the plane actually takes off).  There are two small grocery stores smack dab next to each other, which is strange.  It worked out well for us, though, since neither had everything we needed.  They both, however, had coffee to go which was at this point a necessity for me.  I still don’t understand the coffee sizes here – are Germans and other Europeans just naturally awake people who don’t actually need normal sized coffees?  I guess I’ll just have to start ordering 3 at a time!

We came back to the room and took a nice and needed rest.  We turned on the Munich (Bayern FC) soccer match, which was really just a rotisserie of all the games that were currently going on, but every so often our game came on.  Doug went and cleaned out the rental car and then took it to tank it up.  It has been a great car for us.  I’ve come to love the hatchback thing.

 

Waiting for our last dinner in Munich.

At 5:15 we decided to walk instead of drive down to our new favorite restaurant, the Kirschgarten beer garden (the same one we went to twice yesterday!).  Being creatures of habit, we all ordered the same thing as last night, except for Doug who ordered a ham and mixed vegetable gratin.  Now, if you’ve been following, you’d expect this dish to have 3 pounds of ham and 2 teeny tiny veggies covered in melted cheese.  Well, Germany sure pulled a fast one on us and Doug got a skillet with lots and lots of veggies (turnips!  No one at the table had eaten turnips before…) with some ham – not too much – covered in melted cheese.  It was a delicious meal and we got to see our German friends from last night.  We still didn’t understand them.

We walked home and Doug gave directions to the beer garten to two nice older ladies who were looking for parking and spoke pretty good English.   Obviously not trusting him, they then stopped and asked a German couple the same question.   I hope they had reservations.  It seemed like every seat in the entire restaurant was reserved.  They were having an American BBQ all you can eat buffet (optional) for $10.50 (euros) which seems like an incredible price but I told Doug he couldn’t come all the way to Germany and eat American BBQ.

We are all packed and the girls are asleep on this, our last night in Europe.  I know that tomorrow will be a very long day.  But it will be completely worth it.  It has been so nice to just be together – even through the irritating moments – and not have to do homework, soccer, work, or any of the other things that make our regular life hectic.  This has been hectic in its own sense, but different hectic.

Elisabeth has been daydreaming about what it would be like to run a B&B – what sorts of rooms she’d have, how they’d be decorated, etc.  She wants to learn all of the languages so that people will feel comfortable.  Her current thinking is that she’ll have each room decorated in a theme from a place she likes to visit.  We’ve come up with:  England, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and Disney World.

So now we get to think about our next journey, whatever that may be.  I think we will have to wait until at least next school year so the truancy officer doesn’t come knocking at our door… but it is fun to think about.  And now wish us luck for our very long journey home.

Edited to add:  we woke up to snow this morning!!!  Excitement all around!

The gateway that we had to walk through to get into Old Town Munich.

The Glockenspiel!

The Glockenspiel moving, but you can’t really tell in the picture.

The girls having lunch in their little cubby. The restaurant didn’t have seats, just tall tables.

Our last dinner in Europe, at our favorite beer garden – Hirschgarten in Munich.

They made a liar out of me! Veggies!

Waiting for our last dinner in Munich.

The girls playing with wooden kinetic toys in the German toy store.

The German toy store we went to.

Waiting for the Glockenspiel to go off. I can’t believe how tired I look!

The girls stole all of our warm ear-wear! Desperate times call for desperate measures…..

Day 15: Munchenaurstrassegarten

One of the joys of driving around Bavaria is hearing our poor GPS lady try to pronounce all of these words.  I think she got tired the other day because inexplicably another lady’s voice took over.  But all hail the GPS – aside from sending us straight into the arms of the Austrian police, and then directing us to a non-existant bridge, down a bike path and then through a cow field, she has delivered us safely and easily to each destination.  Honestly, my job as navigator would really be a lot more difficult without her and so for that I top my new $18 Paris-bought hat (from a stinky Parisien store) to her.

The Salzburg innkeeper's son Matteo was enamored with Charlotte's cat shirt at breakfast this morning.

We bid a very fond farewell to our hotel in Salzburg.  Breakfast was excellent this morning as always, except much to Elisabeth’s dismay they did not have the croissants that she loves.  Instead she was forced to eat three pieces of cake.  And scrambled eggs.  During breakfast, the innkeepers adorable son Matteo came over to hang out with us.  He really liked the cat on Charlotte’s shirt and kept pointing saying “meow” which we think in German means “meow.”  Cat, in German, is apparently “cat” although it might be spelled “keight” or something.  We’ve been getting a real kick out of German.  For example, when you push the button to request a stop on the bus, a big red sign lights up that says “Wagon halt.”  Pigs are schweinen.  And in general if you don’t know what to do, just string a bunch of English words together and end with an “en” or a “er.”  It is really amazing how many English words sound exactly like German words.  Eventually we could probably make it by here, save the random capitalization of words in the middle of sentences.

After breakfast, we packed up our belongings and stuck them in the car (which by the way is covered from stem to stern with crumbs….).  The drive to Munich is only about an hour and a half from Salzberg, and just to spite the Austrian government we did NOT buy a vignette and instead drove the approximately ten kilometers that we had to drive in Austria on back roads not requiring a vignette.  GPS lady didn’t even object, which she usually does.  “Make a U-Turn.  Make a U-turn.  MAKE A U-TURN!”  So now, Oesterich Republik, your silly $120 euro fine is only $112.  HA.

We have apparently not driven ourselves crazy, because on the drive to Munich we discussed future family vacations.  We’re thinking of an RV trip across America.

There are apparently stretches of autobahn where there’s no speed limit even in the rain.  We found that interesting.  I guess the German government doesn’t necessarily care if you want to kill yourself, laissez faire!  The drive was completely uneventful and we arrived at our hotel in Munich right around noon.  Our room wasn’t ready yet, but Jan – the guy at the front desk – gave us a 20 minute overview of everything we could do in Munich from museums to surfing on manmade waves (which apparently people do even in 35 degree Fahrenheit weather).  It was quite an overview, and from there we decided to go get lunch. All of the shops are closed here today, on Good Friday.  He was certain that the Hirschgarten(Munich’s largest beer garden) would be open.  They have 8000 outdoor seats!  Only 500 indoor ones though.  We got indoor seats number 497, 498, 499 and 500 – which were nicely located in a hallway.  We did not care – we just wanted food.  And the food was

Our lunch. Yes, I had the weinerschnitzel again. I will rat myself out before Doug gets the chance.

excellent!

The girls elected to have pasta since they loved the spaghetti so much in Salzburg.  You can probably see where this is going… they ate none of it.  But, hey, they loved the weinerschnitzel this time!  MY weinerschnitzel…  which was fine because it was two enormous pieces of flattened, battered and fried pork.  I did not need both of them.  Plus, combined with the excellent kartoffelsalad (potato salad), I did not need more to eat.  We were so happy that Elisabeth likes the weinerschnitzel here.  We vowed to return for dinner and made a reservation for a mere 4 hrs later.

After we ate and went back to the hotel to move our stuff in, we walked over to the Nymphenburg Palace.  Jan, the hotel guy and tour guide extraordinaire, told us about a great museum there for the kids called the Mensch und Natur museum (or man and nature) which shows a history of civilization and also a bunch of animals.  What he did not tell us was that it is 98% in German.  So we wandered around this museum, which I bet would have been excellent if we spoke the language, trying to figure out what things meant.  They have lots of interactive games that go something like this:  there are 20 stuffed animals (as in real but killed and stuffed) in a glass encasement in front of you.  The computer gives you clues and you have to guess which animal they’re talking about.  You can imagine that Elisabeth would be excellent at this game in English, but adding the German layer made it a bit complex.  I’m certain people around us thought we were dumb as tacks when we couldn’t guess anything in the three allotted guesses.

Outside Palace Nymphenberg - a couple of blocks from our hotel. Cold and rainy.

Bizarrely when we got to the very end, which is an entire two rooms depicting how animals kill their pray (picture two real, stuffed lions ripping into a real, stuffed gazelle about 5 feet from you), THAT was translated into English.  Do with this information as you please.  Another German word we loved – a grizzly bear is called a Northamerikanerbrunbar (or something like that).  See what I mean about German?  And, little known fact, the word dachshund (like the little weiner dog) literally means badger dog.  Someone told us this in England but we didn’t believe them until we saw a stuffed “dachs” today, which looked remarkably like a badger.  So what started out as a bit of a disaster (science museums in languages other than your own are tough) ended up being fun in an entirely different sense.

One can only take so much of this type of fun though and so we left after about an hour and a half and came back to the hotel.  We laid low for about an hour and then went back to the Hirschgarten for dinner.  It was a wonderful dinner, too.  I think it was my favorite dinner of the trip.  First of all, I love German efficiency.  Within 3 minutes (and I’m not kidding) of ordering, Doug had his meal.  It is difficult to even come up with an explanation for this, but the girls meals were right behind.  Mine took a little longer, at approximately 7 minutes past ordering.  I had pork medallions in a mushroom cream sauce.  It was SO good.  The girls had weinerschnitzel with fries and Doug had some sort of roast pork with a potato dumpling.

