I think I might have to move...

if the weather doesn't get better soon!

It's raining. Again. Nothing new, I know. But it is the last day of May! And yet it is 53 degrees and raining. It makes me want to stay in my pajamas all day and never leave the house.

But that's what I did yesterday while it rained - stayed in my PJs all morning and read Stieg Larsson. So I would like to do something a bit more original today. Actually, I really want to go downtown - I need craft supplies to make decorations for Marc's PhD completion party (or whatever it should be called). But I have so little desire to pack up the Bean and then go out in the rain.

Ahhh, I need some sunshine and a good dose of motivation.

P.S. The LOST finale was such a major disappointment.

P.P.S. But the finale of Grey's Anatomy - now that was DRAMA! It had me bawling and really nervous. So nervous, in fact, I locked the door to the apartment, which we never do. It could have had something to do with the fact that Marc wasn't home.

P.P.P.S. Happy Memorial Day!!

I think I have mentioned before that lunch is our main meal of the day. Dinner usually consists of bread and cold cuts or a salad. So, lunch is the time to get my "warm" meal in. But I really hate cooking elaborately just for me. I'm always on the lookout for good, healthy ideas. Or at least good, not totally unhealthy ideas.

Marc often does our grocery shopping and he brought home tortellini recently. So I cooked that up, defrosted a little spinach (a staple in our freezer) with a little margarine and mixed it in with the tortellini. Then I sprinkled parmesan cheese over it and VOILA - easy and tasty! This is one dish that I will definitely make again.

The Saga of He Who Did Not Sleep (and his mother)...

I have an amazing sleeper. Not a sofa, not a mattress and definitely not Marc (he sleeps, but not long enough for my taste!). No, this amazing sleeper is the Bean. The Bean is 7 months old and still takes 3 naps a day. These naps are usually at least one hour long, if not longer. Then he goes to bed around 8 p.m. and doesn't get up until 7 a.m. the next morning.

This amazingness is a gift unto me. Because I very much enjoy sleeping. I (unlike my husband) need at least 8 hours of sleep a night to be fully functional the next day. And since I don't generally make it to bed until 11 p.m., a waking time of 7 a.m. suits me just fine. (Bean, if you read this, I would totally be up for not getting up until 8. :o)

But YESTERDAY....oh the horror that was YESTERDAY....

There were NO naps. Not a one. Well, there was that snooze in the car. But that was it.

I saw it coming, but I couldn't have imagined the extent of it's horribleness. You see, when the Bean misses his first nap, it kinda makes the whole day go south. But if he gets a short nap in, then things will generally be ok. So I put him in the car, as we had a church thing to go to. I fully expected that he would sleep for those 20 minutes in the car. And it was very, very silent in the car (no raspberries, no sonar noises, etc.). So imagine my surprise as I opened the door to find a smiling, very awake little man. Uh oh.....

He did, in fact, fall asleep on the way home. But we all know that a 10 minute nap is not sufficient. So, even though he woke up as I was getting him out of the car, I put him in bed. I was certain that he would fall asleep. Oh, how wrong I was.

He cried for the next 90 minutes (not solid - I did pick him up several times and I fed him). But when I wasn't entertaining him, he was crying.

Who's kid was this?? Not mine - he almost never cries, almost always goes to sleep cheerfully.

A trip to Ikea was on the agenda for the afternoon. I thought about canceling, but if I had stayed home, I might have begun to go crazy from the crying. So we went. And he was awake. The WHOLE time.

Seriously? Seriously!!

He fell asleep on the way home (do you see a pattern here?) and stayed asleep as I brought him into the house. I rejoiced, but my joy came too soon. About 10 minutes later, he was awake. So I fed him and as he almost fell asleep drinking his bottle and since he had only slept a total of about 30 minutes the whole day, I laid him down.

He didn't cry.

He also didn't sleep.

Then he started to cry.

So his papa took him on a walk. This goes against all of our sleeping principles --> We do not take extreme measures to make him sleep. He will go to sleep on his own and in his own bed. So we don't and he does.

Why the exception? Well, his mama was sooooo tired. She just couldn't take any more. So this was his papa's gift to his mama.

