So much happening...so few posts

Sorry to not connect for a while; it's not because we are sitting around doing nothing.

Last week we made some decisions: we decided on an apartment and decided on a car. This means we can arrange our move and convert our remaining dollars into a couple of Euros to buy the car. We will stay in our current apartment - by moving out the 'temporary' furniture - and moving our furniture in tomorrow. We get to pay rent and storage. We now have a huge container in NC, Munich, and our space in Neuhausen.

As for the car, we bought a Volvo xc90 with every feature they offered. The salesman said the pope drives this model.... thereby proving car salesmen are the same all the world over. (c'mon, the current pope was previously the cardinal of Munich... and you expect me to believe he would drive a Swedish car?)

I had a 46 hour trip to the USA starting Sunday so Daph and the kids went to the zoo and had fun. I was only allowed to go since I promised to bring back:
- two packages of oeros (daph)
- skittles (David, Brian)
- Bon appetit, Living magazine (Daph)
- Henricks gin (Daph)
- tiger beat magazine (Julia)
- pad of drawing paper (Brian)
- more candy (David and Brian)

We have the movers bringing our stuff beginning tomorrow (TH), we pick up the car Friday and the temp stuff goes to storage on Monday.

In addition - I have to travel again Friday (overnight) to Paris to recruit at Insead (don't yet know the shopping list for this trip) but we have tickets to the Oktoberfest on Saturday.

Updates should be coming!

George....RIP

George is a dog. He doesn't realize that he needs to keep Daphne happy. Dumb.

Take a look at this picture.
You will notice 1. Cookies and fresh pretzels hanging around our necks and 2. a smudge on the children's noses. It is tradition that in the parade, people throw the pretzels and cookies out to the audience. The cookies are a gingerbread cookies (Lebkuchen) shaped like a heart (herz) therefore they are called Lebkuchenherz. They say things like "Greetings from Munchen!".

Daphne bought some Lebkuchenherz for the grandmothers and Lisa K. as gifts on Saturday. When we went to the parade on Sunday, George ate the cookies off the counter. Daphne was sooo angry.

We got two more from the parade on Sunday and Daphne put them on display in the apartment.

Believe it or not - George ate the new ones while Daph and I were at the Hard Rock. Anyone want a dog?

Issue #2 - the smudge. During the parade, court jesters, roam the parade and approach children and smudge them in the face with black grease. This comes from the 1500s during a very bleak time, when these people encouraged a depressed Munich population to find a way to have fun. It's pretty cruel - all the adults laugh while a guy smudges a cute little, unsuspecting kid's face.

David left it on his face both days. Julia didn't find it funny.

Praise the Lord baby Jesus!!

Believe it or not - - - we have the internet and telephone.
We have wireless LAN - with the password "ILoveGermany"
We can have more than one computer running at a time. We can't get blocked from service after using too much bandwidth. We can stream clips from youtube at reasonable speeds.

In addition - we have a phone. (no answering machine - but this seems greedy at this moment).
If anyone wants to call, after remembering we are 6 hours ahead of ET and 7 of CT, you can reach us at
+49 89 61 51 71 63
or from the USA you would pick up the phone, hit 011 and then the 49....

We also have a calling plan that includes unlimited calls to the USA.
It's raining in the desert!

Tough times

Daph had some bad news last night so I stayed home and we spent the day together. Since the telephone man was scheduled to arrive, I don't think she could take another bad technology day.
After getting the kids off to school and having the technician come to the house, we went for a walk and we talked about some things we missed. After getting worrisome news from home, she felt far away. She said she misses cooking - in her kitchen with her tools. That got her talking about missing some food we just really haven't seen here. She said she wanted a turkey burger and fries.

I convinced her that we should use the day together to just try and have some fun. She didn't feel like it but was a trooper.

I didn't know where to get classic american food. My only thought was really embarrassing - The hard rock restaurant in the city center.

To top it off, we only ordered 3 appetizers: potato skins, nachos and a quesadilla. It was salty and fatty and tasted like home.

Not our best "acclimating" moment...

Bigger Parade

Sunday (day 2) brings the Costume and Rifleman's Parade. This is a huge parade, more than two hours long, with over 60 groups marching. This is where you bring out your very best dirndl or lederhosen. The parade is broadcast live on tv and all the politicians are part of the event - we have an election here in a couple of days.

Tons of fun. We got there early and positioned ourselves across from the most posh hotel in Munich. The fun started at 10 and people were already drinking beer on the balcony of the hotel.

Early in the parade - the car companies brought out their best rolling advertisements. The boys loved it. Brian still yells, "BMW!!" at the top of his lungs. It is a bit embarrassing since they are EVERYWHERE.

Riding in the back of the BMW convertibles were the guys with the whips. They make the whips produce a snapping sound in rhythm that is pretty impressive. They also do this over your head in the Oktoberfest tents.