Now, I know customs are different in different parts of the world, but we have never had what happened at dinner ever

Outside the beer garden where we ate both lunch and dinner... if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

happen before.  I saw a woman with a little boy around 2.  She was walking him around the restaurant.  He made it over to our table.  Then climbed up on the bench beside me.  He was obviously in love with Elisabeth and Charlotte.  Then he picked up my fork and tried to eat Doug’s potato dumpling.  Then he crawled over my lap (on a bench seat) and sat between Elisabeth and me.  He proceeded to eat Elisabeth’s french fries.  He then crawled behind Elisabeth and to the other side and ate more of her fries.  And to make it funnier, his mom got him a plate to put them on!  We were smiling and laughing with the little boy, so she probably thought we didn’t mind.  She did not speak English, but did speak Spanish so Doug managed to find out that she’s Bulgarian but living in Spain.  The little boy’s dad and another person were sitting in conversation at another table.  So they sat with us while we ate – the little boy occasionally taking more fries – until they decided to go back to their table, which elicited screams from the 2 year old.  It was a very bizarre, funny situation, but no one seemed to think it terribly abnormal but us.

After my excellent dinner, I ordered the apple fritter with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream.  Oh my delicious.  How do we not eat apple fritters all the time in the States?  I question our judgment!  I think this might be the reason I break down and buy a deep fryer.  I don’t even love dessert, but this was fantastic.

And now we’re back at the hotel.  They only dole out the internet in 120 minute intervals (which might sound like a lot to you, but you’re not stuck in a hotel room for hours on end while your kids sleep!).  They said I can have as many intervals as I want, and I intend to take them up on this.  The hotel is nice, but nowhere near as nice as the last one we stayed in.  Quality wise it is as nice, but friendly wise it just doesn’t compare.  They charged me 2.20 (euros) today for like three sips of coffee.  I asked for “American style” coffee.  Obviously these people have never set foot in America.  We take our coffee by the gallon compared to Europeans.  So if they plan to charge me for three sips of coffee, I plan to use their internet.  They also charge for breakfast.  They get one shot (tomorrow morning) to equal our Salzburg breakfast, otherwise Sunday morning looks like granola bars and complaints from kids.

Today’s pictures are all from the cell phone.  I didn’t even take my camera out today.  First, it is raining and I get nervous about it getting wet.  Second, I got lazy.  Tomorrow we’re going to see the enormous Glockenspiel and find out whether I come home with a cuckoo clock (which apparently only tourists buy, Germans hate them).  We’re also supposed to see a toy museum, although after today’s experience, we’ll have to see.

Here’s all of the pictures from today:

The interior of our beer garden.

Outside the beer garden where we ate both lunch and dinner… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Our hotel – Hotel Laimerhof.

swans outside of Nymphenberg Palace.

Doug and the girls look at the swans outside of Nymphenberg Palace.

Outside Palace Nymphenberg – a couple of blocks from our hotel. Cold and rainy.

We asked the girls to get over by the stream for a picture. There were ducks and geese swimming by. Inexplicably this encouraged them to do the chicken dance, thus the funny poses.

Our lunch. Yes, I had the weinerschnitzel again. I will rat myself out before Doug gets the chance.

The girls at lunch at the biergarten near our hotel – the largest in the world with something like 8000 outdoor seats. Of course it is raining and freezing, so no one is outside.

The Salzburg innkeeper’s son Matteo was enamored with Charlotte’s cat shirt at breakfast this morning.

Day 14: The Charm of Salzburg

I first visited Salzburg back in 1997 with a group of my friends from MIT.  I remember falling in love with it then.  We happened upon a festival, which is apparently not uncommon, and then wandered around the streets taking in the charm.  So that was my desire for today, to take in the ambiance of this truly beautiful city.  Our plan was to start with the Salzburg Castle tour and then just wander the streets until we were tired.

It was a good day, these two got along very, very well. This was taken on the bus to town.

We started off the morning with another delicious breakfast – the same as yesterday.  Then we came up and got ready to head to town.  Our hotel is about 15 minutes outside of town, next to the mountain Maria and the Von Trapps hiked over in the movie.  There is a bus that runs essentially right by the hotel straight into town, which has been very convenient for us.  Even though we have a car, the bus is a no-brainer.  No stress, no parking fees.  There are no tourists on this bus, which is fun.  This morning there were a bunch of older ladies heading to the market with their little baskets.  Completely real.

On the bus, Doug quizzed Elisabeth on some of her French vocabulary.  After each word we’d ask her if she learned the word in French class at school (which she goes to once a week before school starts) or in France.  The answer was uniformly “school.”  So we asked her if she learned anything in France?  And she thought.  “Yes!  I learned how to play foosball!  Or how do they call it?  Babyfoot!”  So, our trip is by all measures a success.  We brought them to all of these countries to learn some culture and Elisabeth learned to play foosball!  We can go home now.

We missed our stop and therefore had to backtrack across one of the bridges, but it was nothing.  Then we wandered through the town until we found our way to the base of the fortress.  On our way we discovered the Salzburg Cathedral.  By this point Charlotte needed to use the bathroom and has no interest whatsoever in old churches so she and Doug set off to find the toilets while Elisabeth and I went into the cathedral.  I think my favorite part of Europe is the old cathedrals.  The feeling I get when I look up and see the amazing architecture and detail can take my breath away.  I have an obsession with pipe organs.  You can feel the passion the people who built it had for their God and their religion.  When I walked into St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, I remember feeling like my breath had been taken away and getting a bit teary eyed.  Well, the Salzburg Cathedral gave me a similar feeling to St. Peters – on a smaller scale.  I didn’t take any pictures inside because there weren’t many people inside, but the ones who were there were actually praying and it seemed irreverent.  But there are lots of pictures on the internet for the curious.  I would have loved to hear the pipe organ played…. maybe next visit.

Outside of the Cathedral is the famous chess board, which I remember as being bigger and more interesting.  When we were

Charlotte riding "the horse" on the giant chessboard in Salzburg.

there, no one was actually playing so we took pictures of the girls with the pieces.  Charlotte likes to ride “the horse” while Elisabeth wants to plot out strategies.  Such different children.  When we came back by this area on the way down from the fortress there were two people playing a game which we enjoyed watching as well as two older men playing on a bench next to the big board.

The Salzburg Castle is way, way up on a hill.  It was never captured, although what they don’t tell you when they state that fact is that when Napoleon and his crew showed up, they just gave up the Castle to him.  We elected to hike up the hill instead of take the funicular.  It was steep.  And I had to get out the albuterol.  But it wasn’t too long and we could all use some real exercise.  I think it took us about 15 mins to get to the ticket counter, and then another 5ish to get all the way to flat ground at the top.  Our ticket included an audio guide as well as admission to the various museums in the castle.

The audio tour was short but pretty good.  The girls each got their own headsets, as did Doug and I.  They had special programming for kids which Elisabeth really liked.  Charlotte, not so much.  She’s a tough cookie sometimes.  She hung in there though.  Thankfully the tour was only 30 minutes.  After the tour we walked around the courtyard and happened upon a ringtoss game which entertained the girls for a long time.  Charlotte got very into trying to get two to land on the horn at once and Elisabeth tried to practice circus tricks by balancing on one tippy toe while tossing a ring from one hand to the other with her eyes closed.  They were happy, we were sitting down and all was well.

A pretzel as big as Charlotte's head!

Before we left, Charlotte’s future Kindergarten teacher told her that in Austria and Germany they have pretzels the size of her head!  So Charlotte had been repeating that to everyone who asked her about the trip.  Lo and behold, at the top of the Salzberg Castle they sure enough had pretzels the size of her head!  Turns out they were “too salty” (imagine, in Salzburg – land of the salt), but we all enjoyed it anyway and now she has a picture to take to her future teacher.

The last thing we did at the castle was to tour a marionette museum.  It was small, only two rooms, but the girls really enjoyed it.  They got to operate a marionette, take goofy pictures, and open a scary cabinet that had a freaky marionette in it with an evil, evil laugh.  They got a kick out of it.  I have always secretly wanted a marionette and for only about $125 I could have bought a 6 inch tall one at the museum!  I did not, sadly.

Our admission ticket also included a ride down on the funicular, which was appreciated by me since going downhill aggravates the stress fracture/tendonitis in my foot.  As we walked down to catch the funicular, we walked out onto a terrace overlooking the beautiful city of Salzburg.  At that moment all of the church bells in the city started ringing because it was noon.  The ringing went on for some ten minutes.  It was really amazing, something that no film or audio recording could capture, and we were so lucky that the timing worked like that as it is nothing I ever would have anticipated.

When we got to the bottom, we set out to find lunch because Elisabeth was threatening to die on us.  We spent a lot of money on airline tickets and I’d hate for one to go unused.  We happened upon a fresh air market (undoubtedly the one the old ladies were heading to) where we found a hot dog for Elisabeth.  And guess what?  She LIKED it.  Even though it was not exactly like the one brand of hotdog we eat at home.  So I guess the answer is that it takes 14 days of near starvation before she’ll eat. At this point Charlotte said she needed to use the toilet again and we had a little adventure.