It took almost a full hour of strolling to get him to fall asleep.

But then he slept the whole night.

And now? My friends, he's sleeping again! And has been for almost an hour.

The Bean is back!

Little Rays of Sunshine

You know that song you used to sing as a kid as you stared out the window at the falling raindrops and wished as hard as you could for the sun to come out: "Rain, rain, go away; come again another day."

It doesn't work.

I know, I'm sorry to burst your childhood bubble. But I have concrete proof that it doesn't work. Because I sang it almost every day for two solid weeks. (Just to entertain Noah, of course.)

And it just kept on raining.

Finally, finally it stopped on Sunday. It's still cool and the sun often disappears behind the clouds. These, however, are conditions I am willing to accept, in order to receive brief glimpses of the sun. And the clouds are of the "must photograph" variety:

(photos taken from the living room window)



I'm certain that you are now asking yourself how I survived these traumatic two weeks of rain.

Well, I'm glad you asked! Flowers, my friend, flowers! Blooming plants and cut flowers in the house....

and blooming flowers in the garden.







































These are my little rays of sunshine.

And here is my big 7 month old ray of sunshine:

FB

I will admit it: I love Facebook. I thought I would hate it and so I avoided joining for some time. Some time ago, I had tried My Space and thought it was horrible, so I was expecting something similar. But I love it! Why do I love it? Well, I am really far away from lots of people that I love. And the time difference makes telephone calls kind of complicated. So I love getting up every morning and checking to see what my friends were up to the day before. I love that I get to see when my brother puts a new cabinet in his kitchen, how my niece changes month for month, what my silly little nephew is up to, how my friends' kids are growing in leaps and bounds. And at the same time, I can share photos of the Bean, ask questions like "who is using cloth diapers?" and "do you give your baby a pacifier?" or just plan a trip to Ikea with my friend. For these reasons, I have come to love Facebook.
At the same time, I find Facebook difficult. Often, I wrestle with whether or not to comment on a post. When there are already 10 comments on a photo saying "cute!" should I make it 11? Is it meaningful to that person that I comment?
Or my most current struggle - when someone makes a statement that you just can't agree with or writes something that you personally find to be offensive, is it necessary to comment? Or could it just be damaging to the relationship, especially because that person can't hear the tone in your voice as you're commenting and might misinterpret your words? Or what if you do comment and then they respond to your comment in such a way that you feel offended and the relationship suffers? Is it worth it? But what if you don't comment, because of said doubts and then just have this feeling like you missed a chance to tell them something that's important to you. That not commenting leaves an elephant in the room that you just can't get past. That your relationship with that person is affected by your not commenting and they will never even know what happened.
What do you think?

Stripes

Marc and I finally finished painting the toilet. Well, not the toilet itself, but the room that the toilet is in. It took an entire week and here's why (well, here's why plus we have a 5 month old who wants to play and doesn't take very long naps...).
The initial plan was to paint the wall behind the toilet and the wall across from it the blue color. The side walls were going to be solid yellow. But as I was painting the side walls, I decided that the contrast was too extreme. Plus, I couldn't get clean edges on the walls, so the transitions looked bad. After looking around online for ideas (faux paint treatments, etc....), I decided that stripes were in order.
Oh my goodness was it a lot of work! Measuring, taping, painting over the tape to get clean lines and then doing the actual painting. But I am happy with the result.

The tiles on the wall were painted at some point and the paint has begun chipping away. Plus, the tiles are nice. So the next project is to remove the paint from the tile.

Oh and I really, really want a new toilet.....

