Eurocco: Germany, Week One

Now that our Germany trip is coming to a close, it is time to begin recapping everything awesome that we have been doing the past three weeks. This will be not exact and probably really boring, but I'm determined to preserve these memories for our posterity. It was a really great three weeks, hosted by the most hospitable Germans we know in one of the prettiest German cities we've ever been to.

We arrived mid-week, but Nina was at her parents' house and Juwe was working three hours away near the Swiss border, so we were on our own for the first few days. We took the opportunity to: eat all the food in their fridge (Juwe stocked it with all things German: brats, cheese, bread), explore the many awesome parks close by (there are at least 10 parks within a one-mile radius) and bike to the castle (we got lost though, Atticus fell asleep, and overall it wasn't the most pleasant night).

The day everyone arrived home, they took us to the "playground in the woods" called Oberwald. It is a very short bike ride (we found out weeks later when we went on bikes) but with two preschoolers who insisted on walking, it took us at least an hour. Plus, we got caught in a brief, but torrential downpour and were lucky to be right next to a bridge during it. We huddled underneath for 10 minutes, then continued on in the rain-drenched path. We spent an interminable amount of time picking blackberries because the kids kept eating all of the ones I tried to collect in our container. They were perfectly ripe and sweet though, so I must admit I probably ate more. After we arrived at Oberwald, the kids played for hours... Nina and Juwe's friend Mark came by with his daughter and the adults chatted. We ate a lunch of this weird cold sausage stuff (think bologna smushed into a sausage shape), cheese, bread and fruit (this will repeat itself almost every day). After the kids were bored at the park we walked through the outdoor zoo next to it. Yes, outdoor zoo. Acres of wild animals hanging out. Mostly elk and deer types, but some buffalo and horses as well. We all walked back together.... picking blackberries and working through several meltdowns. Atticus even got hit by a bike and broke the girls' chain who hit him. He still talks about how sorry he is that he broke that girl's bike and it was his fault. I remind him it was her fault for hitting him (she was only about 12 though). Hopefully, they made it home ok, we didn't really stop to see.

He was obsessed with this stick-building pit

After leaving Oberwald, the Germans insisted we go and get a spaghetti eis, which is a weird ice cream thing that looks like spaghetti. It was delicious, but the portions were huge, and I felt bad when I couldn't finish mine (everyone was ordered their own, but I probably would've opted to share and should've spoken up). Since it was before dinner, everyone was feeling pretty sick so we headed home and relaxed for a while, and ate a light dinner (probably bread... German dinner).

The next day, our friends Ida, Patrick, Felix and Justus joined us while on a whirlwind tour of Germany to visit Patrick's friends and family. It was a full house for a few days but it was wonderful to spend time with them, and it felt just like the good old days of January 2013. We spent all day at the zoo (Tim stayed home to work) and playing in the water playground, then came home and played at the playground more. I know we also visited the castle and ate ice cream sometime during these few days. We ate schnitzel (not with noodles) for dinner and everyone crashed with exhaustion. Ida was adorably pregnant with their third baby, and their kids were as rambunctious as ever (Atticus and Felix got in a few physical altercations... but Felix is almost a year older and twice his size so he always got in trouble, which I felt bad about... Atticus needs to figure out fighting with a burly German/Norse child is always a bad idea for him).

Patrick and I got really into engineering a river down to the swimming hole. We were mostly successful, but maybe a little too determined.

Schnitzel with french fries.

Playground at the zoo.

Needing a nap.

Their faces crack me up in this one.

He carried around a stuffed giraffe the whole trip and they were by far his favorite site.

German zoos let the animals roam free.

After they departed, we spent the rest of the week in a typical pattern of spending all day out with the kids (me and Nina) while Tim stayed home to work. We went to the Natural History Museum (3 euro and really impressive), the river playground (but after the crazy intense thunderstorm that blew in scarily quickly and left us stranded in a very crowded ice cream shop for half an hour, the river was too cold to play in), and several other playgrounds around.

 

After we left the science museum, we headed to the castle grounds for a while and roamed, picking mushrooms and flowers. Also check out the clouds. The clouds in Germany are like nothing I've ever seen. They seem so close to the earth and are huge and look different every second. I would love to lay down and watch them float by....

Nina, about the castle: "It's not very old, only like 350 years." Which is like the oldest modern building in our country!

River playground, post crazy-scary thunderstorm:

Also at some point this week, the chimney sweeper came. She had short, bleach-blonde hair, lots of earrings, and wore a old-style chimney sweeping uniform like in Mary Poppins. She was super cool, and made sure all the gas lines weren't leaky and went up into the scary, hot attic to clean out the chimney. The kids were fascinated.

Week two: equally as awesome, though our stamina died down a bit...

 

Insecurity

As some of you know, I'm a little obsessed with breastfeeding. Also, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, among other things. I'm also a little judgmental when others don't do these things. A lot of times it's because I love it so much I can't understand why you as a parent don't. Soft, stretchy baby carriers make me happy in a way that strollers just cannot. But I think a lot of my judgmentalness stems from my own insecurity as a mother. I don't really like playing with my kids. I don't really like doing a lot of things, like giving them baths or taking them to children's museums. I'm kind of lazy in a lot of ways when it comes to parenting. I do these things most days (except the baths) because I know it will be healthy for them and their development and I want what is best for my kids. But when I'm feeling like a particularly unfit mother, I know I have one thing that I'm really, really good at, and that's breastfeeding. I can nurse my babies exclusively for 6-7 months, and it's not that much more difficult to keep it up through the toddler years. It's the one thing I have (ok, actually, I'm really good at putting my kids in expensive car seats and rear-facing them forever and installing them very, very correctly), that I KNOW without a doubt is best for my kids. And while it is tempting to use as a crutch, like "ah, he can eat a hot dog for lunch, I breastfed him for 2.5 years" or "one more episode of Caillou, he is still breastfed at least" I usually don't. So, when I don't read them at least 11 books a day or let them watch a little more TV, I won't feel quite as guilty because their little brains got all that yummy deliciousness as babies.