A view of Salzburg from the Salzburg Castle. You can't hear the bells in this picture, but trust me they were amazing.

First, toilets here cost money unless they’re in a cafe and you’re buying something (or if you’re in a museum or somewhere like that).  The doors on the bathrooms are essentially full length doors – so no crawling under.   This bathroom said 50 cents (euros).  So I stuck in two twenty cent pieces and a ten cent piece and nothing happened.  Then I saw you had to just have one fifty cent piece, which I didn’t have.  This little old lady behind me was trying to talk to me in German, which is a pointless exercise. But she kept digging in her purse saying something so I waited so as not to be rude.  Then she elbowed me out of the way and went into a toilet.

Out we went to find Doug to get some more change and back in we went again where this time the attendant was in there waiting.  Arg, she expects a tip and now I literally only had the fifty cents on me!  We successfully got into the bathroom stall this time and then when it was time to leave, Charlotte turned the lock some way and we could NOT get out of the stall.  And of course now the attendant was gone!!!  I got stressed thinking about how long we’d have to stand in this stall before the attendant came back, and then Charlotte started to get stressed and well, I jiggled it and wiggled it and somehow it opened and got us out of there.  And the attendant now has some British pound change in her basket because I did manage to have that.  Whew, enough of this pay to use bathroom stuff!!!

It was at this point, though, that we realized Charlotte’s complaints of a stomach ache were real and that she is having some sort of digestive issues.  When she said she had to use the bathroom again ten minutes later, Doug said he would just bring her back to the hotel.  Elisabeth and I stayed in Salzburg engaging in her new favorite activity “window shopping.”  She’d never heard of such a thing since we almost never just go up to the mall and walk around.  Salzburg’s intertwining streets, alleyways, and tunnels are jam packed with upscale shopping.  I don’t remember it being like that in 1997.  But I found some $1000 little black dresses and fancy schmancy jewelry (neither of which I bought).  We picked out the most ridiculous shoes we could find and looked for presents for friends.  We found the ridiculous shoes, but no presents.  We did, however, find Mozart’s birth house, which is sort of like Mecca for us pianists.

By now, it was raining, and although we had our raincoats it was getting my camera uncomfortably wet.  So we decided to head home.  When we got back, Charlotte and Elisabeth played together well – and got along – for about 3 hours while Doug and I rested.  I knitted and goofed off on the internet while Doug wrote in his travel journal.  We’ve truly never seen the girls play together so happily for so long, and it was so nice.  We had intended this week to be a more relaxing pace, and I’m really glad we’ve been following that the past two days.

We went down to dinner right at 6 (when they open) so that we could get back upstairs in time for the first pitch of the

The extent of the veggies.....

Phillies opening day game. (which they won!  Go Phils!)  The girls devoured their spaghetti, earning themselves ice cream.  I had the weinerschnitzel again and Doug had some baked potato with chicken and cheese.  I took a picture of it to show you just how many veggies they put on a plate.  And all the veggies you see in the picture?  That’s exactly how many more veggies Doug got than I got…

Sadly this is our last night in Salzburg.  We head to Munich tomorrow and then home on Sunday.  We took a blind poll this afternoon and this hotel is universally ranked as the favorite place we’ve stayed, not counting the homes of our friends.  It is a really great place.  I could stay indefinitely.  They even have an 11 month old Golden Retriever to help me get through missing my puppies.  The hotel is chock full of kids, so meal times are easy and delicious.  And the bathroom is perfect.  I’m trying to figure out how to transport the bathtub to Virginia…

As we talk about our trip winding down, it is really great to hear Elisabeth say that she’s not ready to go home, she wants to see more countries.  She wants to go to Ireland and now Italy because she has decided she loves spaghetti.  I told her there are lots of fun new places to explore in the US too.  Our next “big-ish” trip will be to Boston in early June for my college reunion.  I’m not sure who is more excited, Elisabeth or me!

Here’s the rest of the pictures from today:

the two crazies unwittingly making the same face as the wooden Easter bunny rabbit to their left…

The mountain that looms over Salzburg, where the Von Trapps (in the movie) escaped the Nazis. This is how it looks from our B&B.

It was a good day, these two got along very, very well. This was taken on the bus to town.

Elisabeth’s new ‘do for today – pigtails!

Elisabeth and Charlotte and the giant chessboard in Salzburg.

Charlotte riding “the horse” on the giant chessboard in Salzburg.

On the way into the castle!

Salzburg Castle, as viewed from about halfway up the hill.

The executioner’s house, as seen from the top of Salzburg castle. Apparently no one wants to live next to the executioner.

Ring toss was so fun that we did it for a long, long time.

A pretzel as big as Charlotte’s head!

The favorite game of the day – ring toss.

Elisabeth operating a marionette.

Salzburg as seen from the Salzburg Castle.

A view of Salzburg from the Salzburg Castle. You can’t hear the bells in this picture, but trust me they were amazing.

Mozart’s birth house!

Our last dinner in Salzburg. Plates were cleaned.

The extent of the veggies…..

On the funicular, about to head to the bottom of the big hill that Salzburg Castle sits upon.

Day 13: The Hills Are Alive….

Elisabeth and Charlotte at breakfast.

Day 13, our first full day in Salzburg.  We woke up around 7am and headed down to an anxiously awaited breakfast in the hotel restaurant that did not disappoint.  This is a really nice hotel/b&b, run by a parent/child team.  This morning the mother was serving in the restaurant.  She offered us tea, coffee and/or hot chocolate.  I, obviously, chose the coffee while the girls chose hot chocolate.  She brought out the cutest little pots of coffee and hot chocolate.  There was enough coffee for 2, maybe 3, cups.  She also brought cream and they have a whole huge sugar pourer right on the table!  This is my kind of place. No shameful opening of 6 or 7 sugar packets – just distract everyone while you casually dump sugar in the coffee straight from the pourer!

They had tomatoes and cucumbers, which I found odd for a breakfast, cheese, an assortment of deli-ish meats like ham, salami, etc., some pastries, some breads, yogurt, granola, cereal, some fresh fruits like bananas and oranges, and then some sliced peaches, and juice out on the counter.  And then the “mom” hostess came by to ask us if we’d like any eggs cooked to order.  We had scrambled eggs all around and I think we all tried a bit of everything.  Elisabeth deemed it a “no creper” meaning she ate so much that she would not eat a crepe even if offered (which I fail to believe – she has a separate stomach compartment reserved solely for crepes).  She went to bed tonight saying how excited she is for breakfast tomorrow.

The plan for today was to go on the 9:30 Sound of Music Tour, which I booked in advance along with a hotel pickup.  As with all plans, though, they go straight to you know where in an instant!!  Yesterday I got concerned that they had not confirmed my hotel pickup and sent them an email.  They responded back, confirming my pickup and told us to be in the lobby at 9:10.  I knew we were about 15 mins away from Salzburg proper, so I was a bit concerned by this late time, but hey – it is their tour, right?  So 9:00 we are outside.  9:10 obviously comes and goes.  9:11 I start to get anxious because I’m like that.  9:15 I feel that I’m deservedly anxious and at 9:18 I went inside to ask Sylvia (the daughter hostess) if I should be concerned.  She says she is sure that I have no reason for concern, that they are just running late, but she’ll call to make sure.  And then sure enough they say “Oh, Everharts?  No, they didn’t book a hotel pickup.”  Much stress and anxiety (for me, no one else it seems).  In the end Panorama Tours more than made up for themselves, I think.  They sent a cab to fetch us and paid for it.  We missed the 9:30 bus, but they stuck us in a van and we chased down that tour bus while the van driver gave us a very interesting guided tour of the city.  And then when we got to the stop where the tour bus was waiting, the guide kindly gave us our own private mini-tour of what we’d missed and then rearranged people on the bus so that we could sit remotely near each other.  She also bought the girls ice cream at one of our stops.  So all in all, it turned out fine and Panorama Tours sufficiently made things right – but this is the kind of stuff that really stresses me out!

At the lake where the Von Trapp kids fell in the water. In the back is the house they used to film scenes of the Captain and the evil Baroness sipping cocktails.

Back to the tour.  Oh but first one more side track.  At this stop where we chased the tour bus we ran into another Sound of Music Tour full of kids from Langley High School in McLean – just a few miles from us!  Small world.  And now really to the tour.  The first stop we made was at the lake where Julie Andrews (Maria) fell into the lake with all of the kids from a boat.  Elisabeth knew it immediately.  Two interesting things about this place:  first, little Gretl couldn’t swim.  So the take that is actually in the movie, she goes underwater and apparently it was quite an ordeal.  Julie Andrews was supposed to fall backwards holding her but fell forwards (or vice versa).  Then they wanted to do a re-take but all the kids refused because the water was so darn cold.

