Venturing Out

If you're my Facebook friend, you probably saw that we didn't wake up till after 1 p.m. Berlin time on our first day here! Whoa! We were clearly sleep deprived from our travels. Even so, 1 p.m. here is merely 5 a.m. at home so again, it makes sense that we were still asleep, it made less sense when you realized we'd been asleep for over 13 hours. :)

Anyway, I had to wake the kids. I turned off their white noise. I took the two sheets off each window and opened the curtains. I started making morning noises. But they still needed a little help. They were sleepy!

First things first, the kids always start their day with "milk and juice". White milk for Dalton, chocolate for Autumn, and O.J. with 2 powdered meds in it for Easton. Only, there was no OJ. Jason was having trouble finding "Ohne Fruchtfleisch" (literally "without fruit meat" a.k.a. "pulp free"). So there was none. But he did find this Schoko-Milch for the Goose (we cut it with white milk):



She liked it!

However, this shelf stable whole milk made Dalton gag and retch after a single sip:



:(



Admittedly the dude is weird about milk. He cannot drink it out of a regular cup or a straw . . . only this sippy cup like a baby. Milk out of any other cup makes him gag anyway. So, for his morning milk we treat him like a toddler. :)

Autumn took her Milch out onto the balcony.



And then everyone wanted to be on the balcony:



I got to making breakfast (er, lunch at this point?). Jason had found some "Vollkorn" (Voll = whole korn = grain) labeled bread so I used my handy dandy translator app to check out the actual ingredients. I just point my camera at the words and then the translation appears in it's place. Very nifty.



Unfortunately, it's not ALL whole wheat. It's some whole wheat, some refined wheat . . . and then some Zucker (sugar). At home we ate totally whole wheat bread that was sweetened with honey. I'm fine with relaxing our standards here and there, I really am, our bodies are just less okay with it. I brought a single loaf of bread from home and we started with that for toast. There's only so many transitions I'm up for right now. :)



Then I hopped in the shower. I have no hair dryer here yet so, luckily, our shower head height is adjustable and I just lowered it where I didn't wet my hair:



However, showering here is awkward. You have this tiny little piece of glass to try to hover behind so water is spraying everwhere:



And the drain of the tub is over in that 1/3 of the area as well so it gets stepped on. It was not my best shower but whatcha gonna do?

After that we got dressed and finally ventured out on our own. For dinner the night before, we went "right" out of our building. So that morning we went "left":



One of the first things we came across was a cemetery. Max Liebermann, a famous-ish painter is buried there.



"What's a cemetery?"
"You tell me. What is a cemetery?"
Dalton: "Where people go to vote?"



Then we continued on our way:



Berlin is big with the bikes. We knew this coming in and had our bikes shipped over. We also knew that you have to be careful to never ever get in the "bike lane" part of the sidewalk. I think the kids are getting it. They still don't always pay the best attention, though. We get lots of "stupid Americans" glares. :)

Hey look, the TV Tower back there:



And then we came upon the "Bio Markt" (that is basically an organic grocery store). There is a cow out front:



It's two levels. To get up you have an angled people mover / moving walkway thing like at the airport. Good times. Upstairs they also have this little play area. Yes, you can really crank and move this carousel:



We didn't buy anything yet. We just looked. We then continued on around our block and came upon an Eiscafe (ice cream shoppe). There are bazillions of these in the area. But this is the one we stopped at:



The napkins have E's initials!



The whole exchange was rather awkward trying to order our ice creams. First we had to decide what kind we wanted, and with a different language, the labels are sometimes hard to figure out, obviously. But the girl behind the counter was all, "Bitte schön", which, as far as I ever knew only meant "you're welcome" or almost like an extra fancy "please". But she was saying it like, "May I help you?" and was saying it to everyone else we waved ahead of us as well. So, eventually we made our choice and I tried to order our "Zwei Schokolade" (two chocolate) for the boys. She gave me one. So I had to be all, "Another one" and she was all, "same?" and I'm all "Ja" with my big head nod for emphasis. Then I ordered "Zwei Erdbeere" (two strawberry) for me and The Goose and again, she gave me one. And again with the "same?" And all the while I keep thinking of exactly the right things to say . . . in Spanish. Aye yi yi. ;) She gave me my 7.20 total in English. That's not quite 10 U.S. dollars. But we had our snack! I guess that's success . . . eventually!



Easton noticed how we were very close to the park from the night before. So he suggested we walk over there with our ice creams. I had been planning to take them all along but how nice to be able to be like, "Yes!" rather than "No no no" all the time. :)

We hadn't seen this fun angled spinning thing when we were there the previous night:



Easton especially couldn't wait to finish his ice cream and get up there to copy this fun game a little German girl was playing where she was running on the wheel and then, "Ein zwei drei ... {some German word I don't know}" she'd jump off into her dad's arms. Well, then E finished and got up to play and so did Dalton and that sure ruined the little girl's fun. Oops. I couldn't remember how to apologize. Well, except for in Spanish. And English. She sat with her arms folded and a pout on her face going around a few times and then her Dad took her off to do something else with not the most understanding of expressions. :/



We went off to the other areas of the park again as well:







Ole!



And shortly after this, Autumn didn't wait till the toddler in front of her had cleared the steep slide and slid down into the back of her. This toddler had 3 adults (mom and grandparents) all hovering over her and all went to her rescue. Barf. Autumn was totally in the wrong, but dude, zimmer down. ;) I insisted Autumn apologize (in English) but she cried and cried (Autumn did, the other kid was fine) and refused. So, then it was time to leave. After I rounded up the boys with Autumn's loud crying and everyone's "stupid loud American" glances we ended up walking out behind that same toddler she rear-ended. The kid tripped and overreacty Grandma was all sucking in her breath all dramatic again and waving her hands all frantic like, "Oh dearest me! This small person still learning to walk has fallen from two feet above the ground! What ever shall we do!?!" Pfffft. Outta my way, lady, I have no time for you, good luck with your new job as a helicopter!

And we walked home.

Couldn't figure out for the longest time how to get in the building. We needed our key. Check. We needed to figure out which way to turn it. Check. Eventually we were in. And then we had trouble getting into the actual apartment as well. *sigh* I knew it was tricky so J showed me the trick . . . I still couldn't do it. Ugh. Why you gotta make it so hard, Germany!?

Jason got home not too long after we did and we headed out for some Abendessen (dinner--quite literally "evening food"). We ended up at an Italian place where our waiter spoke wonderful German, English, and I presume, Italian. Stupid Americans and our one language. :) He was actually quite nice to us. The kids had pizza and I had some Alfredo type pasta only it was made with Gorgonzola. Pungent.



J paid for dinner with our Visa and they brought a little dealy bopper out to the table to run the card with. I haven't seen anything like that before.



Berlin is a cash based place for sure. Many places don't even take cards. But we had to tell him his tip to his face all on the fly. Jason says tipping here is more like 10%. I dunno but they all seem very grateful when we tip and when it's slightly more than 10%.

I think we just went home after that. Gave the kids melatonin again and a slightly earlier bedtime. I was gonna make us wake up at a more reasonable time the next day!