nichtszusagen

• It's been a very long time since I've done one of these, because it's been a very busy summer. I'll try to catch up a little today.
  
  
• Dagny wasn't able to stay very long when she visited this summer, because she's taking classes to get her teaching certification, and was taking one class summer term. So we tried to make the most of the time she was here and did a lot of touristy things.
  
  
• The biggest thing we did while Dagny was here was a three-day trip to Prague. Dagny did all the research, even found the hotel online: . It was a boat-hotel, which was cool and interesting. There was a fancier-looking boat hotel upriver, but our location was much nicer, because we could walk to all the places we wanted to see. The other "botel" would have added a mile to our walk every time.
  
  
• We drove--about a 5-hour trip in Moby (), and were a little worried about parking the beast, until a helpful parking lot attendant pointed us to the parking garage of a mall, where they had a special section for larger vehicles. That's a common problem in Europe, by the way--most cars are pretty small. We had quite a time trying to ask how we would retrieve Moby on Sunday... it didn't occur to Carl that the mall would be open on Sunday, since in Germany everything's closed on Sundays.
  
  
• It rained the first day, but not hard, and we didn't let that slow us down.
  
  
• We saw the Communist Museum , which was fascinating. Carl took a lot of pictures inside, but I didn't take any, so the sign is all you're getting. Sorry about that.
  
  
• We also saw the toy museum, which was in parts creepier than the Communist Museum. Take these dolls, for example: . Wouldn't they give you nightmares? They had a Barbie anniversary exhibit, which Dagny and I enjoyed--they had several that are in Dagny's collection, but there were some I'd had as a child that they didn't have... but perhaps they didn't sell "growing-up-Skipper" in Europe?
  
  
• We went up to the castle , of course, and the Charles Bridge , which was undergoing some renovation work, so it wasn't as impressive as it might have been.
  
  
• We took a river tour, which was interesting. Everything was described in at least six languages--Dagny was happy, because she could understand what they said in English, German, and Spanish--the rest of us had to be satisfied with just English and German. LOL The tour boats were all over the place. There were dozens of them: . I don't think it was possible to get a picture of the river without at least one tour boat in the frame.
  
  
• The food was the biggest adventure. The first night, we were tired and since the hotel's restaurant was closed for a party, we just went to the closest place we could find. It was a very nice restaurant on the river and rather pricey, but the food was impressive. I had goulash in a bread bowl, which sounds dull, except that the goulash was great and the bread was so delicious I could have made a meal of just the bread. Carl, Curran, and Dagny had a seafood lasagna that they loved. Camden had salmon with couscous, and he wasn't as happy with his--he tends to be adventurous, so the results are mixed. But I traded him some of my bread for some of his couscous, making both of us happy.
  
  
• The second night, the kids were a little worried. There was a guy on the street advertising this restaurant, so Carl said "sure," and we followed him into the basement of this building. It was cave-like, and their trademark was having a huge variety of meat, which upset the kids quite a lot--zebra, rattlesnake, probably some things they really shouldn't have had. I just tried not to think about it. We stuck with the tourist meals--a really nice spicy sausage for Dagny and me and goulash for the men.
  
  
• The third day, we were up at the castle when we had the worst lunch ever. Ordered from the lunch menu--ham and cheese sandwich for me and sausage and potatoes for everyone else. My sandwich was two slices of stale white bread (not even good bread--like Wonderbread, but without the "wonder" part), a tiny square of processed white cheese, and a sliver of ham. Even so, it was better than the sausages, which had huge globs of fat in them. By this point, we'd discovered that you could pay in dollars, euros, or Czech crowns, so we asked how much for each. It was something like $103 if we paid in dollars. Needless to say, we pulled out the crowns.
  
  
• And that evening, we stopped by another place that offered tourist meals--supposedly typical Czech fare--and had a mediocre dinner. They have a lot of dumplings, which none of us were very impressed with.
  
  
• Exchanging money was another big adventure. There were exchange places everywhere, but you had to pay close attention, because the rates could vary drastically. Often, it ended up being more prudent not to exchange money at all, but to pay in euro or dollars. We'd heard a lot of horror stories about crime and pickpockets, but despite not being particularly careful about flashing cash, we had no problems.
  
  
• The coolest part was one evening as we were walking back to the hotel, the kids were bickering, so we stopped at a park along the river to talk it out, and just as everything got settled, fireworks started going off. So we sat down on benches and had the best seats in the city--they were shooting them off directly across the river from us, and we saw them right above the castle. Just gorgeous. Carl got a lot of nice pictures of them, and Dagny got a couple, but again, I didn't take any.
  
  
• I was surprised by how many people spoke English, and how much American stuff there was there--Coke and McDonald's, you expect, but I took pictures of several other things that I'll probably do a Thursday Thirteen of.
  
  
• The old town was beautiful, and I was fascinated by the sidewalks--took a bunch of pictures of those, too, with another Thursday Thirteen in mind. They're all cobblestone, but in a variety of patterns.
  
  
• They're apparently famous for marionettes, and we bought one--again, I didn't take pictures. Dagny and Carl did.
  
  
• On the way back to Heidelberg, we took a little detour past Seybothenreuth, where we'd lived from 1995 - 1997. A lot has changed, and a lot hasn't changed. The lot that was flooded every winter for ice skating and curling is now a day care, and the big open playground is now all overgrown and broken down. But there were still plenty of memories for Dagny and Curran, and we're glad we went past there.
  
  
• Grafenwoehr, the post, has changed dramatically, because a lot of units have relocated there. We initially thought the elementary school had been torn down and rebuilt, but we did find it. The building where Carl's office had been was gone, though, without a trace, and the old commissary was now a post office and a bank (which tells you how small the old commissary was).
  
  
• So it was a very nice trip. I have a bunch of pictures I plan on posting for Thursday Thirteens.
  
  
• That's about all I have time for today. I'll post this now and try to write a little more next weekend.

Labels: about me, weekend update

// posted by Darla @ 9/05/2009 11:46:00 AM