The Horses pull the beer tents (and other things) and are adorned with beautiful decorations. You can see the beer companies fight to produce the most elaborate horse gear.

Beer is pretty central to the festival.

Lots of incredible costumes and historical outfits.

This was also the first time I went to a parade (in the morning) and saw the marching band participants stopping the march, to have a drink with the audience.
This is all the more incredible because they are marching to a beer festival! Can't you wait another 30 minutes... to like 11:30 am?


More pictures to come.

Oktoberfest sans children

After a lovely day with the kids on the wiesn, Daphne and I were invited by my good friend Oliver to join him inside one of the Oktoberfest tents. We met him and many of his friends outside of the tent at 5:30.

It was striking how different the fairgrounds became from earlier in the day. There were a few more "Bierleichen" (German for "beer corpses").

Oliver is an old friend and introduced us to some "Prussians"(also known as non-Bavarian Germans), two guys from Norway, two Swedes, and an Austrian. With us as Americans, we rounded out the Bavarian festival.

Oliver has connections and was able to reserve a table in the elevated "reserved" section which is like sitting in the luxury box at Yankee stadium. It was great. We only stayed for a couple of hours but were able to get a feeling for the fun.

Oliver was horrified that his two Swedish friends bought the tourist hats so Daphne joined in the fun.

The pictures cannot capture the frenetic, chaotic feel of the tents. It also doesn't capture the heat - it's hot. They ordered off the menu (choice of half-a-duck or half-a-chicken) while Daphne and I had a big pretzel. Daphne also managed to eat a huge bowl of red cabbage.

Great fun and we were home by 9pm. The others stayed out quite a bit later.

Opening Day

Saturday is the opening of the Oktoberfest. They have a small parade through the city that brings the beer to the festival. The Burgermeister (mayor) greets them, bangs a tap into a barrel, takes a sip and declares the party officially open.

We went to the parade Saturday and really enjoyed ourselves. The biggest difference for us was that we saw lots of horses and no firetrucks.

Lots of beer carts too. Very ornate, very pretty.

After the parade (45 minutes) we walked with the crowd to the Wies'n (fairgrounds). By noon, there were 500K people joining us walking around.In the picture that Daph took, you can see the statue of Bavaria over my shoulder. She has a couple of male lions on a leash. You can also get a sense for the 'tents' which hold between 6 and 12 thousand people each.

We sampled some of the rides and some of the carnival food. It was very fun and very family oriented in spite of what you might hear about the Oktoberfest. The one picture shows Brian coming down a wooden slide on a carpet. The best part about this ride was the way up - there was a high speed conveyor belt that you had to jump onto that wisked you up to the top. I swear the ride down was something to be endured before asking your father to go up again.

David and Dad wore our lederhosen but the rest did not.

Opening weekend

Forget the calendar - Oktoberfest is here. Saturday marks the opening of the beer festival with parades on both Saturday and Sunday and the city full of cheerful people. I would expect some good pictures.
The childrens' school marks the occasion by inviting everyone to wear lederhosen (men) and dirndls (women) to school. David and Julia were excited but Brian wouldn't wear his today. Brian didn't want to be the only one in his class wearing the leather shorts. Today is also class picture day for David so his 4th grade picture will show his adoption of the local culture.
Happy Oktoberfest to all!

Deep breaths...

Julia came home tonight and told us a boy asked her out today at school.

Mom said she needed some time to think about this.
Dad said he wasn't ready for this.

The boy is 12, from San Diego but most recently from Italy. He's taller than Daphne, thin with red hair.

Julia said he seemed nervous asking but she was pretty excited. She said it was 'exciting' being asked out after lunch. She suggested they could ride the bus home together one day and go to the local coffee shop to have a iced chocolate and talk. Since his Mom has a car, she could pick him up and drive home.

We should be moving home any day now...

Frontierland...

In the USA we have Williamsburg, VA. This is the working village that teaches us how rough it was to live in the cradle of our country's birth. Here, the country is a bit older.

We spent this Sunday's adventure going to the outdoor museum of Bavaria's history. We visited Glentleiten in Grossweil.

There were over 30 buildings that captured just how awful it was to live in the 1500's or 1600's. Finally they invented a water mill to cut wood. God I appreciate plumbing, electricity, cars, the internet, etc.

We also saw unbelievable scenery.

had a nice lunch with the standard umpa-pa band.

Another really nice experience.


No cool BMWs. We got a smokey wagon.

Getting pretty hairy...

Since we had some pretty basic things to get settled here (house, food, school, internet), we haven't really made our way to the hair salon since the USA. This makes George look shaggy but the boys were looking kind of hairy. I have one picture of them eating ice cream that gives you a sense.

After Daphne made an appointment, Dad was responsible for taking them to the salon. Dad took them but they wouldn't cut the boys hair, so Dad found another place. Mom isn't thrilled. This story could have been printed in Chatham. Brian LOVES having his hair gel in. David asked for some "Axe" like in the commercials...

