Barcelona Blog Day 1 -- Travel Day

One of the things we (mostly me) had been looking forward to with living abroad was how easily we could travel to other parts of Europe. In November, as winter was really starting to settle upon us (which is gloomy, dark, and wet here in Berlin) we thought about heading somewhere sunnier and warmer for "Winter Break" which is the first week of February for Berlin schools. I looked around for various deals and came up with Barcelona. There are tons of places much higher on our "to visit" list, but, for the time of year and budget, Barcelona was a good choice. We'd love to see London, but it's rather pricey and probably even wetter than Berlin at this time of year...not really worth "escaping" to in February for my money. We'd also super love to visit Paris, and if we do that, we'd super love to see Disneyland Paris as part of that trip...again, not really in the budget for the quick get-out-of-Berlin holiday break we had in mind. So, I wanted something "low pressure" (not too much we HAD to see) and south-er. :)

Well, would you believe that I found flights from Berlin to Barcelona for €282.95 TOTAL?!?!? For five of us!! Yes, that's round trip. That's not even 57€ per person (currently that's equal to about $62 USD). Cheaper than a train, by far. Combine that with a fairly decent booking.com rate on a 2 bedroom hotel apartment and all five of us were able to enjoy a 6 night vacation for less than the cost of flying just one of us home to Colorado.

February 3, 2015

Part of scoring the cheap flights was because we chose to travel Tuesday through the following Monday. So yeah, the kids missed the first day back at school after break. That's actually quite frowned upon here in Berlin but guess what: I never asked permission. I actually didn't even call them in absent. And no one called me to check either. Reassuring, no? ;)

Anyway, bright and early Tuesday morning we headed down to our train stop. It was lightly snowing and we walked to the corner to catch the U-bahn for the first leg of our journey. Berlin has two airports. Tegel is the nicer one in town...but the budget airlines fly out of an airport called Schönefeld. And it's on the outskirts of town. So it's about an hour from our flat, actually. 2 trains and a bus. We headed out eating muffins I'd made the night before:


The other way the budget airline stays "budget friendly" is to nickel and dime passengers where they can. So, baggage restrictions. Each passenger is allowed one wee carry on bag. But it's smaller than a typical carry on. EasyJet (the airline we flew) allows 50 cm (19.7 inches) x 40 cm (15.7 inches) x 20 cm (7.9 inches). British Airways (what we moved to Berlin on), for comparison's sake allows 56 cm (22 inches) x 45 cm (18 inches) x 25 cm (10 inches). The big kicker is that, on EasyJet, that's all you're allowed. No "personal item" like a backpack or computer bag or purse. Yep, not even a purse. And definitely no free checked baggage, which is really not surprising these days.

We didn't even own enough tiny carry-ons but our friends let us borrow two and then we used Easton's Angry Birds backpack from school and two small suitcases that we already owned.

Waiting for the train, they run a lot less frequently in the wee hours of the morning. We left before 6 a.m. to make it to the airport for our 8:50 a.m. flight.


Eventually we made it to the airport. Which is a very strange (to us) airport. They don't have a bunch of gates. And they don't tell you your gate until, seriously, like 15 minutes before boarding. So, every single traveler is sort of just there in a big mass waiting for the screens to update. We killed a little time in the bathrooms and gift shop:

(Easton was being a bit of a punk so I cut him out of the picture.)

Finally they posted our gate info and we made the surprisingly long trek to get there. And then the planes all sit out a ways from the building itself.


Before long we were on our 2 hour long journey to Barcelona:


A 57€ ticket is also not going to include "luxuries" such as in-flight drinks or snacks, either. But Dalton is one thirsty dude. Like, all the time (and not easy to be around if he's über-parched). So we had to cave and fork over some money to buy a bottle of water from the flight attendants. But it sure made him happy:


I also had to work on the flight to make sure Autumn didn't get motion sick. We (she and I) were really good about not staring down at her device the whole time. We'd look out the window quite a lot. She actually never felt sick at all...which surprised her when she landed, "Hey, I didn't get goopy!" Hooray!

