Day 2

I made us get up a little earlier this day. Like, I think I got up around 9:00 a.m., Easton woke on his own maybe 9:45 or so and I woke up the little two just after 10:00 a.m.

As I got out of the shower I discovered my contacts case missing from where I had put them the night before. And now Jason had two contact cases with his stuff. Lovely. I texted him with a "is there any chance you could be wearing my contacts?" and the answer was basically "no chance". I'm sure you can see where this is going. All our spare contacts are on the boat, which was stupid of us, but, well, that's how it is. So, I put on my glasses for the day and the kids and I headed out.

This time we went to our main street and went south. Towards the TV Tower.

Dalton was helping lil Autumn walk along the wall. Aww.



And--of course--Easton is jumping. That boy.

The tall thing you see behind them is this old church:



I currently know absolutely nothing about it other than it helps me figure out which way is home now that I don't have my Rocky Mountains to always tell me which way is "west". And it also dingle dongles several times a day for, seriously, like 2 minutes at a time. Perhaps longer. It's at maybe 8 in the morning, then at noon and then again at 6 p.m. I think. It's charming. Except when you're jet lagged and trying to have a snooze.

The kids and I stopped in at some café for some better coffee than I had at home. And a Schoko-Croissant to share:



Ordering was a slight challenge again. But I got what I wanted and let's just focus on that. Although I will add that it's quite a challenge for me to know how much money to give them when I don't see a total on a register. Like, they'd say something like, "3 blah blahs seven and forty" (except all in German). And I guess that's 3.47. But again, I'm making it work and I'm already learning.

As we were sitting there a fire truck came by and the sirens sound all old-fashioney just like they do in the movies. The kids like it. They think it sounds like monkeys, I guess. Anytime we hear one off in the distance they all go, "Monkey truck!"

After our café stop we headed back south down the Allee. I remember my sister saying how clean Germany is. Compared to where we lived in north Denver, I have to disagree. And there is hardly ever a trash can. I had to carry my empty "take away" cup of Kaffee for blocks before we spotted one. And it's not like they're hard to spot:



We stopped in some stores here and there. Just being curious, really.

We also stopped for a few photo ops:





Berlin is covered in graffiti. Erm, I think they actually think of it as "street art". It's not exactly legal but I don't think "they" do a darn thing to discourage it or fix it. It's just the way it is here. It's as much a part of Berlin as, like, gamblers in Vegas or jazz music in New Orleans. It is seriously, seriously EV. REE. WHERE.



Anyway, eventually we got to some we've-gone-far-enough point on the west side of the Allee so we crossed over to the east (Ost). Even the cross walk signs are different here:





We stopped in that store called "Rossmann's" you can see above. Easton said, "This could be like our new Walgreens." It's a chain. We browsed around and then bought some bottled waters. It seems everyone buys bottled water here. I think it's "fine" to drink their tap water but at a restaurant or whatever, they always always always bring it to you with a bottle of water and glasses ("still or gas?"). Nein ice. Interesting side note time: the "checkers" all sit down here. And why shouldn't they? But yeah, all the grocery and other store clerks have a little stool. And they don't give you bags for your goods here. You can buy one but you are encouraged to bring your own reusable ones. And they don't bag it for you ever. I knew this coming in. Luckily.

We continued our walk back up the east side of the street. As we got right near our flat, we saw an official photographer guy, 2 assistanty people, and a model. Autumn wanted to stop to watch:



Dalton did not:



Easton wanted to take a picture of me:



Then we had enough and went home for some lunch.

We took it easy that afternoon. I put Frozen on my computer DVD player for the kids. American DVDs won't work in German DVD players.



I unpacked quite a bit and tried my first load of laundry. All the labels of the settings and such are, of course, in German. And the thing is teeny tiny. But I got one going:



It seriously took, like, the whole rest of the day to wash and dry that tiny load. Goodness.

We decided to head back out to our grocery store on our block for some stuff for dinner. We got a "new" loaf of bakery bread to try. Apparently, Germany has more varieties of Brot than any other country. I wish I made a note of the specific kind we tried that night. I thought I'd be able to go back and spot it and figure it out but nope. We'd like to try lots more of the Brot. We also got stuff for Spaghetti for J. Noodles with butter and Parmesan for me and E and headed back home:



We had our very first meal for 5 in our little flat and then headed out for ice cream to finish "filling up" after our not-all-that-exciting dinner:





It wasn't particularly cold or anything, but we thought the kids might get chilly at night in the shade while eating their ice cream. (By the way, how cute is the cobblestone sidewalk in the background???)

Hey, I just noticed this thing doesn't have graffiti:



We stopped in a different grocery store on our way back home that night. I hadn't known about it just yet being only Day 2 and all. :)

Then I think we probably called it a day. We were still giving kids a little melatonin at night to help them adjust and that was Full Day #2.

Through Easton's Eye

He took pictures of me making breakfast our first day here, I didn't realize he took more than just those till I saw them.

Here is that first "morning" (I use the term loosely) through Easton's eyes:







Our kitchen and balcony face an inner courtyard. This is the roof of a yoga studio below. Sometimes if their window is open we can see hands in poses.


You can see part of the glass wall of the elevator here to the left:




Their little table in the kitchen ready for the food:






This is that dresser at the end of our long hall. J's unpacked suitcases are in front of it with random things atop it. I have no idea still if anything is inside it.




The top of our washer/dryer combo thing in our bathroom. I can say that most of it has been relocated to the open shelving at this point. :)

And there ya go! A 9 year old's point of view of his first morning in this foreign land.

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!