Zwergensprache

Zwergensprache is the name of Noah's sign language class. The literal translation is midget language. In German, it's not uncommon to refer to kids as midgets (Zwerg), without intending to offend any vertically challenged individuals.
No worries, Noah passed the hearing test they administered in the hospital. We're taking a sign language course because babies who learn sign language can communicate long before they can speak. And, babies who learn sign language can generally speak earlier and have a larger vocabulary than their peers.
Of course, we're not intending to learn fluent sign language. Sign language is an independent language with as many words as we have in the English or German language. I took American Sign Lanuage for one semester in college and I have to honestly say that it was much more complicated than I expected it to be. And on top of that, every country has their own sign language. And then there are even regional differences, just as there are in the spoken language. Noah is learning signs from German Sign Language. If he did encounter a deaf person, they would understand his signs.
The intention is that Noah learns a few basic signs, such as "eat", "more", "drink" and "milk." This will help him to communicate his needs and hopefully spare him some frustration of us not understanding what he wants. And the course is a lot of fun, using songs and finger games to teach the babies the signs.
The course teacher has 2 daughters who are 4 years and nine months old. She told us yesterday that she first thought that sign language was unnecessary for babies, that it was some American fad. When her first daughter was 9 months old, she would point at objects as if she wanted them. Her mom would offer her the object that she thought the little girl wanted. But somehow, she always grabbed the wrong thing. And this was very frustrating to the little girl, who would then throw herself on the floor and bang her fists on the ground. That was when she decided to start with sign language, which made communicating with her daughter much easier.
We hope that it will have the same effect for Noah. It will probably take 2-3 months before he starts using signs and his usage of signs will definitely be dependent on our discipline in using the signs with him.
We shall see......

Randomness

Noah is teething. For several weeks now, I thought he might be, but just wasn't sure. He drools buckets and chews on anything he can get in his mouth. Recently, he was so tired and almost asleep, when he started crying again. Then he seemed to settle down to sleep, but then started crying again. This happened every 30 seconds or so and is not typical behavior for him. So I put some teething gel on his gums and suddenly he was out. This has happened a couple of times now. I can't feel any teeth, so it will be interesting to see how long this continues and which tooth/teeth actually come(s) in.

I want to make these cookies. We have some friends coming over on Saturday and if I can find molasses tomorrow, then I will make them for this weekend. Why is molasses hard to find in Germany? My brother-in-law, the Baker, said "that stuff is gross, only Americans would use it." Hmmmph. We'll see if he gets any of my cookies.....

I'm thinking about making one of these Brain Boxes for myself. Only I can't find the pretty index cards and dividers like she used. But I really do think it would help to keep me on track with housework. And maybe give me a little extra motivation.

I'm in the process of painting the toilet. But I don't think I like the color combination. *sigh* I'm going to try stripes on one wall and hope this will help me to feel like the two colors do mesh....the potential of a repaint is looming.....

We started a 6 month Wii challenge with friends of ours. She's so little, her challenge is to gain weight (seems like it'd be a nice problem to have....). For the rest of us or people-who-recently-had-a-baby (when does that stop counting as an excuse??), we have to LOSE. Our goal is to lose 22 pounds in the 6 months. I'm down about 2.5 pounds. So far, so good.

And finally, will winter EVER end? Spring provided a glimpse of it's sunshiny self, but now it's snowing cats and dogs! Tomorrow is supposed to be 40 and partly sunny, but then it's back to snow/rain on Saturday and Sunday. I have had ENOUGH!

Where did the time go?

The Bean went from looking like this
at the beginning of October...















...to this at the end of October.















In December he looked like this

And today, at 4.5 months, he looks like this.






















How did that happen?

He's rolling over (stomach to back), passing toys from one hand to the other, drinking 6-8 ounces of formula every 3-4 hours, sleeping through the night, giving open-mouth kisses, is fascinated by the cat and LOVES his papa. He wants to sit up, not lay down, is incredibly curious and enjoys listening to music. He watches us very carefully when we eat, puts everything in his mouth and might just be teething. He has had a cold for almost a month and a half, but that doesn't change his sunny personality. He loves taking baths, hates having his nails trimmed and has the most unruly hair you've ever seen in your life. He'll only smile for the camera when I don't use the view finder, but instead make funny faces at him. He has more nicknames than one kid probably should. He's growing into size 68 (4-6 months) and out of 62 (2-4 months). He finds blond-haired people fascinating (there just aren't that many in his life) and likes a pacifier when he's tired.

He's simply the best bean ever.

Olympics and other thoughts

I haven't posted since October 2008. Wow. I have taken breaks before and every time I start blogging again, I promise that I'll keep it up. But given my history of not keeping it up, I'm am not going to make any promises. I do, however, generally have more time on my hands these days, so it might just work out this time.

