Where In The World Is Deb?: January 2004 Archives

« December 2003 | Main | February 2004 »

January 29, 2004

Germany, Part Three

Thursday

We signed up for a tour of the castle Neuschwanstein built in 1886 by King Ludwig II who was very artsy-fartsy and had a thing for building castles. So much so that he ran his family fortune out and started working on the Bavarian Government's money. You may recognize the castle Neuschwantstien as Cinderella's castle at Disney. Unfortunately the King was unable to complete construction of it and only got to live in it for less than six months. (I am giving you the Deb Codding special low down - I highly recommend you read up on this, it is a fascinating murder mystery) The Bavarian government decided he was crazy and unable to rule because once he realized that he did not actually have any real power to "rule", he refused to come to meetings and they had to send messengers to extremely remote locations to get him to sign any official papers, so they plucked him out of this castle and imprisoned him in another of his homes. The very next day, the king and his psychiatrist were found drowned in a lake. They have no idea what happened.

We had the good fortune of taking a bus through Austria and back into Germany in order to get there. The scenery is surreal. I feel like all I have done in describing Germany is gush about how beautiful it is. It looks like something out of a storybook, I have never seen anything like it. We are anxious to go back, possibly this summer to see what it is like without snow. I understand the hiking is outstanding.

The bus stopped at the bottom of the cliff that the castle is situated on and we took a horse and carriage the rest of the way.

It was extremely cold - about 20 degrees! We were not allowed to take any pictures inside the castle and I have not had any luck finding anything on the web either. Because they have so many people come through on tours, they have limited the tour to about six rooms of the castle. All of the walls are covered in frescoes and many are gilted with gold. The artistry is amazing. His bedroom has a hand carved canopy bed that took SIX years and four master carvers to do.

This is a picture from the highest floor we toured.

When we were done with the tour, we had lunch in the town. The tour guide had raved about the fresh trout they serve, that it was straight out of the river that day. Jake and I are passionate fish lovers, so we knew this was what we were going to have. We had no idea that we needed to be introduced to our lunch before we ate it hahahahahaha.

They did indeed serve it straight from the river - AS IS hahahahahahahaaha.

When we got back, we had planned to go ice skating again but I had the worst sinus headache and ended up staying in for the night. The next day, we walked around the town some more and then began the travel back. One thing I forgot to mention is that a good percentage of the Germans we met spoke at least fair English because it has been mandatory in their schools since after WWII. It was nice to be understood at least a little bit!

As with all vacations we were very happy to get back to our own space. Next up is a trip to Cairo, Egypt. There is a slight possibility that I will change that to Holland in April (for the tulips) because there is already an organized trip from Sicily to there. I have learned the hard way over, many times that you get to see so much more on an organized trip rather than the hit and miss way that I do things. The other thing that I have learned is that I want to go back to every single place we have already been - ARGH!

Posted by DebC at 10:35 PM | Comments (5)

January 26, 2004

Germany, Part Two

Wednesday

We woke up to about a foot of new snow with more pouring down. Eli and Jake were dying to make a snowman, so they did that before breakfast.

It wouldn't be my family without someone putting breasts on the snowperson.

Got to the ski lodge amazingly early (none of us are morning people!) only to have the outfitting take just over an hour. I will be SO glad when my kids can do everything for themselves!! Much to my chagrin, we discovered that there are no snowboard lessons for children under 12 and further, no ski lessons for children under 7 during the week. Eli promptly refused to do lessons by himself, so I had no choice but to stay on the bunny hill with them. I am a great ski instructor... to other people's children. Jake is absolutely going to be the athlete in the family. He very quickly picked up how to not only use the rope tow (gads I hate those things) but how to get down the bunny hill gracefully and even do some wide turns (on purpose hahahaha). Eli, on the other hand, could not be bothered to stay with us. He decided that since he had skiied several times about three years ago, that he did not need lessons (and especially not from his mother). So he spent most of the morning realizing that he could not, in fact, get down the slope in an upright position. Fortunately by mid morning, Eli met a kid who was also not listening to his mother and both of them decided to listen to me because Jake was doing so well.

After playing around all morning and then eating lunch in the lodge, I decided to take us all up the mountain on the cable car up and ski down an easy trail.