Once we touched down in Barcelona, we wound our way through the airport to catch the train into town. They only come about every half an hour or so:


But it wasn't too long before we were on our way to the stop closest to our hotel:


It was raining quite a lot and there were many exits from the train (we didn't come up out of the "right" one to be closest to our hotel). Jason stopped a lady to ask for directions but she didn't understand English so I had to suck it up and jump in with my Spanish. I was afraid she'd speak only Catalan and not understand mi español but she totes did and I totally understood her as well. She was extremely friendly (we've gotten used to how things can be in Berlin, I think) and she sort of walked along with us telling me about how the street we were looking for is "muy larga" and part was "aqui por la izquierda" (here to the left) and "allí a la derecha" (there to the right) and what number were we looking for? She got us right to where we needed to be. So friendly. In the rain!

I went to check in. The guy at reception spoke excellent English but told me I needed to leave a 2000€ deposit for incidentals and potential damage. I was like, "Two thousand?! Thousand??" and he was like, "Yes, but we will refund it". Then a little voice from around the corner piped up "two hundred". Whew. The building with the apartments was across the street and a few doors down from the hotel. I think locals even lived in this building. It was big and clean enough.

Autumn's bed was all set up for us:


That is our exact same IKEA couch as we have in our flat at home, just a different color. :)

The light coming from the top right of the picture above is the small kitchen.


Here is the other angle to the dining area and the balcony:


Off to the right there would be the hall to Jason's and my bedroom and the two bathrooms.

The view from the balcony:


The boys shared a room towards the entrance to the flat. Two twin beds:


It was a great set up for a picky eating family of 5. We headed out into the neighborhood for hummus and falafel for lunch. It was excellent and I got to speak more Spanish. We stopped for a few groceries but they didn't have the same sorts of things we were expecting (no vanilla yogurt for one). We came back to a still-cold room so the hotel staff came to check it out, delivered us blankets and we took forever looking at menus online and then we headed out looking for a pizza place. We walked to three different ones. The first was questionable and the other two were closed so we headed to a busy looking "cafeteria" but that was only a bakery. So we stopped at a fruit stand and headed up to eat some dinner with groceries we had in the flat. Jason headed out to buy himself a can of soup. But he doesn't know Spanish. So the lentil soup he bought wasn't vegan. It wasn't even vegetarian. :( Dalton was feeling homesick (for Berlin!) and when I gave the kids showers, we ran out of hot water during Autumn's. But the hotel had delivered us a couple of space heaters and an adorable Google Translated apology note about the heat in the flat. Time for bed. We would put Autumn to sleep in J's part of the bed so we could stay out in the living area with the kitchen and TV without disturbing her and then Jason would carry her to the sofa bed each night.
Day 2 is here.

Barcelona

Gosh, it's been a month now but our family visited Barcelona at the beginning of February.

People in the past have asked, "What are you going to do now that all 3 kids are gone all day?" and the answer is "The same stuff I had to do before...just with fewer kids." Seriously, I'm not taking naps and watching movies or visiting museums. Mondays are spent grocery shopping and running various errands...everything is closed on Sundays so there's lots of catching up to do plus getting stuff for lunches, snacks, and meals for the week. Tuesdays we host small group so it is my day to clean the flat. Wednesdays I participate in (and sometimes host) a women's fellowship. Thursdays is German. Fridays are half days for the kids. Commuting time is nothing to sneeze at. Food prep, dishes, laundry (you can't not do laundry for a day when you've got a family of 5 and a washer/dryer combo the size of 4 towels), school stuff...

That explains, hopefully, why I haven't blogged in so long. Yesterday's blog and this montage are only possible because Dalton has been home sick. Eventually I do hope to blog about Spain, but until then, here's a montage like I love to do:

Acht ist Pracht

I don't even know if that really makes sense in German. Probably it doesn't and no one would ever say it. Probably it's an adverb or something or needs to be attached to some other word or said in some other order. Oh well. Fluent Germans, feel free to laugh at me behind my back. ;) To the rest of you: Acht is eight if you didn't already know/assume that...my kids made the "oct"/acht octopus connection early on.

