Learning to ski

The kids spent the two days in ski school with Soren from Denmark and David from New Zealand.

David loved skiing immediately although his teacher says he needs to practice more turns instead of going straight down the mountain. Julia was lukewarm after the first day but happy after day 2. I skied with both kids as our last runs of the vacation and they could both easily manage the bunny hill.

Brian was less sure about this sport. He had trouble "making the pizza" with his skis after the first day but could navigate the slalom poles in ski school after the second day.

I loved the little magic carpet for the little beginner kids. This is so much easier than the rope tow of our youth.

I failed to mention in the earlier blog that when Daphne and I tried to ride up a t-bar lift the very first morning, I tried to sit (which you shouldn't do on a t-bar) and ended up falling on top of Daphne. She started laughing and the Austrian lift operator shut down the lift and started yelling at us. "Stand, don't sit! Stand, don't sit!" It only made Daphne laugh harder.

Skiing - Day 2

Day 2 brought heavy snow and clouds. The kids were back in ski school so Daphne and I again had the mountain to ourselves (along with the thousands of Dutch. I would not have thought that people living below sea-level would be such avid skiers.)

You can see the snow blowing in front of my jacket. Daphne bought a new helmet and goggles. You can see we were at 2,100 meters in elevation.

It was tough to photograph but we got about 6 inches overnight on the mountain. There was almost too much snow.

Daphne liked the trails that cut through the tall trees. (Classic picture with Daphne's finger in the bottom right corner.)

Something about the fresh snow and the end of the week brings out the crazy in people. We watched the emergency helicopter going up and down all day. They actually fly a doctor out to a crash scene via a hanging basket. He does what he can on the mountain and then all are lifted by helicopter to the hospital. They charge the victim ~9K Euro for the rescue.

Skiing - Day 1

Our first day skiing was great. The first hour was spent shaking the rust off. Daphne was back in form very quickly.

The mountain was huge; the weather was warm, the sun was shining.


These pictures are mid-mountain. You could see for miles (or kilometers).
The restaurant at the top of the gondola was straight out of the resort brochure. We sat in the sun and had lunch.

We have found that we spend a great deal of time together as a family here in Germany, but this trip, Daphne and I got to spend time together. There was no one but us, a few Austrians, and thousands of vacationing Dutch. That meant we pretty much had to spend time with each other.

We have not skied in over 10 years and both had fun going back to a favorite sport.

Here is Daphne apres ski in the hotel with some champagne.

Ski vacation

The kids had a week off from school this week - officially called ski week. After a big work event on Tuesday we tried to go down to the Alps for some skiing. Since we cannot drive yet, we took a couple of trains to St. Anton in Austria. The trains were excellent and easy on everyone. Here's the boys in our cabin.

We called the hotel from the train station for them to come pick us up with the shuttle. It picked us up and drove us one half a block down the street to the hotel. Maybe 100 yards. It was pretty embarrassing. We must have confirmed all of their thoughts about lazy Americans.
We spent Wednesday getting settled including getting our ski equipment.

All of this was new to our gang and they loved all the special equipment. David said he was excited to participate in any sport with a helmet. His mother worries about him.

We explained to the kids that they would spent their first days in ski school learning the basics. David asked if his teacher would teach him how to do a "backscratcher" or "Helicopter". His mother shook her head.

Once we all had skis, poles, boots, helmets, goggles.... we were ready.
Out our window the first night, the ski school put on a ski show with fireworks.

The Gages Lenten visit

Our old friends the Gages came for a visit a week ago (I am a bit behind in the blog.) They arrived right after Carnival/Ash Wednesday which is a big deal here.
The kids had a great time playing together and catching up. It is nice to see our kids proud to introduce others to their favorite things in Germany.
The pictures are from a trip to the BMW museum.

As for the beginning of Lent - most people see it as the 40 days leading up to Easter marked by fasting and self-denial. Here in Munich, the reaction is: stronger beer. Apparently, centuries ago, the monks of Munich decided drinking higher alcohol beer helped them with their fasting. Hence, we are in the season of starkbeir; an extra dark beer, only brewed at this time of year, to help everyone make it to Easter.
Happy fasting!

Sunday Dinner

Some families have Sunday dinner traditions. Before we moved to Germany, we used to have Sunday dinner where we 'visited' a different country each time. We would pick a country and have the cuisine from that country and talk about their history.
Now we are getting ready to welcome some visitors and we want to make sure we have some restaurants that we can trust.

Now - we can't go to our favorite Indian and Chinese places with visitors (although they are great), so we want to make sure we have some good German places.
We went down our block to the Lowenbrauhaus, across the street from the brewery, and enjoyed good food and great beer.

The boys liked the cavernous hall. Daphne and I agreed that the food was ok. We still like the place on our block better. The red cabbage and potatoes are amazing.
If you're coming to visit - we promise good food.

Russian toasters

There are two kinds of subways - old, square subway cars and modern, sleek cars. Our subway line tends to get the old ones.
Our boys always hope for the new ones, but we usually get the old ones.

