I took another panoramic long exposure of the view from my room. The picture doesn't do it justice.
For higher res pics, take a look here.
Robert, Emily and Sophia dressed up as Elliot from E.T., a pirate and a cat, respectively. They fit right in. While they were a bit uneasy at first, they warmed up to the celebration fairly quickly once the candy started flying. Robert was particularly wary of a crew dressed as monkeys. If Sophia doesn't stop bouncing off the walls by midnight, we'll spike her next bottle with a dose of insulin.
While a good proportion of the folks in the street weren't feeling much pain, everyone seemed very well behaved. It's funny how little details like our obviously not speaking German didn't seem to dissuade "the toasted" from engaging in animated (though one-sided) conversation.
BTW, Marina had a great time in Spain. She went to a really cool artificial ski slope where the friend she was visiting captured on video a spectacular wipe-out on a snowboard that involved a number of unseen, innocent bystanders. She also went to Toledo.
Marininha em frente do Palácio Real.
The previous paragraph was a joke. No minors consumed alcohol, smoked cigarettes or were harmed in the creation of this joke.
I'm thinking about going to work a couple of times a week on the Strassebahn (tram) once we move to Kirchheim. Seems like a reasonable way to be somewhat "green" (and to avoid paying for Exxon executives' summer homes). By the way, Exxon is called Esso here.
Probably my favorite "feature" is that you can sit poolside and nurse a cold beer while the kids shoot down the various slides like uncontrolled canon balls. You can also enjoy a hamburger and fries or a nice plate of fish. For those that like to toast themselves, you can get your ray tones on at various tanning areas throughout the facility.
This was the third time B and the kids had gone, my first. I'm sure we'll be back. Next on the agenda is to explore the other indoor pools in the region. When we went to the old part of Heidelberg, we entered a mall that had one of these pools. I doubt it's as cool as the pool in Schwetzingen, but location is everything and this one is a 10 minute S-Bahn ride from the soon-to-be Prickril compound in Kirchheim.
On the way home from the restaurant, we decided to take the kids to the public park almost next door. Even though this is a small town, the park is really cool. As you can see below, they passed the Positive and Negative "G" test with flying colors (bad pun intended).
On the way home from the park, our van looked lonely so we decided to go visit our new neighborhood (again). There is no doubt about it, we have a crush on our new apartment. We took a few pictures so we'll remember what it looked like under construction. We then washed the Family Truckster as the snow storm some weeks ago left it looking neglected (the real reason we decided to wash it was that our hands were getting dirty opening the back door).
The windows above the empty first floor on the right belong to our apartment. You can see S-Bahn tracks in the foreground.
Then we drove to another city in the area, Wiesloch, to poke around downtown and look for a place for the kids (and B) to have some ice cream. Even though it was almost deserted (most shops etc. close early on Saturdays), we found a few open places.
We went into a café that had some of the best ice cream I've ever tasted. Robert got chocolate as he has done since he was 2. Emily decided to switch things up and go vanilla; Sophia wanted "pink" so she got strawberry (and it tasted like it was made with actual strawberries). B ordered a bowl of ice cream that looked like pasta and tasted of pistachio. Out of this world all the way around. To avoid shocking the locals with a sudden change of habits, I had a Weissbier.
By the way, I know I've been throwing that "best I ever had" phrase around quite a bit, but I'm not exaggerating. We've have happened upon some extremely good food since we arrived.
On the way back to Bad Schönborn, we picked up my rental car that we'd left at Thomas's house. I had downed a few beers the night before and decided the inside of a German jail isn't the sort of attraction I need to experience (for now anyway :)). BTW, the place where I had the beer also has some hamburgers that put most places in Texas to shame.
We're still impressed with the relaxed pace of life on the weekends. It seems to be just our style. It was nice to see groups of friends escaping the rainy weather over beer and coffee. Ever pushing the dog-inside-establishment envelope, this place had two dogs beneath the same table that seemed to be sparring for dominance. It's not every day you watch a dogfight over a cappuccino, but when in Wiesloch, do as the Wieslochians do (or something like that).
We have been to the promised land...
and it's name is Wal-Mart Super Center. Today, after stopping by a few dealerships to find a second car, we stopped at the Wal-Mart in Karlruhe, a city about 40 kilometers South of our temporary apartment in Bad Schönborn. I was hoping that Wal-Mart was like McDonalds: whether you're in Atlanta or Addis Ababa it's more or less the same thing. This proved not to be the case.
A few differences:
- There are a bunch of little shops co-located with Wal-Mart that sell jewelry etc.
- The place looked like a slightly remodeled bomb shelter. The floors were torn up and there was a general dinginess about the place.
- There's a McDonalds, but 3 Happy Meals and a couple of regular meals ran about 23 Euros! (that's almost $30 for those of you scoring at home)
- This Wal-Mart had two stories connected by a sort of flat escalator that allows you to go up and down with your shopping cart (think airport moving sidewalk at an angle).
We stocked up on school stuff for the kids and a bit of food. We plan to go back and (over)load the van with good stuff once we're in our new apartment. The prices I saw were noticeably lower than in these parts.
Finally, I think I've found a car. It's a '05 Mitsubishi Colt. Should get me to work and back and I guess that's all I expect. I spoke to an insurance agent today and discovered I'll need to sell an organ to pay car insurance here. I'm thinking right kidney.
Today it was sunny. We walked down the main drag of old Heidelberg just to see what it was like. In the next few weeks we'll return and go up the mountain to the famous castle ruins.
The kids pretty much behaved themselves although Emily was demanding star treatment. Lucky for her Sophia love to push the stroller!
Soon after we arrived we wondered into a mall. On Sundays, almost everything is closed but we found a great ice cream shop open.
We also discovered that this mall is home to one of Heidelberg's inside public pools. It's going to be nice to go there by S-Bahn as finding parking can be a real bummer.
Today we made a quick hop over to the French border town of Strasbourg, a little over an hour from our temporary apartment. It's a beautiful city, but today just didn't seem to be our day. Our first mistake was not researching our trip better. A couple of folks had told me it was easy to find the old part of the city (and it was), but it wasn't quite so obvious where we should park. We ended up trying to parallel park our land yacht (minivan) like highschool kids in driver's ed. Suffice it to say the locals were amused.
We saw a tourist information center on the way into the city, but passed it before we could stop. B wanted to go back, but we'd already found the cool part of the city and I thought it was better to just park. Wrong!
Although we saw some beautiful sites, I think we would have done a lot less walking if we'd done our homework. Another major faux paux: we forgot Sophia's stroller. Later, we were starving and looking for a place to have lunch and ended up in the touristy part of the city so I didn't want to stop. I assumed we could walk for a few minutes and find places that weren't so crowded and expensive. Wrong! Conservatively speaking, we walked about 240 miles (386.24 kilometers for the non-American readers of this blog).
~700 Swans a-swimming
Anyway... now that we know how NOT to go to Strasbourg, we'll do it better the next time.
