A word from Songbird!

Hey, this is me.  Songbird obviously... Italy has been great. The pizza is a disappointment but gelato is not so I'm fine. Recently I have been doing Personal Progress (a program in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for developing good qualities) traveling of course, and eating lots of weird food. For my friends I have written letters... but everything in Italy is slow so they probably have not come yet. I like our house minus ants and mammoth spiders. There are lots of birds. I hope we can make pies and jam when the fruit trees are ready. Anyway the blog covers everything interesting that has happened so I don't have much to say. Bye!

It really does look like POPCORN!

Spring is trying to make its way through the rain clouds hogging the sky!  As a result, we've had a few lovely days of sun and mostly overcast days with lots of rain.  The front yard has lakes almost a foot deep.  Super cool until the mosquitoes start breeding.  Last Saturday had a few hours of great weather.  We played hide and go seek, soccer and did a few foot races.  We noticed the apricot trees are in bloom (they really do look like popcorn).  The kids also took some great pictures I wanted to share with you all.  Enjoy.

Popcorn popping on our apricot tree!

The Gang in front of the fire bushes.

Deep Thinker took this picture...not bad for a 7 yr old.

The Net caught this flower up close.

The Net caught this flower too.

Songbird took this one...nice black and white effect.

What is that black circle? It's an ant's eye amplified via our microscope.  The Net just had to take the photo. You can make out the individual lenses that make up the ant's compound eye.  The microscope is a cool way to spend some hours when it's rainy outside.

Sick but not sick of traveling

So you may have noticed that we posted nothing for awhile, and then there were an onslaught of posts. At some point it occurred to us that it isn't smart to post you're out of town while you're out of town. We had fullest intentions of posting everything promptly on our arrival home from Denmark, but...

We left Denmark Friday afternoon and returned to Germany to spend one more day with our good friends. You know people really love you and you love them, when you can stay with them for 9 days, leave for 4 and return again for another couple, and everyone is still happy to see each other! Well, we enjoyed Friday night and the adults even managed to attend the Temple in the Netherlands Saturday morning!

But by Saturday night, The Net wasn't feeling very well, so rather than stay for church Sunday morning, we got up and headed back to Garmisch, Germany, where we spent the night. The Edelweiss Resort is a military resort that felt posh compared to the other hotels where we've stayed in Europe. The beds were soft. They had all-you-can-eat buffets for dinner and breakfast. Everyone spoke English. Sometimes it's nice to have some familiar things...we felt really spoiled.

The "Alps view" from our window at Edelweiss.

The Net had typical cold symptoms -- runny nose, cough, etc., but then Monday night he started throwing up (no pictures).
Tuesday night it was Rosa's turn. And she did a thorough job of it. It might seriously be the worst yuck I've ever had to deal with...all over the bed. Thank goodness for my dear husband who shared the burden of cleaning up with me! By then I had cancelled all activities and was hunkering down for the worst...but nothing happened. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, all was well. Deep Thinker got to go to his friend's birthday party, after all on Saturday. Church on Sunday.

Monday morning Pianogurl wasn't feeling well. Then Tuesday night, The Net threw up all over the inside of The Linguist's car on the way back from Vicenza. Deep Thinker, who had insisted on sleeping with a garbage can next to his bed for 3 or 4 nights, started a few hours later (of course we'd talked him out of the garbage can a night or two before...so all over the bed). Songbird was a few hours behind him. The rest of us were up all night listening to the sound of sickness. I don't want a house with all the bedrooms so close together ever again!

We had a day reprieve, and then I was sick Thursday night/Friday...We hope The Linguist has escaped and we hope that's the end of the story. I've decided that in hell there will be people cleaning up puke! Last minute update: Wednesday night (the 27th the Linguist was sick...).

Tourism in the cold...not recommended

Seeing new things is an enriching experience even if you are freezing cold.