So I intensely dislike the fact that the Olympics are taking place in Vancouver. The time difference with Vancouver is 9 hours. Which means that a hockey game at noon in Vancouver is on at 9 p.m. in Germany. And the ones that we really want to watch are on at 2 a.m. Not to mention that I have seen 0 ice skating, because it's on so stinking late. The Germans seem to be in love with all things skiing, so we get a lot of that in the prime time.

Being the nuts that we are, we decided to actually get up at 2 a.m. in order to watch the Canada vs. US hockey game. It was a good game, worth getting up for. Thank goodness for the Swiss, who televised it. If it were up to the Germans, we wouldn't have been able to see it at all. (As much as I like hockey, I'm not willing to pay for it on iTunes.)

But I was a bit horrified at the end of the game, when the moderator mentioned that the schedule of further games is not yet available, because the American TV station broadcasting the Olympics has to talk with their advertisers before they can determine who will play whom when.

Now, my Swiss German is not as fluent as my German and it was 4 in the morning, so I thought that I might have misunderstood. So I asked Marc if he had heard the same thing that I did (his Swiss German is better AND he needs less sleep than I do). He had indeed heard the exact same thing.

Why did I find that so disturbing? I think it's because I personally think that the Olympics should be about, well, the sports and the Olympians and not about if the cornflakes folks would prefer to have their advertising during the US or during the Canadian game. Maybe I'm being too naive?

In other news, it's 50 and partly sunny here and I am LOVING this preview of spring!

I made these cookies last week. They are YUMMY! But dangerous to have in the house, because you cannot possibly eat just one....To help with this problem of not eating just one and the excess post-baby weight that's still hanging around, I bought a Wii on Ebay this week, including Wii Fit Plus and the Balance Board. I'm very interested to see what kind of a workout I can have with Wii Fit.

I am a domestic godess

I am sick. I have a cold, Japanese style. It involves sneezing, coughing, burning lungs and general fatigue. Not as bad as the bronchitis I had earlier this year, but bad enough to miss two days of work.

Marc is also sick. He's been sick for almost three weeks. So he's home, too. But he had an important meeting today, so he's been on the phone for the last two hours talking about molding and energy and experiments and oxides that I just don't understand. (I try, I really do. And when he talks slowly and uses small words, I almost understand...)

So what am I doing? I am hungry and after 10 days in Japan, I need some home cooking. So, I, living up to the title of this post, am making spaghetti sauce.
My mom makes the best spaghetti sauce ever and I am using her recipe.

Yum, yum, yum!

The one where the suitcase bites the dust...

I have been doing a lot of traveling lately. And somehow, my suitcases can't seem to keep up. (I only say "my" because I brought them into the marriage.)

Marc and I were in Prague this summer. As we picked up our suitcase from the belt, it had a giant rip in it, so that our clothes were almost falling out. We went to the counter and made a report, but were told it would be best if we tried to get reimbursed once we were in Germany, because otherwise, we would get Czech money (can't remember what it's called, cut me a break, I've been traveling for the last 19 hours or so). By the time we left Prague, the suitcase had completely lost a wheel. In order to get home, we had to borrow tape from Lufthansa and tape our suitcase back together. Yes, we looked like hillbillys. I bought the suitcase at Target. In 2006. I think it cost me $80. (Does that sound right, Mom?) When I told the lady at the Lufthansa office in Germany that it cost $80 and yes, I do mean American dollars, she didn't know what to do. With the exchange rate at that point in time, the original cost in Euros would have been 50. And since the suitcase was two years old, she should have given me less than the original price. But she gave me 50 Euros, because "I'll never find a suitcase for less than that here in Stuttgart."

Not having replaced that suitcase, I headed with another to Brazil in September. Now, this one made it in one piece, but two days after I did. Fortunately, I wore business clothes on the plane. But going to work two days in a row in the same clothes, which I wore during the 24 hour trip from Germany to Brazil was not really my idea of a good time. Fortunately, I had the essentials (know what I mean??) in my carry-on. If it wasn't for the current (dumb) rule about liquids, I would have only traveled with a carry-on!