Yah, let me just say that it did not go well. The cable car was really neat (although I did flash on the F-16 crashing into the cable car in the Italian Alps). We got off the cable car and headed over to the map to plan out our trail. Looked simple enough. We got onto the easiest trail and discovered that it was so flat that if you did not have momentum, you were left trying to skate on your skiis. Jake promptly developed a blister in his boot (I am sure it started with all the morning snow plowing that he did). We miserably slogged through with hopes that the trail would head downhill soon. It did, around the half mile mark. As soon as we saw that the trail would have some decline to it, we also saw, up in the distance, ski patrol blocking off... the easy trail. I had a sinking feeling and started prepping the boys that no matter what, we could always take off our skiis and walk down. After the first hill and about fifty thousand falls (complete with skiis popping off), we did just that. Walking downhill in ski boots is a special trick. If you have never had ski boots on, picture walking (at all, let alone downhill) with two casts up to your ankles that do not allow your foot to bend. Now add wind, snowfall and nearly zero visibility to it. Uh huh. It sucked bad... two MILES worth of bad (I checked the map back at the hotel). Needless to say, we nearly cried with relief three hours later when we got back to the lodge, fifteen minutes after closing time and thirty MINUTES prior to sunset. There is no night skiing here which means no lights so we were staring to get scared on top of our misery. Along the way, not one person offered to help, nor did we see any ski patrol (after the ones that blocked off the easy trail that is). Argh.

I forgot to mention that if you got off the ski trail at all, the drifts were at least 3-4 feet deep. I have never ever skiied anything like that in my life. I learned to ski in New England where ice is all you get and ANY covering over the ice is considered to be a really great day hahahaha.

And, while it was a miserable three hours, the day as a whole was FANTASTIC. I cannot stress enough just how beautiful Germany is. I have lived in snow before, this is different. THIS is what the term winter wonderland really means. I wish the Navy had a base in Germany - I would be stationed there in a heartbeat.

Stay tuned for part three.

Posted by DebC at 09:59 PM | Comments (1)

January 24, 2004

Ready, get set... GO!

MONDAY
We left our house at 4 am on Monday with trepidation that we might not actually be going anywhere due to the scheduled strike of the Alitalia pilots. I was pleasantly surprised that there was NO problem at all with our flights (even though we did end up being delayed until fifteen minutes prior to the strike!). We walked out to the little business plane in Rome that would take us to Munich and Eli said "Mom, are you sure we are getting on the right plane?".
"Yes Eli, I am sure - it is the only one boarding right now."
"Mom, just ask the flight attendant to be sure."
"ELI, I am SURE, just come on."

He is very much my mini me - lives up to the stereotype of firstborn all the way. We got settled onto the plane, took off and then the flight attendant came on the loud speaker and did her welcome aboard speech. "Welcome to flight blankety blank with service to Monaco." (insert freaked out mom face, inspiring freaked out Eli face). It was much to our relief when the pilot came on and said the same thing except said we were going to MUNICH. We discovered that Munich goes by at least three names - munich (US), Munchen (Ger) and Municho (It). The Italian version sounds just like Monaco.

This is a shot flying over the Alps. It was stunning.

Public service announcement for those flying to Germany. If you come across a doohickey hanging in the bathroom stall, do not push, as the button says, while you are peeing. It sprays nasty toilet sanitizer all over your legs.

Once at the Munich airport, we decided to take the train rather than rent a car because I wasn't sure how much I would actually need a car in Garmisch. My friends had told me everything was walking distance. Plus, I do not have the best track record driving in snow LOL. We found the train/subway ridiculously easy to use. Until we missed our connection in the middle that is. Tired and hungry we opted for BURGER KING HAHAHAHAHAHA, while waiting for the next train. If Italians smoke a lot, Germans have them beat. We had no choice though because everything else was outdoors in 30 degree cold. So after some good ole comfort food (in 6 feet of haze, giving a whole new meaning to "smoked" meat), we had to PEE! Two agonizing words... Pay Toilets. And yes, you would be correct if you guessed that we did not have a sincle 50 cent Euro coin.