The obvious title for this post in English would be something like "Eight is Great!" so I was trying to be all clever in German "Acht ist...." but I know all of, like, 5 adjectives auf Deutsch. And the only words that rhyme with "acht" that I could think of were, like, conjugated verbs: macht (make), gemacht (made), bracht (which I think can mean vomit among other things)... So then I was going to be all "eight is wunderbar" and then it suddenly came to me: pracht. There is a café run by Christians here called "Prachtwerk" and I was thinking, "I don't know what the name even means"... ('Magnificent Work' according to Google Translate) and when I typed in "Acht ist Pracht" Mr. Internet told me "Eight is Grand".

Perfect.

And if the internet says so.... well then...

Moving along.

Dalton is eight!


Last Monday the 23rd was our little man's big day. And, by some lucky coincidence, their teachers had some sort of training so the boys didn't have school! Happy birthday to Dalton indeed!

Jason took the day off work and we kept Autumn home from Kita to have an all-about-Dalton day. He woke up to gifts and Dunkin Donuts:


Hey look, it's an 8!


His actual birth time.


This photo op has oft been a tradition for our family, but I wasn't really feeling it this year as it was technically still Sunday the 22nd in Colorado (where he was born) when it was 7:57 a.m. here in Berlin. Oh well.

After breakfast he dug into a few gifts:


And when he had opened them all and was already content with what he had received, Jason whipped out the first clue of a small treasure hunt (we did one for Easton and we knew Dalton was probably hoping for a hunt too). Eight clues for our eight year old. And at the end?! Treasure indeed: his very own iPod Touch!


We thought about taking the kids to a museum for the day but Dalton was perfectly content to check out his iPod, play Xbox with Easton with the new figures he received, and build new Legos. In his jammies. With all his family around. Truly a perfect day for Dalton. I spent part of the day making cupcakes as we had some afternoon fun to look forward to...



We had talked about some possible party ideas for Dalton...we found one that sounded cool but then they said that ALL party guests MUST be at least 8 years old (his closest friend is only 6 and then there's Autumn) and, when they didn't have school, I proposed, "hey, how about we go see a movie with a few friends on your actual birthday?" He loved the idea. He voted for Paddington but it was long gone from theaters here so the only other English version "kid" movie was:


We (me and mein Mann) hate SpongeBob, actually. I have never let the kids watch it. I think it's rubbish. But....whatcha gonna do? They're much older and actually exposed to much "worse" now so SpongeBob "Sponge Head" it was (seriously, that's what 'Schwammkopf' means. How redundant. 'Square Pants' would be something like "quadrathosen" if I'm not mistaken. Anyhoo...).

So, around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, we headed over to the Sony Center where the movies are most often screened "OV" (original version = ENGLISH!). We met our few friends there and settled in with popcorn. The movie was so so. Hardly any of it was "3D". And Jason even nodded off at one point. Shhhhh. ;)


After the movie we hopped on the train with everyone back to our flat. Jason rode one stop further to pick up some pizzas. Dalton showed off and shared his new iPod while we waited for Jason to show up with dinner.


And Murray gave me a hand with the cupcake toppers. I don't use artificial colors in food/frosting so I like to add décor in other ways. I forgot to have Jason print anything at work the week before so I had to hand draw them myself. And then, I stupidly miscounted how many kids we'd have, so Murray saved the day by drawing two more characters for me:




We ate. (Our friend from India asked for ketchup to dip his pizza in.) We sang and had cupcakes and, as the next day was a school day, our friends left. Dalton got a couple of FaceTime calls and a recorded Skype message from family in the States and he went to bed an exhausted and happy camper. After the kids were in bed I had to rally and whipped up some brownies for Dalton to share at school the next day. Brownies are definitely American but everyone liked them (according to Dalton) and Easton's teacher from Ireland (who teaches Dalton something or other) asked if she could have seconds...and Dalton told her no! Ha! He was like, "Well, since there's not enough for everyone to have two..." which is a perfect response had it been another student. I had a big laugh over that. Oh, our Dalton!