I think a lot of the mommy wars stems from insecurity. We are so busy criticizing others' parenting styles, because unless ours are the absolute right way, then we aren't doing the best by our children, and in this day and age, that freaks the hell out of mothers (I really shouldn't exclude fathers from this discussion because I've heard many a dad debate the pros and cons of co-sleeping and baby-wearing with the best of them) We need research to back our decisions, we need science to know that we are good mothers. Which in a way, is really quite sad. What about happiness as an indicator of well-being? Mom's happy, baby's happy, life is all good. Why do we need to know that TV is kiling brain cells or BPA will disrupt endocrine function or rooms with corners will hinder creativity?

I guess I can see how knowledge is power on so many levels, and the more educated you are the better decisions you can make for your family. But with that education comes terrible, guilt-inducing responsibility to be the absolute best parent you can possibly be, and in order to be that, you have to compare yourself to make sure you are being such. And when you compare, you inevitably judge others for their decisions, and are occasionally vocal about those decisions which in turn can hurt other's feelings when they aren't living up to the arbitrary standard you set for them on their behalf. Their insecurity then leads them to think their way is THE way and the cycle repeats.

Tim's been reading the attachment parenting book written by the artist formerly known as Blossom, and listening to her has made me think a lot about my own attitude. I've listened to bits and pieces so I'm not one to pass a judgment on her lifestyle or choices, but her tone is that of "this is the absolute best way of parenting and there is no other legitimate way to do so." I agree with her that our kids are over-vaccinated and over-academiced and over-sleep-trained but I don't think the answer lies in swinging to the absolute other side of no vaccines or ABC books.

 

Day 7: Cambridge to Paris

Starting note: For those keeping track, we are now on our third day in Fez, have endured a number of harrowing adventures which we will soon share, and are on the hunt for a good apartment. For now though, all is well.

Back to our summary: We woke up as late as we reasonably could, gathered up what remained of our stuff, got some breakfast and headed out the door, saying a rapid goodbye to what had felt like a too-quick stay with our friends.

We caught the bus to the train station, caught a train into Kings Cross, walked over to La Pancras international train station and then waited for our turn aboard the Eurostar, while Tallulah slept, after she dozed off while we waited for our turn to go through security.

We had a fine train trip and set next to a lovely quartet of older British tourists headed for a stay in Paris. The one women in the group was delighted with our kids and we sang what mutual songs we knew for a good while, including trading off "God Save the Queen" and "My Country tis of Thee." Traveling under the Atlantic Ocean through a marvel of modern engineering in the Chunnel was a bit underwhelming, but a tunnel is a tunnel.

When we first got off in Paris, we were a bit overwhelmed and put off by how crowded and chaotic it was. Going into our hotel, which was in one of the poorer parts of Paris didn't help much, neither did the unfriendly hotel concierge or the damp and dingy room (all products of our admitted cheap streak). But when we made it into the heart of Paris for an afternoon of exploration in the most iconic city in the world, all of our dim mood vanished.

The Eiffel Tower was successfully impressive, the area around it refreshingly clean and green and the weather was perfect and the only complaint was the sun was in the wrong part of the sky for us to get great shots from the grounds in front of the tower. We did get to lounge in the great just-past-noon sun for a while while Atticus and I played imaginary tennis and only decided to leave when both the kids thought the next fun thing would be to collect cigarette butts (when the Europeans get the memo that smoking isn't cool, the whole place will be only yet more ideal).

Nursing at the Tower:

We took a nice walk across the Seine and through some of the swankier shopping districts of Paris, stopping to take some pics and work with the now-grumpy kids. When we reached the Champs-Élysées, we were a little daunted at how far away our intended target, the Arc de Triumph, lay, so we hopped on the metro, and after several failed attempts to get under the very busy traffic square around the Arc, we eventually made it and stayed as long as our chilled and grumpy kids would stand.

We made it back to the hotel fairly late, and needed to find food. The only thing that I could find that wasn't a fancy restaurant was McDonalds, so we committed the grave sin of having our only real dinner in France be at a McDonalds, sorry food gods and denizens. I brought back the food, which was predictably awful, and we decided to go for a walk. We wanted to get some ice cream, but again, McDonalds seemed our only option. We got the ice creams and continued to walk up to the base of the Basilicaf  du Sacra Coeur with the hopes of scaling up the hill that it stood atop both to see the chapel as well as look out on the lit-up Eiffel Tower, but were disappointed to find it had just been closed and that there were several non-American food shops at the base that were still open to serve those who had just exited the grounds.

So combine that with the fact that Atticus was on a sugar high and wouldn't go to sleep, thus interrupting our plans of watching the copy of Les Mis that we had on our iPad together while we romanced each other, and our night one evening in Paris ended on the same sour note on which it began, unfortunately. That is, however, the way it goes when traveling rapidly across Europe, you only get limited chances to get things rights. We did have a some very lovely moments in the afternoon, and many more the next day, however, that, on reflection, will more than make up for the dour moments. I'm almost positive that Cait and I will have the opportunity sans kids, and we'll realize that while it is nice to be alone and free to romance, being there with all the people closest to us lends its own magic touch to all experience.

Summary: Bus and train from Cambridge to Paris. Explore Paris on a lovely spring evening.