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.

Zip line park

Everyone loves the zipline park....

Except for when something like this happens...

Thankfully he only did this once!

"Snowhenge," Food, Arts & Crafts, and Fun

 So we've had a lot going on...pictures best explain it...

"Snowhenge"

Creators of Snowhenge...note the bamboo poles used to help create and shape it. 

the Net's photo of an Italian Sunset

I tried to comb Rosa's hair...rats five, comb 12 broken teeth.  Match goes to Rosa!

Yes that's a crab with pasta on the plate.  It was actually mostly in the crab shell.  It tasted great!

Pianogurl whipped these up for Deep Thinker's b-day party...theme was survival a la  Bear Grylls.

Pianogurl also made this cake....

The Net and I put our survival skills to work.  We made a bamboo bench.

It still needs work.

The Net made this for the survival b-day party.

Speaking of survival, the mice moved into this in our barn and dug out some insulation.

And some more insulation.

Another photo the Net took.  Great eye!

Ants, Smoking Closets and Alarms…

What a weekend! One of the first things we noticed upon returning home is that the ants are moving into our house. Ferrara has gotten a lot of rain lately, and apparently, we’ve been designated the local emergency shelter for the affected ant population. Add to this the fact that Songbird has decided she’s terrified of ants and we’ve had quite the dramatic production going on here. We’re still not sure what to do about that. 

I’m having Florida flashbacks. We used to get teeny tiny see-through ants called ghost ants climbing all over the counters and bathtubs looking for water. It wasn’t pleasant, and they were almost impossible to get rid of! I confess I welcomed the monthly pest control plan we had in both of our Texas homes. Italy is a little to eco friendly for that, though, so I think we’re on our own.

After episode 1 of the ant drama died down, I started the laundry. There’s always so much laundry. I think it breeds at night in the clothes hampers! Anyway, about halfway through Thursday, we started to smell something strange. (Songbird would like me to point out that she smelled it first). It was familiar, but I couldn’t remember why, and it was really strong in the entryway. Finally it dawned on me that it smelled like we’d blown a fuse. I opened the box to turn the offender back on (this is a pretty normal occurrence), and was greeted by a little smoke, but all of the switches were in the “on” position. Weird. We went around the house checking everything, but everything was still functioning and the smell was still really strong. I didn’t see flames anywhere and kept a pretty close eye on it until The Linguist came home and called the electrician.

He did an initial assessment and told us he’d return the next day to take a more in-depth look. When he arrived Friday he opened some kind of panel in the wall and started freaking out and saying whoever wired this should go to jail. Our wires had been taped together instead of being routed through more official-looking clear pieces that he was waving around in the air while he ranted. He said that because the wires weren’t in there correctly, there was arcing between the wires when we ran high-usage appliances (like the dryer, oven or dishwasher) and we’re darn lucky we didn’t end up with our house on fire since we use those particular appliances a lot. 

Disaster averted, we spent Saturday handwashing our dishes and hanging our laundry on an old rack we found in one of the outside buildings. The electrician came and fixed the wiring last night, so hopefully we’re out of danger now.

Everything seemed just peachy until we tried to leave for church this morning. As the linguist set the house alarm instead of calm, the alarm started shrieking. He attempted to turn it off again which made it stop for 30 seconds and then started wailing again. Then we heard the shrieking rise in pitch (which indicated that the inside alarm was going off, as well.) The kids and I shut the door to the van before our hearing was permanently damaged.  The Linguist (poor guy) spent 10 minutes or so trying to get the alarm to turn off, but to no avail. In the meantime, cars driving by and people walking by were staring at the house as they passed. 

We finally had to call the electrician (again), who came over half an hour later to try and fix the problem. He was able to turn the alarm off and we left for church an hour late. He came back later and finished the job!  So our alarm is now good to go.  We’ve seen him enough since moving in that he might be considered our closest friend in Ferrara!

And so ends this week (Italians start the week on Monday)…we still have ants (which resulted in another fit of hysteria from Songbird), but we have averted the fire danger and shouldn’t be plagued by any rogue alarms in the future.

On to Sonsbeck!

We left Oberamergau and traveled North to Sonsbeck, Germany, to visit some friends who are stationed there. I can’t even describe how wonderful it was to stay in their home, and enjoy the food, conversation and fun that comes when you spend time with good friends and family. It was true comfort food for the soul!

They baptized their oldest daughter and blessed their youngest in the German-speaking branch we attended with them Sunday. The people we met were so kind and made us feel very much at home. It was a reminder to me of how the gospel creates family wherever we go. It also made me think about how quickly time passes. When we met them, Pianogurl was in the second grade and Deep Thinker wasn’t even born yet. Between us we had 5 children. Now our numbers have grown to include 12 children!

One day we visited a spectacular museum in the Netherlands that focused on the battles around the Arnhem Bridge. You may have heard of it in the movie “A Bridge Too Far.” I hadn’t, but we devoured the museum with interest. Basically, there were several military groups that were assigned to seize control from the Nazis of the bridges in the Netherlands during WWII. The other bridges were all successfully taken, but Arnhem was not. The museum (which is actually in the hotel that served as headquarters during the attempted takeover) has a number of different artifacts, personal accounts, computer/movie exhibits that tell the story of what happened at Arnhem. The crowning feature, though, is an interactive exhibit where you board an airplane and “jump” with the paratroopers down into Arnhem. As you walk through, it’s like you are in the streets – greeting the locals and battling the Nazis – complete with fire, gunshots, bodies, etc. Finally, you cross the river to escape the enemy. Deep Thinker and The Net thought it was about the coolest thing ever -- we had to go back through again.

The rest of our time was spent with the kids playing and the adults talking and taking care of the kids. We really enjoyed holding their new baby, who was just about 6 weeks old – so tiny and sweet! It was with much reluctance that we loaded up our van to head back to Italy. Many tears were shed on the way home. Sometimes it stinks to be constantly on the move. The silver lining is that they are close enough we can see them again in the near future!

The drive home was long – 11 hours in all – but once you factor in stops for gas and bathrooms, it took closer to 12 ½. Pianogurl didn’t feel well for about the last half of the trip and the kids were all so ornery from sitting in such close proximity, that I seriously considered leaving a few of them in Switzerland!

Speaking of Switzerland, it was breathtaking! We drove through a narrow valley that looked like green velvet stretched over rolling hills. The snow-capped peaks stretched above that. It was so pretty that it almost didn’t look real! Most of the rest of our time in Switzerland was spent in tunnels – a couple of them were so long I started to wonder if we were ever going to come out! We crossed the border into Italy and the tunnels became almost non-existent, so we got a good look at the gorgeous Italian Alps, as well. We also enjoyed the beautiful lights from Milano, although we didn’t appreciate the extra traffic.

We arrived home at long last and found the house intact and even a little bit warm. It even almost felt like home…