Science Party

Easton's birthday was back on the 9th.  Under normal circumstances, we would have a party for him that next weekend.  But being here in Germany, I needed to postpone it a week.  For my sanity.  First there was so much sickness in December that I could hardly get Christmas done, let alone birthday plans just two weeks later.  Second, Easton wanted a science party.  "Ingredients" and supplies are just MUCH harder to find over here.  I needed time. 


I sort of hoped he'd pick the indoor climbing gym option, but no, our little nerd wanted science.  Actually, I love that he loves science so much.  I wish he had chosen such a party back home when I could have done a better job for him.  Mostly he just wanted to blow stuff up.  He's a 10 year old boy, after all. :)


Because it was in our flat, we were limited on how many people he could invite.  He chose 5 friends (plus himself, Dalton, and Autumn) and every one of them made it!



I didn't go overboard. The boys wouldn't have noticed or cared and I certainly didn't need to do it for me or Facebook "likes".



I definitely prefer cupcakes for parties. So much easier than cutting a cake but boy, was it getting tough to shove 10 candles in there without setting his little paper atom on fire! :)



We started off with pizza and the spread I had on the table. I served water and apfelschorle (sparkling apple juice) out of sciencey looking beakers with measurements on the side. Every fruit and veggie was eaten. Yay, international kids! One boy picked up a snap pea to eat, even though he had never tried them and was like, "I'm not sure if I'm eating this correctly." Cuteness. And, I like to hear what everyone over here calls (what we call) "tortilla chips". If I send them in the kids' lunch, classmates are all, "Can I have one of your burritos?" "Can I have one of your nachos?" and my boys think it's the funniest thing. Side note: when we went to a indoor swimming park a few weeks ago, they had "Warm Nachos"...which was just tortilla chips. No cheese sauce. So, anyway, I asked the boys at the party and they said, "Tacos!" and "Nachos!" Tex Mex is certainly not a "thing" over here. Just like the Mexicans are probably all, "Those Gringos call this 'salsa'!" when really 'salsa' is just Spanish for "sauce". Or "pepperoni" here is definitely peppers...if you ordered a pepperoni pizza it would have spicy peppers on top and no meats. Okay, I got way off track. Anyway...being international is enlightening in so many ways.



So after the pizza, we got started on our minimal experiments. Baking soda is even hard to find in a box over here. It's lower strength than we have in the States and it comes in, like, these individual packets. Anyway, I did eventually get a box of Arm and Hammer and made each boy a "Blow up a balloon with science" project. Each boy had a water bottle with vinegar in the bottom and I funneled baking soda into each balloon and attached them to the tops. I brought them out so each boy could lift the balloon to let the baking soda fall into the vinegar and the CO2 that resulted blew up their balloons which they all thought was a hoot. It was a good project to kick things off.



Then we moved on to Elephant Toothpaste. This one required hydrogen peroxide which is not just in every little store like it is at home. At home you could get 3% or so in a big brown bottle for, like, a dollar, right? At any grocery or Walgreens or wherever, right? Or go to a beauty supply shop for 6%. Well, here, I had to ask at a pharmacy. I stopped into one sort of on a whim so I didn't have the German word for it (Wasserstoffperoxid). She didn't understand "hydrogen peroxide" so I wrote down the chemical symbol and she was all, "Oh yes. We have 3%." And a 500 ml (about a pint) container of it was 8€ ( a little more than $9!!!) So, anyway, it would have been nice for each boy to do their own elephant toothpaste, but I wasn't willing to fork over all the money for it. So, I just had them help me out. Easton measured out the H2O2:



Another boy added in the dish soap. Another boy dissolved the yeast in warm water (yeast is another thing you can't just buy in a jar but rather in individual packets ONLY). A fourth boy added it in to the peroxide soap mix. Ta da!



It would have been slightly more festive if I had some food coloring to throw in there but, nope, no liquid food coloring in Germany. I could have bought something that would work, I'm sure, but was it really going to be worth it? I don't know...