And today? Yet another suitcase drama. I arrived safely in Tokyo, after a one hour train ride from Stuttgart to Frankfurt (on which a bunch of soccer fans almost got arrested for riding without tickets - it was very dramatic!), an 11 hour flight to Narita and then a 1.5 hour bus ride to the hotel. The first thing that I wanted to do was to unpack and hang up my suits. But I couldn't get the suitcase open. Now I admit that the zipper was broken before I ever left home. But you could still use it, it had just come unstitched on the one corner. Well, I spent a half hour trying to get it open. I have the swollen index fingers to prove it. And I was utterly unsuccessful. So the hotel porter had to come up and cut it open. So I will be buying a new suitcase during my stay here. Fortunately, I have a whole weekend with no plans...

My room is on the 14th floor of a hotel in a popular shopping district of Tokyo - Ikebukuro. I was positively surprised to have free internet (unfortunately not wireless). The room is small, but not too small for Japan.
I have a pretty good view from my window. Unfortunately, the pictures didn't come out so good, because I took them through the glass...

And the street below:
It's warm here, about 70-75 degrees, and seems to me to be pretty humid. And it's raining, but I'm used to that, because it's been doing that so often in Germany. Where it's also about half as warm as here.

My doorbell just rang and the hotel manager wanted to know if I was "making fire" in my room. Um, no, is that allowed? I was told it was non-smoking. But standing in the hall, I noticed it, too - the smell of smoke. Not cigarette smoke, real honest-to-goodness fire smoke. I asked if we should leave our rooms and he said "No, we find it." So I'm just sitting here waiting for the fire alarm to go off at any minute....Stay tuned.

Mason turns two

This sweet boy is my nephew Mason. Today, he is two. He looks very much like my brother did at this age.

Because we live an ocean apart, Mason knows me from almost exclusively from pictures. This is probably the worst part of living overseas - the irregular visits with family and friends. I am very grateful to my sister-in-law and brother, that they show Mason pictures of me/us.

What I would most like to do today: give Mason a big birthday hug! But that will have to wait a couple of months...

Just feelin sorry for myself

I'm sitting here trying to get motivated to clean the house and pitying myself. Because

- We went from summer directly into winter here. It's cold! What happened to fall??

- I'm husbandless for a little more than a week, while my husband is on vacation in Romania with a friend of his.

- Yesterday's girls' night got cancelled because my friend is sick

- I had a hard time falling asleep last night, because I watched a scary TV show and see point #1

- The left arrow key on my laptop doesn't work

- This morning, my cereal ran out and I don't like Marc's cereal and I'm too lazy to go to the bakery around the corner

- I have to clean the house (alone! - see point #1)

- I go on a business trip tomorrow - SUNDAY!

- The flight for my business trip leaves at 7 a.m. - on SUNDAY! Fortunately, I will sleep at my in-laws, so I "only" have to be at the train station at 5:36 a.m.

- I worked until 9 p.m. last night to get ready to go on this business trip

- One week after Marc gets home, I will be gone for a week and a half on a business trip.

I think I'll go eat some ice cream...chocolate ice cream makes everything better! And since we're both going to be gone, there's nothing else to eat here anyways...

Adieu, Summer

Today we said "goodbye" to summer. It was supposedly the last summery day of the season. Marc finished a meeting earlier than expected and called to ask me if I wanted to join him for an evening on the sea.

He picked me up at the train station and we headed to a local park, which has a sea fed by the Neckar River. Unfortunately, this sea doesn't offer the possibility to swim, but it does have a very nice beer garden. So we grabbed some Wurst and Potato Wedges.

(Sorry, but a side note: the cat just wrapped her paws around the cupboard handle - pretty much like a person would do - and opened the cupboard. I now have my camera sitting next to me to attempt to get this feat of cat genius on film. Unfortunately, she has left the vicinity of the cupboard. People, this is one smart cat!)

Sitting in the sun, looking out at the water and eating our simple (fatty!) meal, it felt like we have the best lives ever.

And then, we took it up a notch. Yes, we rented a paddle boat. Girls, is this not the MOST romantic thing ever?? Maybe you've never met the mushy side of me before. Well now you have!