Back to school

Last week Daph and I went to back to school night via the subway, to the train, to the taxi. The trip was about 90 minutes and we arrived late. This week was Julia's back-to-school night and we decided to rent a car.
The only car the rental car company had for me was this BMW Z4 roadster convertible with a stick shift. The kids thought it was cool. Mom drove us down to the school and (after some heavy coaxing) got the car up to 160 km/hr. She then got passed by a VW mini-van. Oh the dishonor...

News

Julia's news is that she lost another tooth and the tooth fairy left a Euro. David said that he still likes the bus but he is quite shocked to hear the language used on the bus. He said people use a lot of "inappropriate" words. He then asked me if the 'F' word was the king or the queen of bad words. Let's be happy he maintains his inquisitive mind.
Brian was the winner of one of 3 school-wide awards. He was asked to come up on stage to accept the award for being nice and open-minded to other students. The teachers cited his willingness to play with anyone on the playground and his good-nature and friendliness to all. His proud parents were not shocked by the award. A nice kid.
He received a certificate of achievement. He was beaming.

New Friend

Daph's new friend has been great.
She has called Daphne to tell her that she is coming over and taking Daph to go do things: go to the grocery store to explain some products, go to Ikea to look around, go for coffee.

Today she and her family (from Ohio ex-pat assignment) invited us to a special beer garden party to celebrate the end of summer.

If you look closely at the picture, you can see it says "Jazzbiergarten". They have a beer garden where you can listen to live jazz music. This is a pretty ok country no matter what Daph tells you people on the phone.

Since it was the 'end of summer' party, they had face painting and other things for the kids. They also had a trampoline. The pictures don't do the trampoline justice.

Now - Daph doesn't like trampolines - but I figured, what could go wrong? We don't speak the language, I am not sure how the insurance works, we are surrounded by beer drinkers, I don't have a car, there doesn't seem to be any emergency people around, trampolines are inherently dangerous... what the heck.
















Look at Brian's face.

This is the kid hit by a pipe earlier in the day.

Later came the face painting.


More pictures.

Trouble in paradise

Sunday the sun was shining and the kids wanted to return to the park and the playground.

We walked to the park and the kids begged Dad to push them around the merry-go-round type equipment that spins them around with centrifugal force.

Daph hates this ride because she fell off as a child and got caught under the ride - two black eyes. At least that's her story.

Anyway - this is everyone else's favorite... until Brian fell off backwards and then leaned in. Mistake. Big mistake.

Daph and I were watching from 10 feet away as the ride spun one of the handles directly into his face. Ouch! It was like him getting hit in the face with a pipe.

He cried and cried. Once we determined no teeth were lost and no blood was coming out. We were ok. He was really hurt and sore.

Ice cream was the only thing to get him back to "happy Brian".

I call this picture - PTSD Ice Cream.

College football

Saturday was the start of the Ohio State season. We watched the German national team beat South Africa 2-0 in soccer.

This is probably better for my health than watching the buckeyes. I can root for DE without having a heart attack. Sounds like the OSU game would have been stress inducing.

Small world

While visiting a playground on Saturday, a nice woman approached us and said, "I heard you speaking English so I want to come over for some conversation." It turns out she is from Penn State. She had a 4 year old who played with our kids and an 8 month old. Her husband came over and told us he is on his sabbatical. David Wexley and I asked what he taught - atmospheric physics. He's an expert on tornados.

Now - the wife was from Oklahoma - so that made sense. But studying tornados in Munich didn't seem quite right.

David W. told him that he was raised in Michigan and his father teaches at MSU. I told him we were a buckeye family. We all agreed it was best for us to leave them and go to a beer garden since it was about 60 minutes until the season started.

If it wasn't for the Williams family - we probably wouldn't have been so polite.


A nice day.

Hirschgarten

Saturday we met a good friend of mine from Siemens and walked to the Hirschgarten city park about 2 km from our apartment. The park has many playgrounds, fields where people were flying kites, a beer garden (of course), and is famous for having an area where deer and goats walk around freely. It was a cool, crisp day and we found a place to play chess in the park with a large scale set. David Mc and Tim took on David Wexley and Brian.



The fact that Brian doesn't know the rules of how each piece can move may have influenced the outcome.

Daphne liked the deer. Probably a reminder of NJ.

Serious Dogs

There was a street festival in our square ("platz") this weekend. In the center of the fun was a guy selling huge sausages and currywursts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currywurst) .
Dave and Brian both took the challenge. They loved the ketchup dispenser hanging from the ceiling.

Julia's Favorite

Julia's news from the weekend is that she got a new cell phone. She is the proud owner of a pink Sony phone. "...the best thing so far..."

Daph got....
.... a monthly train pass. Not quite as glamorous but probably a good sign that she will stay with us in Muenchen for a couple more weeks. Progress.