Got to Garmisch after a gorgeous train ride into the Bavarian Alps. Snow everwhere. All Eli and Jake wanted to do was throw snowballs.
View from the hotel (which was about the same any direction I turned)
<img src=http://debcodding.com/hotelview.jpg></a> 
After they were properly wet, we ate an embarrassing amount of German food and turned in for the night.

TUESDAY

Woke up bright and early to go skiing only to find it pouring rain - went back to sleep. Woke up again, still raining. We decided to walk around the town and were soaked in minutes (imagine that!). I discovered that my FAVORITE, favorite Candies boots have a crack in the bottom that lets my sock get wet. So with the boys' tennis shoes also wet, we started outfitting ourselves with things you can't buy in Siciliy. Snow boots, gloves, hats and umbrellas and suddenly life was gooooooood.

There were frescoes everywhere.
<img src=http://debcodding.com/garmischfresco.jpg></a>

We then had THE BEST SOUP
<img src=http://debcodding.com/bestsoup.jpg></a> 
and THE BEST STRUDEL ever!
<img src=http://debcodding.com/beststreudal.jpg></a> 
(and yes, Eli was properly horrified that I took those pictures)

After hiking at least five miles we declared ourselves tired and as a reward, the rain changed over to the fattest clumps of snow imaginable. It look like clumps of cotton candy falling.
<img src=http://debcodding.com/snowing.jpg></a>

We decided to go ice skating since we could not ski that day and went to the stadium used for the 1936 winter olympics. It was HUGE - four rinks. Two nights a week, they open in the evening for the "Eis Disco", which turned out to be fabulously fun. Apparently there is not really a drinking age here in Germany - there were teens swilling beer everywhere but the music was thumping (98% American pop/hip hop) and the disco lights were swirling. We skated indoors for a while and discovered that they do not stop for anything which includes zambonying (new word?) the ice - it was like skating on a bumpy lake surface. We also skated on the outdoor rink which was hilarious - one giant snowball fight with no international boundaries. It was still snowing and the music out there was the alpine accordian type music hahahahahaha. Jake and Eli are both avid rollerbladers and have also ice skated before so they were off like a flash.
<img src=http://debcodding.com/skating.jpg></a> 
The white dots are actually snow flakes. Jake's favorite saying was "check this out mom" as he skated backwards, turned and finally did spins.
<img src=http://debcodding.com/lookma.jpg></a> 
<img src=http://debcodding.com/skating2.jpg></a>

Stay tuned for more of our Bavarian adventure tomorrow!

Posted by DebC at 04:08 PM

January 20, 2004

OOPS! Fogot to put out the "Gone Fishing" sign

We left for Germany (Garmish) on Monday. We will be back on Friday - expect a several part trip update starting then. (I am tzping on a German kezboard and the kezs are in weird places, it is bending mz brain!).

Posted by DebC at 01:25 PM | Comments (2)

January 16, 2004

Oh! I forgot one more bit and piece

I called the cops on Seth two days ago. He ran away from home.

Okay, okay, I know that isn't funny - a little gallows humor because it scared the living crap (does crap live?) out of me. I was folding clothes in the living room and Seth was wandering in and out of the living room patio door. We have a 10 ft by 40 ft, completely enclosed backyard (six foot privacy fence). I often let him go out there alone for short periods of time because there is nothing that can hurt him out there. The gate is latched with a deadbolt which is really, really hard to move because the weight of the gate has pulled the hinges down. I have to use my foot to lift the gate up while simultaneously pulling the deadbolt.

So anyway back to the other night. Eli was putting a DVD in and suddenly decided to look in the backyard (Seth had only been out there about five minutes) and he runs back in with a panicked look on his face "MOM, Seth is GONE!!" Possibly the worst thing a mother could hear in regards to her 25 month old baby. Eli and I ran up and down the back and then the front to no avail. My neighbor was just coming home and his family pitched in as did everyone else we saw (gotta love the close knit community that is military housing). After I had been frantically searching for about ten minutes, I called security. The gate guard put me on hold before he even checked to see whether I *could* hold, arghhhh. When he came back, I firmly (but politely) suggested that in the future he should find out whether it is an emergency before he put someone on hold. He answered that several cars had just driven up and that traffic was his first priority. EXCUSE ME?!! Wrong thing to say to a mom who is freaking out. He put someone else on the phone and before I could get my whole story out, the guy just about dropped the phone and was at my house thirty seconds later. I told this guy what happened with the gate guard (after Seth had been found) - I am sure there were some adjustments made LOL.