We paddled around for a half hour, watched the sun set behind the hills (unfortunately, we didn't have a camera - maybe next time) and promised ourselves that we would never become workaholics, who can't take off from work at 5 p.m. (after an 8.25 hour day!) to just enjoy life.

Then we headed back to the dock, back to our car and back home.

It was a perfect, lovely evening.

Potato Festival

Marc's grandma grew up on a farm. And his mom's cousin's family still owns and runs the farm. The dad and his two sons have potatoes, chickens, apples, pigs. They work very, very hard and have to combat with the nature and its' consequences. Being a city girl through and through, I find the farm and life on the farm fascinating.

Today, Marc's cousin (one of the sons), who has the potato part of the farm, organized a potato festival. He invited several of the local clubs to prepare the food, serve the beer, wash the dishes, play music, even hold a church service. The food contained, of course, potatoes - potato soup (which was delicious!!), potato salad, potato bread and potato filled pasta (maultaschen). And there was freshly pressed apple juice (we watched them press it), freshly made potato chips (Marc's cousin's son fried them himself - he's going into 5th grade!) and much more. A tour of the chicken stall, rides on the tractor and a kid's area with goats, rabbits and crafts. It was well organized, well decorated and a lot of fun.

They also have their own store, with their products and many other products from the region (oil, cheese, bread). They were also selling pumpkins and mums - I can't believe it's fall already!



It was a beautiful day. This past week, it rained about every day, if not actually every day. And it hasn't been very warm. And today looked like it might be the same - we awoke to a cloudy sky and a chilly temperature. But by about 11 the sun was out, the clouds were gone and it ended up being simply perfect!

A lovely way to spend a Sunday...

Life in 625 square feet

Have you seen the Ikea displays, where they set up a "house" in just xyz square feet? Those are a pretty good example of our life...I think the smallest one is only one room and we have a little more than that, but we only have 625 square feet. And some of that is our patio, because the landlord is allowed to add half of the area of the patio to the size of the apartment.

So when I married Marc and moved into his apartment, it was all about what we HAD to keep and what we could get rid of. Because we just didn't have the space for everything. Somehow, we managed to set up the apartment and were fairly satisfied with it. The rooms are small, but we got used to it after a while.

Or at least told ourselves we got used to it. But then, when we were honest, we had to admit that we need more space - our apartment is so chaotic most of the time, just because we don't have enough space for everything. So we started looking for a new apartment. But we are looking in a very specific area for a very specific type of apartment and a landlord which allows pets.

After being turned down for two apartments because of the cat, we recognized that we might be in our current apartment for a while. And tried not to be satisfied with that. But then it started bothering us that the bookshelf, which we were using as a room divider in the living room, blocked out a lot of light to the dining "area." (Because the window was in the living room "area.") So I got out the measuring tape and found that the bookshelf would fit against one of the walls. So with a lot of sweat and muscle, we moved the bookshelf (without first unloading the books).

And were pretty satisfied with the results:


The apartment search is still on, but at least you can sit at the dining room table during the day without having to turn on the light...

And when we were done with that, I made a cake, because we had company over on Sunday for cake and coffee. It was really easy to make, it tasted good and I think it looks pretty.

It's a ready-made torte base, then apricot jelly mixed with orange juice, then vanilla pudding powder mixed with orange juice, which is also mixed with cooked sugar and orange juice. Then whipped cream. And then lady fingers soaked in orange juice and melted chocolate on top. An hour in the fridge and it's ready to go.

The Joy of Neighbors

I've explained the concept of Kehrwoche before - we have to clean the landing and the stairs down to the next landing in the common stairwell of our apartment building. We do this every second week, alternating with our neighbors.

Lots of people (including myself) are not very diligent about remembering Kehrwoche. But my husband, being the good Schwab that he is, always remembers Kehrwoche. The Saturday we got married, we came home from our reception at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday morning and Marc did Kehrwoche.

And having lived here for 1.5 years, we have never seen/heard our neighbors do the Kehrwoche on their week. And on the Sunday after their Kehrwoche, it doesn't look so clean. But being the trusting people that we are, we just take it for granted that they do it most of the time.