After the lake we essentially just drove around town seeing the Abbey and various other sights from the movie before we drove slightly out of town to see the facade of the house where they all lived, the gazebo, and the walkway where Julie Andrews sang “I have confidence in confidence alooooone!”  Another interesting fact:  Leisl accidentally put her foot through a glass panel in the gazebo during one of the takes of “I am 16” and in the VHS version of the movie you can see the bandage.  They edited it out in the DVD version.

Then we went on a long 45 minute drive though a beautiful hilly farm country with lots of beautiful lakes.  The entire purpose

The beautiful church in Mondsee where they filmed the marriage of Maria and the Captain.

of this drive was to get us to the small village of Mondsee which houses the church where Maria and the Captain got married in the movie.  It is a beautiful church from the outside, and on the inside it is different than any other church I’ve seen.  Very ornate.  The girls walked down the aisle much as Maria did.  We also found a good and cheap lunch in Mondsee from a butcher’s shop.  Doug and I had sandwiches made of a kaiser role and some kid of warm ham that tasted a bit like sausage with mustard of course.  The girls just had a slice of deli him and the shopkeeper gave them a gummy worm to go with it.  We ate it in the beautiful square outside of the church.

After Mondsee it was a 30 or so minute drive back to the bus station where the tour started, during which they showed an interview with the actress who played Leisl.  The interview was probably the most interesting part of the entire tour.  On the whole, I have to say I was incredibly underwhelmed by this tour.  I had these visions of running right up to the Von Trapp house and rattling the gates.  Or looking at where the Von Trapp family hid from the Nazis.  Or for the love of Pete jumping up and down stairs singing Do Re Mi!  There was none of that.  Yes, they played all of the songs and encouraged us to sing along, but it was very forced.  We didn’t get to go to the Abbey, although it is open to tourists.  We did not get to go up to the Von Trapp home (the one they used in the movie) because someone lives there.  There was no Do-Re-Mi on the steps.  Or around the fountain.

I think that for the money we spent, we could probably have hired a taxi to drive us to the various places (except Mondsee and for that we have a car) and just get a lot of internet research to read to ourselves while we were there.  So it is not something I would recommend to future travelers, especially if you really love the Sound of Music.  You will be disappointed.

Re-enacting the jumping up and down the stairs singing "Do-Re-Mi." We had to do this one quick and recruit the help of other tourists to stop the annoying tourists from continually getting in front of us.

After the tour, we went to the Mirabell Gardens, where they filmed the Do-Re-Mi while jumping on stairs and running around a fountain scene and did our best to re-create it despite these really irritating tourists who kept getting in the way of my picture.  Luckily I had some other tourists on my side who kept yelling at them.  Elisabeth and I skipped hand in hand down the “tunnel” singing Do-a-deer.  I think that was more fun than the entire tour.

Then we had a quick snack of our favorite “Pom Potes” or little applesauce things you suck the applesauce out of (you can buy them at Costco!  we brought some with us!) and chocolate and then boarded the number 21 bus back to our hotel.  It was early – only around 2:30 – when we got back, but the girls were so very tired that we elected to spend a few hours just chilling at the hotel.  I read to Elisabeth for about an hour (we’re reading the second Mysterious Benedict Society book – and definitely recommend the series!) and the girls played on their various electronic devices until 5:15 when Doug took them for a walk to get some fresh air.  That meant I got an entire hour to myself!!  It was glorious.  Truly, magnificently glorious!

At 6:15 we went down to dinner where Elisabeth ordered something other than chicken nuggets!!  The clouds parted and rainbows and leprechauns came down when she did it.  It was amazing.  She devoured her spaghetti with tomato sauce, as did Charlotte.  I had a pan seared chicken with rosemary sauce and asparagus risotto and Doug had beef goulash.  All of the meals were quite good.  Then something funny happened.  Last night we kept hearing pounding.  Like someone hammering drywall.  At 9pm!  It was disconcerting and a bit annoying.  Then tonight, there were a few families in the dining room.  We were sitting closest to a family of Brits.  We heard the pounding again and at the same time four of us said… “THAT’S what it was!” And we realized that the pounding we were hearing was not construction but the pounding of the weinerschnitzel, which makes it ever so much easier to tolerate.  It was funny to hear four of us all remark at once though and now we have something nice to say when we hear the pounding, “weinerschnitzel up!”

Something we keep coming back to at dinner is the fact that of the 13 dinner-ish meals that we’ve had away from home,

Beautiful scenery in Austria.

virtually none of them have had vegetables.  I know that we Americans are always castigated for being too fat and eating terribly, but you can’t really go into a restaurant back in the States and order a meal without veggies.  I mean, even at my favorite Popeyes they serve you a veggie!  But here that is not the case at all.  The only place we’ve had veggies with our meals have been in the homes we are staying in and even then it is generally a small serving.  At home, Elisabeth and Charlotte have to eat their age in veggies – and not teeny ones.  Elisabeth has to eat 7 large-ish pieces of broccoli to get dessert, and Charlotte 4.  Only in St. Etienne would this have been possible.  We audibly laughed in Switzerland when they brought Doug’s omelette with one teeny broccoli head, one teeny cauliflower head, and one teeny broccoli-flower head all beautifully displayed in a nest like thing.  In Austria they don’t even make an attempt.  The closest thing to veggies on the menu tonight was asparagus soup or the asparagus risotto that I had.  You could order a salad, I suppose, but we’re both just amazed at the absolute lack of vegetables.  Europeans must come to America and wonder why there are seven whole asparaguses on their plate!  Or an entire third of their plate is covered in roasted veggies!

Tomorrow we plan to tour the castle that sits over Salzburg.  I toured this same castle with friends back in 1997 and I remember it being interesting.  Then we’ll walk around the town a bit before heading back here for dinner.  But I don’t want to spoil day 14’s update in advance so I will close here.

Here’s the rest of the pictures from today:

Elisabeth and Charlotte at breakfast.

Family photo. Behind us is the mountain that the Von Trapp family (in the movie) hiked over to get out of Austria. In reality they took a train.

Our tour guide!

At the lake where the Von Trapp kids fell in the water. In the back is the house they used to film scenes of the Captain and the evil Baroness sipping cocktails.

Eating lunch in Mondsee square.

The butcher where we got some lunch. As Doug said, in France you go to a bakery and they’ll but a slice of ham on your bread but in the German regions you go to a butcher and they’ll put some bread on the ham.

Elisabeth and Charlotte singing “I am 16” in front of the gazebo used to film the song.

The house they used for the exterior shots of the Von Trapp family home.

The Abbey where Maria was a nun is the red minaret building. Off to the right, up high, is the Salzburg Castle.

Red Bull’s corporate headquarters. The Red Bull owner lives in Mondsee.

Beautiful scenery in Austria.

Elisabeth and Charlotte blocking the beautiful scenery in Austria. I need to get better at arranging photos…..

The beautiful church in Mondsee where they filmed the marriage of Maria and the Captain.

The interior of the church in Mondsee used for filming the wedding between Maria and the Captain.

E&C walking down the aisle in the church used to film the marriage of Maria and the Captain. In reality they got married at the Abbey.

Re-enacting the jumping up and down the stairs singing “Do-Re-Mi.” We had to do this one quick and recruit the help of other tourists to stop the annoying tourists from continually getting in front of us.

Doug and the girls singing Do-Re-Mi at one of the locations used for filming the song in the Sound of Music.

Day 12: A Long Day on the Road

A pathetic picture of what was a beautiful drive.

Today we drove about 7.5 hours from Bulle, Switzerland to Salzburg, Austria.  A long day.  With few stops.  Only one, in fact, for food around 2pm.  As we now know, we should have stopped prior to that.  In Switzerland or Austria.  You might think it would be a boring day, but it was not.  It ranked among the more stressful days of the trip but ended quite well.

Another couple stayed at the B&B last night.  They were pretty respectful about being quiet when they came home from dinner at 11pm, so we didn’t let the kids run wild this morning as they slept until 9am.  This farm b&b was very nice, but you could literally see through the walls – the cracks were pretty big.  So even when Elisabeth was whispering very very quietly it sounded like she was right in our room.  Anyway, breakfast today was the same as yesterday.  The girls then fed and said au revoir to Pierre-Henri, Charles Robert, and Blanchette (the three goats).  We said our (sad) farewells to Nicole and promised to return and then got in the car to head out.

It turns out that some countries require you to purchase little stickers in order to drive on their interstates.  Switzerland charges 40 CHF for a tag that’s good for a year.  Our problem was that we only had 30 CHF left and our bank charges us an insane amount to take out more money in Switzerland (the Swiss have quite a racket going….)  So Nicole sent us to the Post Office to buy one.  Post Offices around here do way, way more than just mail things.  At La Poste, you can do your banking because the post office also is a bank.  You can buy handbags, toys, small personal items, etc.  And you can buy everything with a credit card.  So I went in to buy one (after Doug tried valiantly to fit the car in a space that was only about 2/3rds big enough).  Alors, La Poste doesn’t take credit cards for the vignette (little sticker).  So we head to the tourist office since we heard you could buy one there, but that was a fallacy created by some internet writer.  The lady there sent us to a gas station.  But not any gas station, it has to be a big one. With about 30 meters left before getting on the interstate we managed to find a big gas station AND it took credit cards.  Whew.  Doug then put 29.98 CHF worth of gas in the car and we headed out of Switzerland.