We made Oobleck with cornstarch (brought over from the States so I don't know if they have it here) and water which everyone thought was super fun. They played with it for a good long while.



(I made Oobleck when the boys were little(r) and the unexpected texture--it looks and acts like a liquid but you can pick up clumps or "punch" it and it's hard--made Dalton throw up. So he opted out of this one. He has a few small sensory issues like that. "Quirks" his doctor called them, saying they didn't need special attention. Anyway... Getting off track again.)

We also tried to suck a hard boiled egg into a bottle. I had read that Frappacino bottles work well for this. Unfortunately, while we do have those here (!!), they come in plastic bottles. And you definitely need glass for this. A friend had a dressing bottle we thought might work and Jason bought a jar of tomato sauce that we also thought might work. It didn't go quite as we'd hoped (the egg fell apart) but it still sucked it in and the boys thought it was fun enough:



We had some polymer fun by filling a Ziploc bag with water and then poking wooden skewers through it with no leaking. We followed that with some centripetal force fun by spinning coins inside of balloons. They thought that one was pretty nifty too. You can get the coin really going inside there and then you can even gently toss the balloon in the air and the coin keeps on going. One of the coins we used, can't remember if it was the 10 or 20 cent Euro coin, but it made a fun whistling noise which we hypothesized was due to the unique ridges on the coin's edge. They had fun with those for a bit and then we headed outside.



We were going to do the classic "Diet Coke and Mentos" trick, but it didn't work super great. It worked, but was also kind of a flop. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't get a huge bottle of soda. Or maybe because "Diet" here is not the same as "Diet" at home...here it is called, like, "Coke Light". I tried it out with 3 Mentos the day before and thought if I did 6 for the party it would be better. But nope. It was the same. It was basically less impressive than how it would have "exploded" had I shaken it on our walk down the stairs. Oh well. Time to blow up one more thing: a sandwich bag! This used the same baking soda vinegar reaction as our first experiment, but kept on going till the bag popped. Again, it worked but with more of a "pffft" hole at a seam than the explosion the boys were surely hoping for.

Fine then.

Time for cupcakes.

We headed up to sing. Our guests included two German boys who are also fluent in English. One is also fluent in Chinese having spent the last 6 years in Shanghai, the other spent some time in Singapore (but still "only" speaks German and English). Two boys are brothers from Scotland and the 5th boy is from Zimbabwe. We only sang in English, though. I didn't want to make the two boys do a duet in German if they didn't want to.



Poor Autumn and Dalton didn't get spots at the table. They're such good sports about it, though.



Just before it was time to go, I put some M&M's in water. The artificial colors are water soluble, but the white dye for the "M"s is not, so, after a little time in the water, they (the m's) float off the sinking candies up to the surface intact. It wasn't the most exciting but the boys all still thought it was a little nifty. I think it's a good point for Americans especially: ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT PUT THIS IN YOUR BODY!?! :)

I also had a gummy bear experiment happening but it wasn't long enough to shrink or grow gummy bears.

And I had some back up plans for balloon "rocket" races and, if needed, some static electricity fun with some of the leftover cupcake topper papers.

Had we been at home, I also wanted to make "goo" or "slime" but Borax is nowhere to be found over here. Boo. I had to scrap several ideas for those sorts of reasons. Dry ice? Where would I get that??? Not that I can call easily and be like, "Hi do you have dry ice?" or liquid nitrogen would have been fun too. Oh well.