Well, last weekend, we had Kehrwoche. And as Marc was faithfully cleaning the stairwell, he found some powdery substance under the neighbors' doormat. Now, we've heard stories of neighbors putting threads or powder under their doormat to check that the others are doing their Kehrwoche, but we really thought these were a type of urban legend.

Well, not any more. It's happened to us personally. Take a look...

So, what do you do when something like this happens? Just clean it up and throw it away. Oh no, not Marc. He wanted them to know that we knew what they had done. So he made a little pile and left it in front of their door.
It was the neighborly thing to do, right? Maybe they lost it and were looking for it and didn't think to look under the mat. Or maybe they can use it again in two weeks when we're back on for Kehrwoche.

And cleaned the rest of the stairwell so loud that the whole house must of known that we do Kehrwoche!

Harbor Town

Two weeks ago, we visited Hamburg for the weekend. Marc has a friend who moved there about 6 months ago, so we headed up to visit him. We took the train, a ride of about 5.5 hours. This is pretty comfortable, although even on the train you can end up sitting in traffic (the ride home took about 6.5 hours). But since neither one of us had to drive, we could work on our website, read, sleep, whatever. It's a good, relatively inexpensive way to travel - taking the car would have cost more.

Hamburg is really pretty. It's on a harbor, the 2nd biggest in Europe. We took a tour of the harbor by boat. There were giant freighters and some really big luxury yachts. Roman Abramovich, the fifteenth richest man in the world, was having a yacht built that cost 200 million per meter and was 100 meters long. It had a lot of bathrooms and other crazy features, that you just cannot imagine needing on a boat.
Hamburg also has several seas, where you can go boating, kayaking, etc. It's really something special to live on the water, I think. Maybe you take it for granted once you've been there for a while, but for me it has a special charm.Saturday, we checked out the town and found that the Stuttgart wine festival happened to be in Hamburg while we were there:

Marc snapped this:
And I took this one:
It's not a memorial to Rex. After I took this picture, a homeless man came up to Marc and told him that these are the shoes of a volunteer from the Maltesers. The volunteer said he had been running around so much, that his shoes were smoking and needed to cool off...

While downtown, the police started blocking off the streets and then there was a demonstration. I know that one of the topics was against deporting illegal immigrants. Oh and they demonstrated, because Hamburg does not do a good enough job of protecting the environment. And I think they threw in a few other topics, too. I think it's great that people march for things that they believe in, but there didn't really seem to be a cohesiveness between the topics they had chosen for their demonstration, which made it a little difficult to understand what the primary goal of the demonstration was. The police escorted the demonstraters through. And filmed them, in case something happened, so that they could then have video evidence. (The banner says "No deportation, jail or camps. The right to stay for all!") It was a peaceful demonstration, but the police were dressed in riot gear anyways. Even though they do this regularly any time there will be a large crowd (European Soccer championships as an example), I still can't get used to it, it makes me nervous every time.

While the streets were still closed, some guy in a little sports car went around the barriers. As he came to the end of the demonstration, there was a police man on a motorcycle, who indicated that he should pull over. Instead of pulling over, he made a screeching U-turn and drove very quickly in the other direction. Now, you have to understand that practically the whole Hamburg police force was in this general vicinity. He did make it around the corner, but ended up having to stop at a red light. And there in front of him, was the big police riot van. So he didn't get any farther. Genius, huh?

Saturday night, we grilled. Marc's friend works on the 6th floor of a parking garage. Well, he doesn't work in the parking garage, but on the 6th floor there are offices. And not your normal, everyday offices. Little two room offices rented to a bunch of random companies, mostly in the IT area. And then they have a common area with a piano, a fish tank and books. And a big balcony with a picnic table and a grill. The whole thing is kind of random. But it had a good view!
During our visit in Hamburg, we did eat Hamburgers. Did you know that the Hamburger was actually started in Hamburg? And the German immigrants, who often passed through Hamburg, brought it with them to the US, where it was then premiered at several fairs and somehow made it's way to becoming an American tradition.
All in all, Hamburg was well worth the weekend trip!

I thought...

that the ticket-takers at the boarding gate were there to make sure that only those who had booked got on the flight. And then I read this

Something I thought couldn't happen any more!