The route we took in Switzerland was much more crowded than I expected.  We hit congested areas every 15-20 miles.  And the Swiss don’t drive as fast as the French.  I don’t think we saw a speed limit about 100 km/hr in Switzerland today, where as it was 130 in France.

Our dear friend Google Maps led us astray today.  Twice.  First, she directed us to get off of the interstate while in Switzerland and then led us into Austria and then back onto the interstate.  First a word about Austrian roads.  Apparently the country of Austria does not believe that two vehicles should be able to drive in opposite directions on the same road.  The roads are exactly the width of 1.5 cars.  So all along the way there are little pull offs and you sort of pull over and the oncoming driver wiggles past you.  There are one lane bridges that then turn sharply to one direction with only a mirror to see if anyone is coming.  We’ll revisit these in great detail in a little while.  At any rate, we spent about 15 minutes in Austria and then it told us to turn left and get on the interstate again.  I am about 95% sure we never saw a gas station.  Immediately after getting on the interstate we went through a VERY VERY long tunnel.  Miles.  And immediately upon exiting the tunnel they had a road

The thing that caused all the problems...

block set up to stop people who didn’t have the Austrian vignette.  That we had seen absolutely no place to buy.  And no notices about.  So of course they stopped us.

The polizei guy spoke English but all he said was we had to have a vignette because we have to pay to drive on the roads in Austria.  And Austria has a 10 day vignette for 8 euros.  Fine, let us buy the vignette then.  But, unfortunately, he continued.  He said  “The problem ve have now though is that there is a 140 euro fine for driving vithout a vignette.  Come with me.”  So poor Doug had to get out of the car and go with this scary Austrian polizei guy and pay a 140 euro fine for not having an 8 euro vignette that we had no notice of and no place to buy.  Of course he did not argue though.  And hey, as a bonus, our receipt for our fine gives us two whole days of driving on Austrian motorways!!  Too bad we’re leaving here in three days.

It really gave us a sour taste in our mouth for Austria, and I am 100% convinced it is a revenue raising tactic for catching tourists who are only in Austria for literally 5-10 minutes on this tiny peninsula that sticks up between Switzerland and Austria.  I became more convinced of this as we drove between Munich and Salzurg because on that road, where they tell you 14 million times to buy the vignette and give you at least that many opportunities, there are no polizei stopping people after they enter Austria.  Very frustrating.  I think we’ll take non-interstate routes back to Germany where the Autobahn is nice and free.  But I also wonder if we hadn’t followed Google maps (as well as the navigation system, which I think is run by Google maps) if we’d been on the interstate the whole time and seen many, many signs.  If that is the case, those police guys must think we’re incredible idiots.  I don’t know, though, because there were lots of us in the same boat.

our first and hopefully only stop at McDs this trip.

So, that was fun.  Then we got onto the Autobahn, where there is in fact a speed limit in most places.  We were starving by this point but there weren’t any places to get food.  The cute little towns were not close to the motorway like in France and Switzerland.  Plus, between the two of us we speak about 5 words of German.  Ergo, we did the unthinkable.  We stopped at a McDonalds at an “Autoway.”  Elisabeth of all people was opposed and wanted to get something more authentic.  This is hilarious because every restaurant we’ve been to she’s ordered chicken nuggets, but we both appreciated her sense of adventure.  I will fully admit that when I bit into that first McDonalds fry, I was really happy.  The Coke still didn’t have ice though.  Boo.  The stop at McDonalds proved to be good though – the girls got Pokemon toys with their Happy Meals and played a very inventive game in the backseat for the next couple of hours.  They don’t usually play inventive games together, so that was really nice to witness.  They might actually like each other!

After that we were in Munich pretty quickly – within an hour.  Doug and I spent that time discussing why drivers in Europe, and roads in Europe, seemed to work better than in the States.  We came up with a few reasons, but who knows for sure.  Roundabouts are pervasive here, and they work really really well if you know how to use them.  Also people here religiously drive in the right lane except when passing.  Even when things got congested, traffic flowed.  We did see one car that lost control on the Autobahn but even after spinning around and hitting a tree everyone walked away and it was just a one car accident.  AND, miracle of all miracles, there was no rubbernecking!  Can you imagine that on I-95?????

We experienced some heavy Munich traffic, but only for about 1.5 km and I think it was due to construction and rush hour, but then it was smooth sailing.  As I mentioned, we saw a million signs for Austrian vignettes and then got to the Salzburg area about an hour after leaving Munich.  It was a really pretty drive south from Munich to Salzburg.  Lakes, mountains, and fields.

Once we got off of the interstate, our dear Google Maps led us astray again.  This time it is probably not Google Maps’ fault, but not definitely.  It sent us down some little roads to our B&B.  We thought we were in trouble when we encountered nothing but a metal fence where our road should continue.  But we turned right, and then ended up driving down what is apparently a bike path.  Like I said, the roads here are REALLY narrow.  So narrow in fact that you can easily mistake them for bike paths.  We figured it out when we hit a spot where the path went under a bride that was much too low for cars and there was also a little gate across it.  So one u-turn later we were heading back up the bike path.  Eventually the bike path did turn into a road and looking at the map it looked like we could make our way to another bridge, to take us over the tiny stream, about 1km up the way.  So we made it up there and Google Maps then sent us through this little neighborhood where, I’m really not kidding, minivans have to do multiple point turns in order to make a simple right hand turn.

Definitely took a wrong turn somewhere. This picture is not zoomed in...

Then the now annoying voice said “Turn Left.”  Our choices were this:  a slightly left-ish

This was at the end of the dirt road. We were so thankful the gate was open!!! From here we got on a bigger, paved road that took us to the right place.

path, not road, through a field that clearly people drive on as gauged by the two tire tracks in the grass, or, a completely dirt road running beside a freshly turned field.  We chose the dirt road because it looked less like trespassing.  Luckily we chose correctly and ended up on a normal sized road – one that even lets two cars by at the same time.  Then we only had another ~2km until we found our bed and breakfast.

 

 

At this point, I was completely expecting a bed and breakfast run by some socially inept, crazy family who would talk our ears off and then show us to a rat infested room but we were in for a very pleasant greeting.  Hotel Bloberger Hof is fantastic.  It is probably the fanciest place we’ve stayed yet, but still cheaper than Switzerland and not much more than the flats.  We’re in a “family suite” which is a huge hotel room with two full beds.  And an enormous, wonderful bathtub.  And a balcony!  It is really perfect for us and so comfortable.

We finally made it to our Hotel in Salzburg, which is wonderful!!!

Another bonus of this hotel is that they serve a delicious dinner right downstairs, which was our first order of business.  I had  Weinerschnitzel!  The girls chose………. chicken nuggets.  Doug had a sausage with some cabbage and potatoes.  It was great and a good environment to dine with kids.  I think we’ll dine there again, if not the next two nights.

At dinner with what's left of my weinerschnitzel.

It took forever to get the kids to sleep.  I swear Charlotte can invent reasons not to sleep that are truly astounding.  Tonight she used nearly an entire box of tissues because her nose is stuffy.  Tomorrow, bright and early we go on the Official Sound of Music Tour!  Unfortunately it will probably rain.  Today marks the first day of our trip that we’ve had any rain, and the forecast looks pretty bad for the remainder of our time here.  That’s fine though – at least I won’t have to put on sunscreen – I hate that stuff!!!

Well, I’ve put all of the pictures from today in the post itself, so I will just close here.  Until tomorrow!

Day 11: Chocolate and Swiss Alps

It is hard to believe that I just typed “Day 11.”  That means we’ve been away from home for 11 nights.  Whew.  Life on the road is fun, but really tiring.  It has become somewhat of an ordeal to find lunch that the girls will eat seeing as they’ve had their fill of jambon beurre (ham and butter) sandwiches.  But we’ll get to that later, first breakfast.

The girls feed the goats at the farm where we are staying.

We’re staying at this gorgeous farm very near Bulle, Switzerland called La Ferme Cuquerens.  It is a milk farm, which it seems most farms around here are.  There needs to be a lot of milk to support the cheese and chocolate industries.  Each morning, the hostess, Nicole, serves breakfast in the dining room downstairs.  She puts out a nice spread of yogurt made here at the house from the milk from the farm – both sweetened strawberry yogurt and unsweetened plain yogurt.  She also bakes her own bread and makes her own jams.  The jam she served this morning was peach and melon – which sounds strange but Doug said was delicious.  She also served some syrup which clearly had some kind of berry in it, but she claims it is made from some sort of tree on the farm.  We could not determine what kind of tree, but it was good.  And, joy of all joys, there was COFFEE!  The kind that comes from a big pot!  That you might find at an American home!  I was so happy that I drank half the pot.  And then came back to bed because I felt sick from the coffee.