The boys call these ones "Russian toasters."
If you visit, you will surely hear this reference as if everyone calls them Russian toasters.

Local party

This weekend I had some work to do so we only got out to walk around late on Sunday. We walked down a block to our 'platz' where there was a small party for the Mardi Gras.
They had some rides for babies and carnival games for people with more money than sense.

Our guys wanted to try the games. Here we played balloon darts. As far as I can tell, you play darts and then win a pencil worth approximately 1/100th the value of your purchase. The kids loved it.

Then the fun really started. There was a local group who celebrate Mardi Gras from the neighborhood who perform. This local 'fasching' group was made up of people between the ages of 25 and 50 with limited ability. Wow. If you ever saw fatboy slim with their video for "praise you" you get the idea. Train wreck.

For the loyal blog viewers, this is the same square where we had the huge hotdogs. Today everyone was still adventurous. Here we have crepes:
Brian: Nutella
David: Sugar
Julia: Sugar and Cinnamon

Brian also tried the corn on cob - it must be in season here in Bavaria.

Dinner Party

Daphne threw a dinner party this weekend for Mardi Gras since she was born in New Orleans. Mardi Gras is a very big deal here. Everything closes Monday at noon for parties and then all music and dancing ends at midnight on Tuesday.

We had two German couples over and one American couple. Daphne made Gumbo and etouffee.

The boys played Wii with our guest. He's the boy who asked Julia to coffee.

Super bowl

In case anyone was wondering - the boys and I did watch the superbowl.

With kickoff after midnight on Sunday (school) night - Mom said we couldn't go to the Hard Rock Cafe to watch the game. We woke at 6am and watched it via the slingbox/DVR thanks to uncle Chris.

The boys were sleepy the rest of the day. Not so different than many other people in the USA today I assume.

Grocery shopping

We went grocery shopping this week and this is still one place where we continue to learn German and feel like we are quite different. It's much less easy to head to the store and hope for inspiration for a dinner menu.

The boys are constantly goofing around in the aisles - that's what they do - so I try to keep them away from Mom who is concentrating on buying flour instead of rice.

As the pictures show, lots of meat choices. Lots of choice.
Choice also extends to the Ketchup aisle.

Although the brand is the same - they have many versions of ketchup that I have never seen in the USA. Both of these sound good to me.

(The curry one is good - we have it at home)

Finally I saw this poster. Pretty universal in its message - even in Bavaria.

 

I said universal, not subtle.

Sunday at the Schloss

Julia has been asking to go through the Castle (Schloss) near our home. We jumped on the bikes, grabbed an old loaf of bread to feed the ducks and headed out.

Dad's only advice was to stay far away from the swans. The other German parents were only too happy to have their 15 months old walk right up to the swans. Check out the pink legs in the picture.
I was wondering how the ducks would deal with us bringing the bread crumbs but I should have only worried about them deciding to carry off one of the children. These ducks/birds would have unhooked their bicycle helmets, unzipped the kids jackets, and unbuttoned their shirts if that's what it would take to get a piece of bread.
If you don't believe me, let me prove my point - they were multilingual.

Finally we went into the Schloss. I couldn't use the flash so you will have to believe me that we saw some beautiful rooms. This one with Daph and Julia is the main room to greet visitors.

Here David is viewing the pictures in the "room of beauties".


Hubba hubba.

Back to school night

We will soon be saying goodbye to our lovely Volvo for about 4-6 weeks.
It is completely my fault. I thought we could get Florida driving licenses in December, and hand them in for new German licenses after Christmas break. Unfortunately, we couldn't do that because we registered to live here in Germany in August and a license issued after our arrival would be invalid. That means we cannot drive exactly 6 months after our registration here in Germany, August 10th, 2009.
OK - we can deal with this. What does this mean for Daph and I?

First the prerequisites:
- Eye test
- 6 hour first aid course
- Biometric photo
- translated US driving license
- .... about 5 more things.

After that - 4 weeks for the application to go to Berlin for verification, then the written test, then the 20 minute driving test. No problem.

This weekend was the 6 hour first aid course (in English!). We went with Daph's friend Regina from San Diego (via Italy last year). Regina's son was the one who asked Julia out months ago.


Erste is first, Hilfe is help and of course Kurs is course in German.

Daphne and Regina had no problem with the first aid but Daph almost failed the eye test - even with her contacts. Daph is lucky the Germans all want her experience here to be thoroughly enjoyable. It's their natural service orientation here in Bavaria.

Our favorite part of the night was where each student had to demonstrate the ability to pull an unconscious person from a drivers seat, pull them out of the car and then put them into the "recovery position".
They paired people up so a 90 pound person wouldn't have to pull me out.

Here is a picture of our new friend (who works at Lego) rolling me into the recovery position.

We got this whole driving licensing thing licked.
What could possibly go wrong?

Look alike

I went for a run today. A small group of Japanese tourists took my picture when I running by the local castle. Then a Korean looking lady took my picture.

I found it a bit strange.

When I got home, Daphne said it was because of how George and I looked together running.

They say people and their pets start to look alike after a while. I have no idea what they are talking about.