We drove around town a few nights ago, just to see what it was like. It seems so new compared to Italy.  One thing I noticed was how small downtown was.  After one "rotation," I was familiar with where I was and confident I wouldn't get lost.  While Viborg downtown isn't too big, it's historic section made the town quite unique for us.  I must admit I expected Denmark to be a lot colder than it was.  My first day of training we had a fire drill and had to evacuate.  When we got outside, beautiful, clear blue skies and the warm temperature greeted us.  Fast forward a couple of days, we park the van downtown and start to walk to see the historic 12th century church and its environs.  Cloud cover, gusting winds and biting cold smacked us in the face as we walked up to the church.  This was the weather I was expecting.  Interestingly, sightseeing isn't near as fun when you're freezing your buns off.  The church was closed until 11am so we powerwalked through some other historic sections of town that were also on our tourist guide.

Songbird freezing in Viborg's townsquare.

Quaint Danish home on historic street with homes dating back to medieval times. 

Really cool home near Viborg's church.

Pianogurl posing in front of a monument that protested Catholicism.

Songbird and the Net reenact the nobility ceremony on the same spot where for 600 years Danish nobles presented themselves.

This poor tree was always the butt of all the jokes.

After getting the blood pumping in Viborg's chilly streets, the appointed hour arrived and we made our way to the historic church.  Architecture and artwork were a few of the Church's differences when compared to the ones we see in Italy.  Entry price was minimal and we didn't have to pay extra to see the underground catacombs (in Italy you do).

Viborg's cathedral front view

Inner view looking towards the altar.  The cieling paintings depict apostles and Old Testament prophets.

Rosa and the altar

Intricate gate near the back wall of the church

Organ pipes also located near the back of the cathedral

The original portion of the edifice in the downstairs catacombs (the rest was burned) & later rebuilt.  There's a hint of Arabic flair in the arches. 

Close up of the 12th century catacomb!

Altar basin photo courtesy of The Net near the altar.

The Linguist was asking people at work what local restaurants they’d recommend and the only offerings were Italian restaurants! How ironic to come to Denmark to eat Italian food…we took a drive and saw a Greek restaurant, 4 Italian pizzerias and a Kabob shop. Our house is about 5 K from town, so we can’t explore the way we did in Oberammergau, but it’s been great for getting school done!  So after some discussion, a US guy recommended a place that the Linguist knew was close to our house and it was a traditional Danish place.  The food was great and the ambiance reminded us of a grandmother's house (tons of plates, plaques, historic photos, etc hanging on the walls).  The Linguist enjoyed the cold beets not something we've eaten for quite some time.  The last time we had them the Net threw them back up!  Needless to say, he was not given the opportunity to try them.  The food was great and the service exceptional and in English.  The menu did include a fairly large selection of fish which Deep thinker tried but didn't really enjoy.  The dessert was quite tasty: chocolate cake-like, ice cream, and some small roll over type goodies that were crunchy and filled with an almond creme.  The Journalist ordered an orange soda that tasted quite mild when compared to its US cousin Crush.      

The traditional Danish dish the Linguist ate looked a lot like a hamburger patty with sweet onions on top. It was really yummy!

The Net tried Schnitzel...and fries (fries are popular all over Europe)

Rosa was happy to get her food too.

Denmark!

Monday, March 4, 2013

Last week was so relaxing. The kids played and played and played. We mothers had intended to do several day trips, but the kids were so content just to run and play together, that we ended up skipping the day trips. As a result, we had plenty of time for chatting, cooking and eating yummy things, shopping online for books (they homeschool, too!) and catching up on everything we’ve missed doing together for the last year or so. Most of the time when we vacation we run around like chickens, and it’s really fun, but also really exhausting. This was really fun and so relaxing – except that we did stay up a little too late a couple of nights.

