Schon wieder mal was dazu gelernt.
Our trip to Germany is over. We have plenty of stories to tell, ranging from compliments on our children from a Georgia Senator to a near-miss with an unexpected trip to Madrid to a VERY abbreviated sight-seeing tour of Dresden. And hopefully, we’ll get a chance to regale you with our adventures later.
But all of that is “fluff” for a later post. This post is dedicated solely to the lessons we have learned while home (or home away from home) in Deutschland. So, in no particular order:
1. Patrick Swayze ist tot. Swayze’s death was quite the news story in Germany. The day we spent 6 hours in the car, we heard radio updates on his death every twenty minutes or so (along with LOTS of Dirty Dancing music). Google the above phrase, and you will find YouTube videos commemorating his life, which was apparently VERY important to the Volk of the Vaterland.
2. Double, triple, extra quadruple check that you have your camera before you get in the car to go somewhere else. Losing it means losing not only the money spent on it, but also the memories from the pictures that were but not yet downloaded. Very disappointing. (However, we can take photos with our video camera, so hopefully some of those will be coming your way soon.)
3. Come to Germany on an empty stomach. Or, better stated, come to Oma’s on an empty stomach. She cooked with all her might, ensuring that we sampled each and every of our favorite German recipes at least once. (And by sample, I mean ate an entire army’s worth of each dish.)
4. Make sure you know which way the wind is blowing before going on a bike ride along the river. Riding a bike on the dike into the wind is nearly impossible. If you should choose to do such a thing for fun, you most assuredly want to ride INTO the wind first and have it at your back on the way home.
5. It is never too cold, windy, or rainy to hang the laundry on the line. Nancy knew this lesson, having spent many, many summers in Schleswig Holstein. Caleb and the kids, however, had some lessons to learn about laundry and what constitutes “nice weather” in this region.
6. Guidebooks take you to places like the local palace, filled with lore and history, but fail to include the truly important destination: the playground. Our independent, unstructured research project has confirmed that kids don’t care what city you’re viewing, how majestic or historically important its sights are, or when a church or castle was built. They just want to check out the local jungle gym, swing set, or slides.
Finally:
7. No matter how optimistic you are about recovering from jet lag, be sure to multiply its impact on your kids by at least 17. A three-year-old and nine-month-old can tag team quite nicely to prevent you from getting much sleep for several days on end.
And since they are, in fact, both asleep at the moment, it is time for us to do the same.
Bis Spaeter!