Prior to breakfast, Doug had started some laundry.  There is no dryer for guest use, but Nicole provided us with a basket as well as lots of clothes pins to go hang our clothes up on the line – which we did after breakfast.  We’re used to hanging most of our clothes on racks at home but using clothes pins on a line is a bit more time consuming.  But also kind of fun.  Nicole said that she’s watch them and when they dried, she’d bring them in and fold them for us…. but we beat her to it.  The wind really whipped around today, so hopefully we didn’t lose anything!

After the clothes hanging, we set out for Broc, Switzerland about 20 minutes away to tour La Maison Cailler.  Every piece of

La Maison Cailler Chocolate Factory

chocolate we’ve seen here in Switzerland has been Cailler brand.  When we entered the area of La Maison Cailler, the air smelled of chocolate.  Inside the building smelled strongly of chocolate.  I imagine that it might drive true chocolate lovers crazy not to be able to just dive in.  The tour was fun and highlighted both chocolate and Swiss  precision.  When the woman told us about how the tour would go, she said that we would be visiting 9 rooms on our own.  The voice would direct us where to go and as soon as the doors opened we should move right along because they don’t stay open for long.  All the while she had a computer screen showing where the other groups were along the pathway.  Then she said, the doors will open in 8 seconds – which they did.  As they say here in Switzerland, “Everything works in Switzerland.”  And we have noticed this.  Things just work.  Except at lunch time, when nothing and nobody works.  Again, we’ll get to lunch.

The nine rooms were about the history of chocolate, from the Aztecs to the French to the Swiss.  Chocolate used to only be a drink until the Swiss made an edible form.  And ironically, the Jesuits found it to be a good thing during Lent as they decreed that a drink of chocolate did not break the fast (I say this is ironic because so many people give up chocolate for Lent).  The rooms were by and large dark, and the first 3 were a little scary for Charlotte and maybe even Elisabeth.

After you see the nine room presentation, you enter into a big room where you can smell all sorts of cocoa beans, read about the history of cocoa beans and where they are found now (almost exclusively in Africa), and where you can see which farms the milk comes from.  At breakfast this morning, Nicole told us that all of their milk goes to the chocolate industry, and sure enough as we stood in this room with about 10 milk vats, one of the 10 said “Romanens” (which is the last name of the farmers here).  So that was pretty exciting.

Charlotte kept going back for more of these...

Then you get to see the process by which one of the most popular treats are made – chocolate “sticks” that are covered with melted chocolate with hazelnuts in it.  I really should have been a mechanical engineer, despite my complete inability to build things, because I find this stuff fascinating.  I can watch endless episodes of “How Its Made” and this production line was straight out of the show.  My favorite was the arm thing that picks up the pieces off of the conveyer belt.  It can sense where the pieces are and grabs them with a suction cup and manages not to damage them.  Fascinating.  At the end of this, they had a bowl full of chocolates for you to eat.  I thought that’s what they meant by the tasting but I was completely wrong.

After you view the workroom, you exit out into a room where they just keep bringing plate after plate of every type of chocolate they make.  And as far as we could tell, you can stay as long as you like.  I think Elisabeth went around twice.  Once around made me sick.  The milk chocolate, which I don’t usually like, was incredible.  Silky smooth and delicious.  I also liked the milk chocolate mixed with hazelnut.  But I really felt awful afterwards.

After that the tour is over and we went outside to play on the very good Cailler playground.  There were a handful of other

Elisabeth dangling from the top of the climbing pole at Cailler.

Americans that came by the playground and the girls had lots of fun.  They had a pole to climb, which is about Elisabeth’s favorite thing ever.  The kid has freakish upper body strength.

It was after 1pm by then, and so began the search for lunch.  One problem we had was that we only had 14 Swiss Francs and our bank charges us an outrageous fee here in Switzerland.  The rest of our Francs were still here at the farm house because Nicole didn’t yet have change for us when we paid her and I stupidly paid for the museum tour in cash instead of via credit.  14 Swiss Francs does not go far here.  This is a most ridiculously expensive country.  The second problem we had is that the places we wanted to go for lunch (sandwich shops) close from 12-1:30 almost uniformly.  It is a cruel joke, I think.  The third problem was that we couldn’t even really find a boulangerie in Broc so really we struck out all around.  Not to mention the kids were rioting and saying they would not under any circumstances eat another sandwich… we have had them a lot on this trip.

So back to Bulle we went.  Bulle is much bigger than Broc and as a last resort has a McDonalds.  But we managed to find a boulangerie that was open (I think it was after 1:30 by this point anyway) right next door to a fruit and legume market.  We ordered a ham and butter sandwich for Doug and a meat pie for me and then Elisabeth piped up and admitted she’d eat a sandwich.  If you starve them long enough, they’ll eat.  Now we had 5.20 CHF to our name.  We went into the fruit market and just flat out told the guy, in French, “We don’t have much money but we want to have a picnic lunch.  We want to spend $5.20CHF.”  He was so gracious – we got four apples, a pound and a half of strawberries, and a pound of cherry tomatoes.  It should have cost about $6.50, but he gave us a discount.  Thank goodness we have cute kids.  We also learned that in fruit and legume shops, you don’t touch the fruit and legumes. You let the shop keeper do that.  Fruit and legumes are surprisingly not that expensive here in Switzerland.

The stream along the Sentier des Pauvres

After our lunch excitement, we went back to the farm to regroup, apply sunscreen, and head for the hills.  We went for a 2ish hour walk through fields and forest, eating lunch along the way.  We, by chance, discovered the Sentiens de Pauvres or the Poor People’s Path which was created in the 1300s.  A very nice elderly couple who I think shouldn’t have been hiking up so steep a hill showed us the way down this steep path to a stream which then led us along the Sentiens de Pauvres.  It was a nice walk, although I grumped a lot because my foot hurt and I get grumpy sometimes…  but I’m glad that we did it because it was really beautiful and definitely a different part of Switzerland than just these unbelievably gorgeous mountains.  The walkway follows a stream for most of the time but cuts back up into the forest at the end.

Around 4:45 we arrived back at the farm for a thirty minute rest and then out to find a cowbell for me and some dinner for everyone.  I’ve always loved that the cows wear bells here and people have these beautiful bells hanging in their house, so I needed one.  I found two stores that sold them in Bulle:  the hardware store and the luggage store.  The luggage store was cheaper by $5 and I liked theirs better anyway, so sold!  Finding dinner was a tougher chore.  On the way into town we had decided that Doug wanted an omelet and I wanted a steak.  We looked at menus all across town and found two disturbing things.  First, dinners here are very, very pricey.  The cheapest steak I could find was $30.  Sugar and butter crepes that cost about 2 euros in Paris go for $8.50 here (2 euros would be about $2.40 CHF).  The second, and more disturbing thing that I found was that every single menu offered two kinds of steak:  cow and horse.  HORSE.  I knew they eat horse around here but I figured it would be kept on the down low.  You know, keep it away from the tourists, maintain our good image.  But no, it is right there on the menu for all to see.  Blech.  We ended up at a pretty good restaurant in town where Doug got his omelette, the kids got their kids meals of chicken nuggets, and I had moules frites that were really not very good.  Everyone else’s meals were good.  And lesson learned:  carafe d’eau, not du l’eau s’il vous plait because they WILL bring you a $5 bottle of water.

Charlotte had a bad stomach ache all throughout dinner and so we came straight home instead of walking around town.

Elisabeth and Charlotte on a rock by the stream. Notice the flowers in Charlotte's hand... she stopped and picked flowers about every 50 feet.

This is probably for the best because it was well after 7:45 when we got the kids in bed as it was.  And they’re exhausted.  This travel thing is fun, but I think we’re all a bit drained right now.  Tomorrow we have a 6.5ish hour drive to Salzburg.  Hopefully the sitting will recharge our batteries a bit.

Now that our day and a half in Switzerland is over, I have two observations to mention.  First, there is no trash here.  I’m serious.  You can’t have trash.  It is a very clean place.  There are not trash bins in town.  When we went to throw away our leftovers here at the farm (from dinner last night) I opened the big trash can in the kitchen and there wasn’t any bag in it, so I didn’t want to throw away leftover food.  We bagged it up and put it in the can in a bag.  Today we were told that we can’t have any trash.  If we DO have trash, we have to go buy some kind of special bag in town and then she’ll “report it for us.”  So we’ve elected to pack out our trash in hopes of finding trash bins in Austria.  This makes Switzerland a pretty place, surprisingly.  You might think people would haul their trash to the forest or, say, accidentally drop it out the window while driving – but no. The Swiss seem to be a very clean people, in addition to being a very precise and orderly people.

A view from our hike.

Second, this place is amazingly gorgeous.  The kind of gorgeous that makes you wonder why people ever leave and why everyone doesn’t live here (then you pay $8.50 for a crepe and you remember…..).  The kind of gorgeous that makes you have to pull over to stare at it so you don’t wreck the car.  And the kind of gorgeous that really instills a sense of awe at just how beautiful our world is.  The skies are a soaring blue that photographs can’t capture accurately (or at least mine can’t).  The mountains are massive, enormous peaks towering over you covered in the most beautiful snow.  And the hillsides are dotted with farms, cows, chickens, goats and sheep.  If you sit and look into the valley, trains go by – and they look like little toy trains.  I don’t know how Switzerland is such a rich country – you’d think their people would just want to sit and stare all the time.  I think if they came to Northern Virginia they’d probably just cry about what they’d left behind.