Today we arrived in Denmark. It is still surreal to be jetting around to all of these places that I’ve only ever seen on maps! The part of Denmark we drove through was rural with a lot of farmland and few houses. The fields covered rolling hills and were so beautifully manicured that they looked like fabric in several places. Most of the farmhouses were whitewashed, with a few red bricks ones for variety. We got off of the main road and followed a more narrow, winding road back to the house The Linguist rented for the week. We rounded a beautiful lake…and then turned the other way to get to our house. It sits next to what seems to be a farm.

Danish Bay area that leads out to the Baltic Sea

Our Danish Farmhouse (for a week)

I say “seem” because we haven’t actually seen any animals. However, we’re pretty certain because of the odor that assailed us when we opened the doors to get out of the van! Oh my stench! We’re guessing pigs. Fortunately, the inside of the house doesn’t smell like that! I’ve decided that I love the layout of the house, and the kitchen especially is appealing – with a row of windows; a huge, long countertop; and tons of cabinets. The bedrooms are good sized and the dining room has one of the largest tables I’ve ever seen. It’s large enough that the kids can spread all of their books out without being in each other’s armpits and with all of it spread out, we can still eat comfortably at the other end. It easily seats 20!

Young kids and moles really enjoyed the large backyard.

Some lovely snowdrops behind the house.

After dropping off our luggage, we headed into town to find a grocery store. We get tired of eating out when we’re traveling – some combination of price and trying to keep the kids happy while waiting for food. We always plan a few nights out, but then cook for ourselves on the other nights. The grocery store was a little bit of a culture shock. The door to get in is one of those circle doors that goes around and around. You know – the ones you kind of jump into and out of and hope you don’t get knocked down by? The Net hopped in and scooted to the innermost part – effectively shutting down the whole contraption and trapping us inside! A nice woman used hand gestures to let us know what the problem was and we happily exited.

Next was the pricing. In Denmark they don’t use the euro, they use krone. Now although euro are worth more than American dollars, they look about the same on a price tag. The milk is 1.20 euro and the pasta is .70 euro. Even though we’re technically paying more, it doesn’t feel that different until I see that $100 is gone for my 70 euro purchase. Krones (not sure if that’s the correct plural or not) are a whole different ballgame. The price of the chips was 19.81 and we paid 33.75 for 15 bananer (bananas). Vandmelon (watermelon) rang up at 50.00 for 2. It wasn’t until we got home and found a conversion that we had any clue what we were spending! Turns out I paid $15 for small bottles of shampoo and conditioner and 2 bars of Dove soap. Yikes!

Top to bottom - 20 Kroner back /front view;
5 Kroner back /front view

The surprising thing was how similar the items were to things we eat/use in the States. They had Costco-sized packages of ground beef, eggs in 30 packs (refrigerated, too!) and a variety of frozen pizza and salad dressings. (There were some different things, as well – most noticeably, the pheasant eggs that were situated above the 30 pack.) They don’t use the produce glove like the folks in Italy, nor do you have to pre-weigh and put a sticker on your produce. They do it all at the counter for you. The shopping carts were also free, although we had to buy more grocery bags since we can’t seem to remember to take ours with us.

We had to try out some of the pastries, of course. They had little hotdogs wrapped in bread that the boys tried. We also got an assortment of cookies that were pretty similar to what we eat in the U.S., some buns with dark chocolate chips in them and 2 small loaves of chocolate orange cake. The cake was yummy with the fresh strawberries, but not too different from something we’d eat stateside. The other little treat we got was an interesting mix of tastes. They looked like skinny cookies (picture breadsticks) with a thick stripe of Nutella down the middle and thin stripes of white glaze for decoration. The cookie tasted almost like peanut butter, though, and the white glaze had a strong enough almond flavor that we couldn’t really taste the Nutella. We had to try that one a couple of times. The breads we purchased are delicious – harder outside crusts, but soft and tasty interiors. One loaf was just plain white, but the other was filled with flax and some other seeds and nuts and something that made it yellow polka dotted…still not sure what that was…but it was tasty!