Seth was found about five minutes later (after being gone a very long 20 minutes total) about a block away from the house, traveling the perimeter fence in pursuit of our dog. When he saw my neighbor (who found him), he started sobbing. Poor little guy. He had let the dog out and was simply trying to get him back the way that we always do. I am still at a loss as to how he got the gate open though. I think he must have stepped onto the bottom wood slat and his weight pulled the bolt down and out of the slot. In any case, I am putting a bicycle chain on the gate.

This is the jogging path that goes all the way around the housing complex. A baby can go far with very little effort!

Posted by DebC at 09:30 AM | Comments (4)

January 15, 2004

Bits and Pieces Part Two

I picked up our plane tickets to Munich a couple of days ago. I hate spending that kind of money when there is a perfectly good free flight available to me. Unfortunately, those military flights are too unpredictable for a very short vacation. When I got to the travel agent's desk, she looked all fidgety and said "alora (which is sort of their way of saying ummmmm), let me just check" So she turned around and checked with her boss. Guess what is happening on Monday, the day we are flying out? There will be a planned strike of the pilots of Alitalia from 10 am to 6 pm. Now here is a concept I will never get used to. The labor unions here are extremely organized and announce strikes several days (or even a month) in advance. There are gas strikes, trucker strikes, airline strikes, train strikes... you get the idea. Now doesn't it seem to defeat the economic impact of a strike when you *tell* people to be sure and fly outside of the strike times? During the last gas strike, we were warned three days in advance of the strike to gas up our cars. What is the point? I don't know. They don't either but apparently it works well enough that they do it several times a year. So back to me (and you know it is all about ME). Our flight happens to connect and leave Rome at 9:30 am. So according to the travel agent, we should be "okay". Did I mention how often planes are delayed around here? So instead of skiing, we may be touring Rome.

Eli's glasses were ready today. It is official. He is Harry Potter now.

He has to wear them for an hour a day at first and then work up to wearing them all the time. The glasses are pretty potent, he was walking around exclaiming how big things are now. He said it is like wearing a microscope on your eyes hahahahahahaha. He is pretty cutie. It fits his personality - he has gotten very bookish lately. I got him several books from the Dear America series and he is nose deep. It is weird to have to order my kid to stop reading and go to bed! He is working on perfecting the art of reading while he is walking. I seem to remember doing the same thing at about the same age. And you might ask, what is so fascinating that you can't put it down? He is reading a book about a kid on the Donner Party. The apple does NOT fall far from the tree.

Posted by DebC at 10:44 PM | Comments (2)

January 07, 2004

Odds and Ends, Bits and Pieces

* Eli (my nine year old) has been going to the school nurse frequently lately due to "blurry vision". He says that every once in a while, his vision goes all blurry and stays that way for several hours. We had an eye appointment on Monday and the optometrist said that he is moderately far sighted. He said that the blurry vision happens when he has been concentrating on close up stuff (like hunched over school work) and then has to suddenly look up to the blackboard. His eyes are then not able to compensate. Ugh. He will have to wear glasses all of the time now. We went and picked some out - no matter what style he tried on, he looks like Harry Potter hahahahahahaha. Anyway, picked out some cute glasses. Price tag? $200 (and yes, that was about the cheapest). There will be no icicles allowed anywhere near those glasses.

* Today, I had a wild hair to take down the Christmas lights immediately prior to going to work. The Navy housing provides each house with an Italian kaleidascoping ladder. It is the coolest thing since sliced bread. You can adjust it to about fifty different positions. The only problem is that it weighs about 80 pounds and it is difficult to adjust the size by yourself. I do everything by myself. I was trying to wiggle the side pin out and put my hand on one of the steps to steady the ladder (you know what is coming don't you). The whole thing crashed down and guillotined my hand. It was heartstoppingly painful. My whole arm was numb for almost four hours afterwards but was not obviously broken or bruised or swollen. I decided that I would have it xrayed because the pain was not getting any better despite motrin and ice. Then it occured to me that "holy shit" I can't have a cast and go skiing in two weeks! Fortunately for me, it is not broken. Yeah. Darwin award for me.