I will be sad to leave Switzerland tomorrow.  It ranks high on my list of favorite places.  This is my third time in the country and it has yet to disappoint.  But I am consoled by the fact that we’re going to Salzburg, which also ranks high on my list of favorite places.  We’re going on a Sound of Music tour while we’re there and then just spending a couple of days enjoying the city.  I’m a bit apprehensive that we’ll no longer be able to rely on Doug to get us whatever we need since he doesn’t speak German, but my recollection is that more people in Austria and Germany speak English than in France.

With that I will close for today.  Here are the rest of the pictures.

The stream along the Sentier des Pauvres

The girls walking along the path (Sentier des Pauvres)

Elisabeth and Charlotte, Sentier des Pauvres

Elisabeth and Charlotte on a rock by the stream. Notice the flowers in Charlotte’s hand… she stopped and picked flowers about every 50 feet.

A little chapel we discovered at another farm near ours. It is also part of the Sentier des Pauvres.

A view from our hike.

The girls feed the goats at the farm where we are staying.

The forsythia is in bloom here. There is forsythia everywhere in Europe.

Charlotte at the Cailler playground.

Elisabeth dangling from the top of the climbing pole at Cailler.

The tasting room at Cailler Chocolate Factory.

Charlotte kept going back for more of these…

My favorite part of the chocolate assembly line – the grabber arm thingie.

Milk from the farm where we are staying (Romanens)

La Maison Cailler Chocolate Factory

Day 10 – Au Revoir France, Bonjour Switzerland!

A view of the Montreux area from the Castle.

Our time in France sadly drew to a close today.  After a breakfast of fresh bread, jam, pineapple, and cake we packed up our suitcases, pried Elisabeth away from the foosball table, and hopped into the car.  Well, first there was an intervening game of “Poisson Avril” which is the French version of April Fool’s Day.  The kids cut fish out from paper, color them, and then try to stick them on your back with tape.  Much fun was had by all (kids) and now we have un poisson avril taped to our window of the car.

We had about a four hour journey from St. Etienne to Chillon Castle, which is on Lake Geneva (which is called Lac Lemon here) very near a resort town called Montreux.  The journey was uneventful and beautiful.  Pictures taken from the moving car don’t do the scenery justice, but I’m including them anyway.  It was really hazy today, so the mountains look a bit less amazing than they might otherwise but if this isn’t the most beautiful area in the world, I don’t know what is.  There are cyclists at every turn, and I can understand why – this environment makes you just want to get out of the house or car and be outside.  The girls missed most of it because they were bickering and playing electronic devices, in turn.

The French and Swiss don’t build roads around mountains, they build tunnels through them.  I haven’t done much driving

A shot of the beautiful mountains, taken from the car.

through mountainous terrain, but there’s something a little scary about driving through a tunnel with a ginormous mountain looming above you.  The tunnel entry looks so small in comparison to the mountain.  But at the same time, I will take tunnels through the mountains any day over a windy road up and down a mountain.  I have nightmares about roads like that we have been on.  We even got the dog carsick once.

We stopped for lunch in an adorable little town.  We popped into the boulangerie where, again, they did not have sandwiches.  But the owner said he could make us sandwiches, so we asked for ham and butter.  Well, ham and butter on two, and ham and no butter on two.  But zut alors!  He didn’t have ham after all.  Only chicken.  So then we confused him a great deal with four separate combinations of mayonnaise, chicken, and tomato, which in typical French style he got wrong and we got the sandwiches he felt like making.  They were good, though, and he was quite nice.  We needed to use the restroom and there were no public restrooms to be found, so he trooped all four of us behind the counter to a teeny little bathroom that he let us use.  Now this should probably disturb me more than it does, but the sink in the bathroom would not turn on and looked as though it had not been turned on for years…..

They threw in some really terrible chocolate chip roll things for the girls (it was a very nice gesture, but they really aren’t good) and then we were on our way.  The girls ate their sandwiches without too much complaining (well except for Charlotte but we have a different standard for complaining with her) and within about an hour we were at our Castle.

 

Chillon Castle

Chillon Castle is consistently ranked among the top 10 castles to visit, with good reason.  It is not a huge castle, so manageable for the kids.  But it has a fascinating history and is really well maintained.  It was built over some three hundred years, starting back in 1000-1100 (they aren’t really sure).  Lord Byron even wrote a poem about it called The Prisoner of Chillon – it is about a guy (Francis de Bonivard) who was captured by the Savoy family and chained in the dungeon for 4 years before he was rescued by the Bernese people.  We got to see the dungeon, and the pole to which de Bonivard was chained, on the tour.  We did an ipod audio tour which the kids were really into:  Elisabeth because it was interesting and she liked finding things they talked about and Charlotte because they played music in the background that she could dance to.

The whole tour took us about an hour and forty-five minutes and culminated with a trip up to the very very top of the keep where we could see beautiful views of the surrounding area.  The trip up was precarious, with low ceilings and non-uniform steps, but we all made it up and down and it was worth it.

Once the castle tour ended, we headed out to our bed and breakfast.  The autoroutes here all have tolls, big tolls.  Today we got super lucky and drove through a lane that must

The girls touring the Castle - both dancing on a strange raised alcove part of the castle.

have been broken because the gate just went up as soon as we stuck our ticket in and that machine wouldn’t take our money no matter what we did – so that saved us $17.50 (Euros).  These toll booths are 100% unattended, and one of the first things we learned on our trip to Europe is that our credit cards do not work here without an assistant.  The European credit cards have PINs, like debit cards, and so when we swipe our card it tells us it is no good.  So this long winded story is all to tell you that we had to stop for Swiss Francs before we could drive to our B&B.  This should be simple, but finding a bank machine was not easy.  Finally after driving around Montreux (really ritzy, cute vacation town), we found a Swiss Bank and I jumped out of the car and ran in.  The silly machine would only give me $20 Francs at a time… or so I thought until two very nice Europeans pointed out I was using a deposit machine.  Stupid American!!

Another 25 minutes in the car and we arrived at our B&B, which is a working cow farm up in the pre-Alps near a town called Bulle.  When we arrived we knew we were on a farm because it smells of cows, and well we could see the cows about 10 feet in front of us.  The proprietor, Nicole, came out to greet us.  She is very nice and also very specific about how things are to be done here.  Children are not to touch the light downstairs, shoes are to be removed before coming upstairs, but the kids are kids so its ok if they want to jump.  She is more accommodating than I’m making it sound, but my first impression was very Soup Nazi-ish.  We have two bedrooms (out of three), an entire kitchen at our disposal, and a private bath for our family to share.  There is no one else here tonight, but tomorrow night another couple will arrive.  Breakfast in the morning is downstairs in a large pretty dining room.

We just came in for a second then went out to grab some dinner in Bulle.  We wanted something fast.  Nicole suggested a few things, including McDonalds.  We found, instead, Alibaba Fast Food and Takeout where they had kebabs as well as chicken nuggets – something for everyone!!  We thought it would be a dive, but that place was bustling with a line 5 people deep at all times.  The food was good but most importantly it was pretty fast.  Everyone is exhausted and just wanted to get in bed.  We brought the food back to the farm and had what she called a “picnic” in the kitchen.

This farm b&b is really quaint but at the same time really done up.  I know Switzerland is known for their hospitality but this

Our bedroom at "la ferme"

is really a neat little place.  The rooms are gorgeous, for starters.  And the beds are all poofy and comfortable and come complete with chocolate on the pillows.  Nicole is also really helpful.  We need to do laundry and she told us that we’ll have to do it in the morning so we can hang it up on the line.  But if it isn’t dry by tomorrow evening, she’s going to take it in and put it in her dryer (the guest quarters don’t have a dryer).  Oh and she’s going to lend us some of her laundry soap since we don’t have any.  It just feels nice and homey here.  And smells of manure.  (Do I comment on the smell of each place we stay???)

Now that our time in France is over, I had a few thoughts that I wanted to share.  First, if you think that it is a myth that the French go get fresh bread every day – it is not a myth.  They might go get fresh bread multiple times per day.  In fact, outside of Paris, I think 75% of the people we saw walking on the street were carrying a loaf of bread.  Even in Switzerland, INSIDE the castle, I saw two people with loaves of bread.  We learned though that each boulanger doesn’t necessarily make his own bread.  Disappointing, but expected I suppose.

Also, our French hosts go about food in a way that at least some of America is trying to emulate.  They told us which farmer our meat came from.  And if you ask where the strawberries are from, Claire knows.  They eat a lot of “real foods” from local places.  Not because it is trendy, but just because that’s the way it is done in France.  “Allotments” (or garden plots in public spaces) are pervasive across both England and France.  In St. Etienne, multiple huge hillsides are covered with them.