We were relieved that the store took our bank card and actually had a chance to test that out right away. Unlike a U.S. store where you collect everything and pay at the end, in this store, you had to pay in each different area. We paid at the bakery, paid at the grocery store and paid again at the clothing/shampoo/soap area. People were very friendly and spoke to us in what sounded like near-perfect English while apologizing for their lack of English-speaking ability. 

Incidentally, we discovered that Mater from the movie Cars is Danish…right on the box of tomatoes we purchased it says “Tomater.” So there you have it!

On the Road Again!

Wednesday, The Linguist’s trainings in Germany and Denmark were un-cancelled (how’s that for a strange word?) and we found ourselves scrambling to get ready for a 2-week vacation. I love vacation! We tried unsuccessfully to get a hotel about halfway to shorten the 12-hour drive, but it just wasn’t possible since it was White Week in Italy and parts of Germany. White week is where the kids are all out of school so that families can take time to enjoy the snow – hence, no hotel rooms in good skiing areas like Germany.

The Linguist, Pianogurl and I have been trying hard to become morning people and have been rising around 5 a.m. for the last couple of weeks, so we opted to leave Saturday morning at 5:30. We made it out by 6. As much as I hate getting up, it felt really good to make it to Garmisch by 10:30. We did a quick pit stop and headed on up to our friends’ house in Sonsbeck. How often does the hubby get sent TDY to a location where friends live?!

Driving through the Alps is like seeing a postcard around every turn in the road

Mountain side near Innsbruck, Austria

Lindt Chocolate Factory in Cologne, Germany

March 2, 2013

Today we studied chocolate! Talk about sweet education! Our friends took us to the Chocolate Museum in Cologne, Germany (although on the signs it’s spelled “Koln”…with the 2 dots above the “o”). We walked along the Rhein river to get to the museum and enjoyed the pretty weather and blue skies.

Lovely view of Rhein river

The museum is really comprehensive – beginning with where the cacao bean comes from and how it’s harvested. The most startling fact was that 75% of the people who work to bring chocolate to us have never even tasted it. They are too poor to afford it. So the next time you take a bite of chocolate, remember to count your blessings.

The kids were fascinated by a movie that showed how to make a dugout canoe to transport the harvest downriver. There was information on chocolate consumption (Switzerland consumed the most in 2010…the U.S. was in the middle or even bottom of the pack, surprisingly!) and how the price of chocolate is established. We sniffed spices that are often used with chocolate and looked at a display that showed the differences in ingredients in different types of chocolates.

A room at the back had the whole factory set up, with a mixer in the front and a machine wrapping chocolates and spilling them into boxes at the back. We watched the chocolate pour into molds, get settled into place and ride the conveyor belt until it was set up enough to be dumped out of the molds. We didn’t see anything that resembled Lucy’s experience much, but there were 6 women in an upstairs room who looked like they were having a fancy-chocolate-dipping party. The kids were a little disturbed that one of them kept eating big spoonfuls of chocolate out of the bowl and going back for more with the same spoon! Double dipper! Her friends didn’t seem to mind, though.

The chocolate grabber picking up minibars

The chocolate grabber setting minibars down

On the same floor, we oogled at the gigantic chocolates that are made in huge molds. They pour the chocolate in and then the mold remains in motion until the chocolate sets up and can be popped out of the mold. Several of them were truly enormous. It made me think of a story I read/saw about a king who wanted a palace of chocolate. Our favorite was the one of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. It was at least 2 feet tall!

Rosa really like this "piece" of art

From there we went up another set of stairs to the chocolate museum. It had games and activities related to chocolate for the kids, in addition to exhibits. One of the exhibits was a room that had beautiful dishes used to serve hot chocolate. Since then Songbird has been fussing about the fact that we have no silver to melt down in case of financial difficulty. We walked through the small tropical rain forest and enjoyed the humidity that reminded us of Florida! The rest of the museum had interesting chocolate paraphernalia – like early vending machines, the purple and white Milka cow (Milka is a brand of German chocolate that is really popular), and even a huge Lindt chocolate suspended from the ceiling! It made me think of Karalene!