* Ice storm for my friends in the Northwest. I have been hearing about it for the last week or so. This never happened while I was there. I am sort of happy and sad at the same time. The guys would have really enjoyed all that snow and the snow days off work and school would have been fun. But, I do not miss the antics of the folks who mistakenly believe they can drive on sheets of ice (and I have been one of them). Anyway, my friend and former coworker at the Recruiting District sent me these pictures he took today at his house in Vancouver, Washington.

And Keith, I notice that there seems to be a layer of snow/ice on the top of your jacuzzi which means that it is turned off. Shame on you.
<img src=http://debcodding.com/icestorm5.JPG></a>

This one is my favorite - very pretty!
<img src=http://debcodding.com/icestorm6.jpg></a>

This is Moe. He looks rather peeved but Keith says he loves it.
<img src=http://debcodding.com/icestormmoe.jpg></a>

Keith took this from a church parking lot near his house - what you can't see buried under that is the main road that goes up to his house!
<img src=http://debcodding.com/icestormnight.JPG></a>

Posted by DebC at 11:40 PM | Comments (2)

January 04, 2004

I can now officially say everyone is properly birthdayed

We have a birthday the first part of each month of the holiday season. Jake's is technically the first birthday in our family (today) but unfortunately, the last to come. This has caused untold amounts of "not fair" grief especially this year. Much to Jake's relief, his birthday FINALLY came! Happy seventh birthday little buddy!

I have continued my mom's tradition of allowing the birthday celebrant to pick out the cake and icing. Normally this works out just fine. Not this time. We had to endure white cake with vanilla frosting that had rainbow candies in it. Yuck. Unknown to me though, this is a huge hit with the seven year old set and all the kids LOVED it. I started a tradition of our own where the party guests are asked to NOT bring presents and instead, we do a cool craft project. On Eli's birthday this year, we made Flubber (it is like silly putty). For Jake, I got white ceramic mugs and found markers specifically for porcelain. When the marker dries, it resembles a glaze and is permanent. I had the kids brainstorm and draw a picture on paper first and then transfer the design onto the mugs themselves. We had a blast. I am going to take all my coffee cups away and replace them with these (we did one for each of us and I will have my guys each do one more so we have a set of six). They turned out really neat.

I will forgo the comment about how unbelievable it is that I have children that are nine, seven and two! (oops that was a comment).

Dexter was the theme

I think Seth liked the coloring the best

All done (only four belong to us - the rest went home with the kids)

"Don't blow baby"

Posted by DebC at 06:56 PM | Comments (1)

January 01, 2004

We kicked off the New Year in a VERY cool way!

Or maybe I should say what we really said: FRICKIN COLD! Eli, Jake and I participated in the annual Polar Dip on base today. This was the first time we have done it. We thought "how cold could it really be?"

There were about 60 or 70 people of all ages that participated. We first had to shoot darts at a poster to determine how long we each had to stay in. Eli hit a polar bear and so only had to stay for one minute. Jake and I didn't fare so well and earned eight minutes. It could have been much worse, some people had to stay twenty!

While we were nervously waiting on the side of the pool (the air temp was about 49 or 50 degrees F.), Jake tested the water with a finger and announced "it's not that cold". I didn't test it at all, I figured it would be better just to jump in blindly. Another kid read the in-pool thermometer and said that the water temp was 52 degrees F. YIKES. The lifeguard announced that the clock would not be started until the last person jumped in - talk about peer pressure hahahahahaha. We decided to hold hands so no one would chicken out.

I think Jake lasted about 30 seconds and Eli was able to stick out his one minute. I could not believe how cold it was. My legs felt like two hunks of cooked meat. Fortunately there was no requirement to be in the deep end so eventually the crowd wiggled and danced and bounced their way to the shallow end. Let me just tell you that eight minutes is a REALLY long time.

Seth had been sitting on the side of the pool in his stroller but got scared when people started screaming so I ended up holding him for the last five minutes suspended above the water which he thought was hugely funny. It actually helped me feel warmer too.

Anyway, we survived it and got hot chocolate and a really neat sweatshirt out of it.

So how was everyone else's New Year's day?

Posted by DebC at 02:18 PM | Comments (2)