One major difference between England and France is that in France the kids eat dinner with the parents – they don’t do “tea” and send the kids to bed before the adults eat.  But the kids also must stay up really late because we never sat down to dinner before 8:30.  I guess it probably isn’t true for all kids, but the four kids we stayed with ate everything.  In just the weekend we were there, I saw them eat liver pate, lamb chops, endive, and other surprising things.  My kids had to survive on bread and jam and little tater tot like things that Claire served once.  So I wonder if the eating with the parents thing contributes to fewer picky kids.  Our kids eat with us every night and they’re as picky as they come – so maybe my hypothesis can be quickly disproven.

Oh, and when we left St. Etienne, the kids gave Elisabeth a soccer ball that is the colors of the St. Etienne team with the team logo all over it.  She’s thrilled.

Tomorrow we’re going to tour a chocolate factory where I’ve heard that you can taste as much chocolate as you want at the end.  Then we might just go for a walk into the hills here.  It is so beautiful.

Here’s the rest of the pictures from today:

A shot of beautiful landscape while driving in Switzerland.

A shot of the beautiful mountains, taken from the car.

Elisabeth and Charlotte in front of Lake Geneva

Chillon Castle

We found lizards at Chillon Castle. I don’t think I have ever seen a lizard outside of Florida!

Walking over the bridge to Chillon Castle.

The girls touring the Castle – both dancing on a strange raised alcove part of the castle.

A view of the Montreux area from the Castle.

Lake Geneva and surrounding area from the top of the keep of Chillon Castle.

The adorable town of Bulle.

The view from our B&B. It is much more beautiful than this picture lets on.

Our bedroom at “la ferme”

Europe – Day 9: Chez Amis Francais

The Loire River.

When we left our friends’ house in the English countryside, Doug and I both said out loud that the kids had already experienced the highlight of their trip.  They couldn’t possibly have more fun anywhere else.  Well, we were definitely wrong.  I don’t know that they’ve had more fun here in St. Etienne, but it is close.  I think there will be tears tomorrow when we leave.

For all the griping I did about Paris, the Loire Valley drive and our time here in St. Etienne has been so wonderful.   The people here generally don’t speak much English and so it feels more like being in France.  And in general people have been much friendlier outside of Paris. It turns out we Americans are a hot commodity here in St. Etienne.  Simon, the 8 year old boy whose family we’re staying with, told his teachers that “les Americans” were coming and the teacher called Claire (his mom) to ask if Simon could bring us for show and tell.  Alors, we are not staying here on a school day!

Our kids have fully integrated into this family.  Elisabeth has become quite proficient at foosball and Charlotte has fallen in love with Playmobile (alert!  present idea!).  They even have Wii here, and I will forever remember the 8, 10 and 13 year old boys saying “Superb Elisabeth!” as she showed off her Mario Bros. skills.  Also, just hearing little French kids say “Elisabet and Charlotte” makes me happy.

Elisabeth and Simon play foosball against Benoit.

Today started off with some foosball after breakfast, naturally, and then a 15 minute drive to see Simon’s soccer match.  He’s 8.  We were very curious to see how much better French kids are at soccer than American kids.  I have to say, I think American kids could hold their own with these French kids.  The French kids have a lot of foot skills.  It literally looks like a string connects the ball to their foot.  But I think our American kids could compete.

During Simon’s soccer match, the rest of the kids jumped on a mat that is used for pole vaulting.  It is really bouncy, almost like a trampoline.  The kids had such a blast on this simple piece of equipment.  I want  one for the backyard.  And then after the match, Doug, Laurent, another adult, and the kids played a game of soccer.   The teams were Doug, Laurent, the other adult, and Clemence (Laurent’s 15 yr old daughter) vs. Elisabeth, Charlotte, Pierre-Antoine (13), Benoit (10) and Simon (8).  Everyone was quite impressed with Elisabeth’s soccer skills.  She did really, really well.  Alas, the adults won after about 30 minutes of play.  But different than the American kids we know, these kids eat, sleep, and breathe soccer.

Elisabeth very focused on soccer. I love this picture.

After the soccer match we came home where we played some more foosball and then sat down for a multi-course lunch.  These French folks really do take eating seriously.  Each meal is hours long and food just keeps coming no matter if you are hungry or not!!  Today’s lunch was an endive salad with something like Vienna sausages, apples, cheese, raisons, and nuts tossed with a mustard vinaigrette, bread, steamed green beans, delicious round tater tot thingies, and lamb steaks.  All served with a bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pap.

During lunch we discovered a pretty funny thing.  Claire is a nurse who works in a laboratory where she has to draw a lot of blood.  This inevitably led to me telling her about my ridiculous fear of needles, which then led to me telling them – in French – about the bat incident from last summer that resulted in a course of rabies shots for the kids.  We were trying to explain “bat” to them and just couldn’t.  So we looked it up in the dictionary.  The French word for bat is “chauve-souris” which literally translated means bald mouse.  That alone is hilarious, but then we got onto the subject of Batman and how Bald Mouse Man just doesn’t have the same ring.  My fear of bats will be lessened now thinking that they’re really just bald mice.

After lunch, and after the foosball of course, we set out to a park.  The kids each took a scooter and we brought a soccer ball.  We drove about 20 minutes to a beautiful park on the Loire River.  We walked around the park all together.  The first fun thing we came across was this massive climbing structure shaped like the Eiffel Tower.  If Elisabeth wasn’t already in heaven, this pushed her there.  She and Simon climbed to the very very top in just a few minutes.  Then down and back up again.  All the kids enjoyed climbing on the structure, even little Charlotte who is so tired she can barely see straight.

Benoit giving Charlotte flowers.

Speaking of Charlotte, she has these kids wrapped around her pretty little fingers.  The boys go out of their way to find flowers to pick for her and Clemence will carry any number of flowers for Charlotte, leaving Charlotte’s hands free to accept her presents from the boys and also pick pretty flowers she finds along the way.  Clemence even made a pretty centerpiece out of this morning’s collection of flowers.

After we walked around the lake next to the river, we stopped and the kids played some more “football.”  Elisabeth cracked us all up by luring Simon to come try and take the soccer ball from her and then making a move and running by him with the ball.  He is a competitive little boy, and she is a competitive little girl – so they very much enjoyed this game of keep away.  Then when another of the brothers came, they played kick the ball to each other.  It was then that we saw the difference between boys and girls:  after the boys kick the ball they wait for someone to kick it back for them while intently staring at the ball.  Elisabeth on the other hand kicks the ball and then does pirouettes until the ball is heading her way again.

Around 6:30 pm we headed home for, you guessed it, more foosball (which they call babyfoot as in baby football).  After the foosball came Wii and then some more foosball.  Charlotte spent this time playing Playmobile quietly in the playroom.  I think she too is in heaven.

Around 8 Charlotte decided she couldn’t wait for dinner and just wanted to go to sleep so we gave her some strawberries and apples and stuck her in bed.  Elisabeth stuck it out until the bitter end, which was around 9:45.  For dinner tonight we had “Raclette” which is sort of like fondue.  They have a Raclette machine sort of like this one where they put little pans underneath filled with unmelted cheese.  Once it melts, you pull out a little pan and dump it on your plate, preferably on your potato.  Then you dip any number of meats into the melted cheese and eat it with your potato.  In addition to Raclette cheese, they had a bleu cheese called Fourme, and another mild cheese whose name I didn’t catch.  It was fun in addition to being yummy.  Obviously it did not fit into Elisabeth’s very very narrow parameters for what she will eat, but that is her loss.

In France they don’t use the word ‘picky’ to refer to children who are particular with what they’ll eat.  Instead they call them “difficile” which seems far more appropriate.

After dinner, the kids played more foosball.   These kids are really good at foosball.  Simon, the 8 yr old, beat me 10-2 today.  He gives Elisabeth somewhere between a 2 and 6 point head start and still beats her.   I think my kids have found the older brothers they never had but apparently always wanted.

The kids in the Vienna soccer jerseys we brought them.

Tonight before going to sleep, Elisabeth asked when we can have ice again.  I’m quite with her on that.  We are an ice loving people, but Europeans are not.  We haven’t been into  a fast food restaurant (yet), and so none of our drinks have had any ice in them.

So with dreams of an icy Coke I will close.  We took a lot of pictures today, here they are:

Simon playing football.

Not watching the soccer game but very happy.

Elisabeth very focused on soccer. I love this picture.

Charlotte and Clemence picking flowers.

The kids in the Vienna soccer jerseys we brought them.

Elisabeth and Simon play foosball against Benoit.

Clemence’s birthday cake.

The Eiffel Tower climbing structure – it is big!

Atop the Eiffel Tower climbing structure!

Charlotte and Benoit.

Elisabeth on the climbing structure.

Charlotte and Benoit on the climbing structure.

The Loire River.

Benoit giving Charlotte flowers.

Kids playing by the lake. No one went in, amazingly.

All of us in front of the lake at the Loire River park.

Le Famille a le rive Loire.