If real, this would have been probably 3 feet in diameter...and maybe 40 pounds!

Of course we had to finish the tour by visiting the chocolate shop that had every kind of chocolate goody imaginable. Deep Thinker was disappointed that we wouldn’t buy him a chocolate bunny that must’ve been a foot tall. He had to console himself with a smaller chocolate bear instead. Poor kid…

Our little tour group

The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

Anxiously awaiting the metro to take us down town

Today The Linguist, Pianogurl and I headed into Amsterdam to visit the Anne Frank house. We parked at a park and ride location outside the city and caught the metro into the city center and then walked about another mile to get there. We were unable to buy advance tickets (due to a school group we saw arriving who had purchased them all), so we weren’t sure how long the wait time would be. I’d say if you have the option, definitely buy the advance tickets, but the wait wasn’t bad.

Anne Frank and her family and some friends (8 Jewish people in all) lived in hiding in Mr. Frank’s spice factory for two years during WW II before being betrayed and captured by Nazis. The family was divided among various concentration camps and Anne’s father was the only survivor. Anne recorded her thoughts and feelings in a journal during that time and even began revising her journal with the intention of publishing it when the war ended. Her journals and notebooks were saved by one of the office staff and returned to Mr. Frank after the end of the war. He pursued Anne’s dream and her account has been published in multiple languages around the world.

The tour begins with a short video clip that gives a summary of her experiences and some of the events during WW II. It is appropriate for younger children – we weren’t sure, so left ours with our friends, but the pictures of the concentration camps were fairly brief and I’m not sure younger kids would even recognize what they were seeing. After some more introductory exhibits, you enter the hiding place behind the swinging bookcase and walk through the rooms where they lived. The furniture was all removed after their capture, and Mr. Frank wanted it left that way. They have a scale model that shows where things were originally, but in the rooms there are just a few things left on the walls. You can see the marks where Anne and her sister, Margot’s, heights were recorded, along with some of the pictures of movie stars that Anne pasted on her bedroom wall.

Pianogurl sings the visitor book in the Anne Frank Museum

The whole experience was sobering. Anne’s family had originally lived in Germany and had relocated to the Netherlands to begin new lives just 7 or 8 years before they had to go into hiding. And Anne died just a month before the prison camp she was in was liberated. One of her friends speculated that if Anne had known her father was still living, she might have found it in herself to hold on. As it was, she believed she was the lone survivor in her family. I have great admiration for her father, who returned alone and had to begin yet again.

The rest of our visit to Amsterdam was more lighthearted. We wandered through the streets, admiring the architecture and the boats in the canals. There are tons of bikes in Amsterdam….like Ferrara on steroids! There were several really beautiful buildings that we’d like to go back and visit, so we may need to plan a long weekend there sometime. We find ourselves fascinated with the huge Gothic churches we’ve driven by in this part of Europe – in part, I’m sure, because they’re so different from what we see in Italy.

Downtown, riverside view of Amsterdam

On our way out, we stopped at a pancake shop to sample some local cuisine. I can’t remember the names of everything we ate, but I’m pretty sure the Linguist has pictures! My favorite was the savory pancake that was more like a large crepe. It had slices of chicken and cheese sprinkled over it and cooked in. The waitress suggested eating it with maple syrup, but I rather liked it plain. Pianogurl loved the waffles that tastes almost like crystallized sugar and melted in our mouths. I couldn’t decide how the little puffs were made…almost like doughnuts, but with more of a muffin consistency. We walked around some young adults who were wrapping their friend in a large, red carpet in the middle of the sidewalk and returned to our van via the metro.

Yummy cheese, chicken pancake!

Super sweet waffles near the Anne Frank House.