But we didn't end up with any leftover time. The two hours were up and all the punctual Germans were arriving to pick their children up. We ask that people not bring gifts so I didn't feel the need to go overboard with party favors. My kids love them and love to receive them, but as a mom, I find them annoying. So, I let each child have their safety goggles (which they thought were cool) and gave them each a roll of Mentos (thinking it would have been memorable from the Coke--pffffft) and some tiny packs of gummy bears (which I had leftover from the failed gummy bear experiment--again, pffft. I would normally be "against" candy but Gummy Bears are hugely popular here for whatever reason. Hairbo everywhere and I mostly wanted them out of my house. :) )

A few friends brought really sweet cards. I don't know if it's the different cultures, or that these kids have all lived internationally, but one 9 year old showed up complimenting our flat all on his own and he's just got the best manners ever. He's a really cool kid. He wrote this card:



And another made this fun little card:



The other friends drew some special Minecraft pictures as our boys all have that interest in common. Not that our friends at home wouldn't have done similar, for whatever reason, it feels different. Easton's class is really special. There are 16 kids and they are great together. I really don't think any kid is singled out or picked on (not by other students anyway, the teachers are a different story) and they all rally around each other. When one kid was being bullied by a teacher, the other kids all came to me like, "The teacher's doing this and it's not fair!" and sticking up for the kid, putting an arm on his shoulder, saying comforting things. Or one time, Easton's foot got caught when he was jumping off something on the playground making him land flat on his back and so many kids ran to his aid while others ran for help. It's sort of amazing. I have big issues with the school itself: some of the teachers and administration are a mess, but this group of kids and this international environment is really something special. If you have the chance to move abroad, I recommend it.

Turning 10 in Berlin

Yesterday marked one whole decade of Easton.



Our sick, 3 pound 14 ounce (1758 g) preemie who almost didn't make it through his second day of life:


(We are literally saying goodbye forever to him in this picture as he had just gone through a lengthy resuscitation and wasn't very stable but had to be shipped off to the Children's Hospital. The chaplain came and asked if we wanted him baptized, he was truly not expected to survive the journey.)

He made it! With a double dose of life, it seems (most days)!



Double digits. Exciting times for our little man. He, unfortunately, had school on his birthday, despite his January birthday, he's been able to avoid having to go to school on his birthday too often. Luckily Friday's are always short days and we let him start early.

We had agreed to wake the family slightly early so he could open a couple of presents before school. He woke up to this display:



And got to enjoy a doughnut as a special breakfast treat. Of course we sang to him:



Then he got to open a couple of presents. I steered him towards gifts he could enjoy after school while we waited on Jason to finish work. He opened this Lego Technic car from Gramoo:



And a new Skylanders Trap Team guy. Plus he popped a balloon from Paw Paw and Me-Me that contained some birthday cash. The day was off to a good start and we headed off to school. I had baked some chocolate chip cookies for Easton to share with his class and walked him up to his classroom. (I usually bid them adieu at the door to their long climb up to their classes). As soon as we entered the hall, two of the boys sitting there wished him a Happy Birthday. All on their own. Awwww. <3 They were excited about the homemade chocolate chip cookies he brought to share later. I wasn't invited by the teacher to join the class for the cookies as I would have been back home but that's okay.  




Just after 1:00, I headed back to collect the boys. Easton had a good morning and reported that he had been serenaded in English, German, Spanish, French (3 kids), Chinese (2 kids), Russian (1 kid), and "Irish" (the teacher). What a fun perk of going to an International School, eh?! There are some other languages / versions but not all the kids are brave enough to sing them on their own, I guess. I don't blame them. He said they all loved the cookies and wanted seconds (you never know how non-Americans will like such an "American staple" as chocolate chip cookies, you know?). He even shared with the two teachers he doesn't like too much.

We set off across the park to pick up Autumn and headed home for lunch. Easton loves meat but, being vegetarian parents, it's not something he gets to have too often. But I bought him some special baguettes to make him a favorite grilled ham and cheese sandwich for his lunch followed by a yogurt, granola, sliced almond parfait. Then he and Dalton got to dive into some video games as it was pouring rain and hailing outside and we were waiting on Jason for any other special fun. He got a Face Time "call" from his BFF Miles back home. Miles is 8 hours behind in Colorado, of course, but gave E a ring before he headed off to school. This meant a lot to Easton as the night before he had been really upset that he wouldn't get to see any of his old friends on his birthday.

Jason arrived home slightly earlier than usual and Easton opened some more presents.





His last gift required a short hunt with various clues around the flat...10 clues for 10 years...and he was rewarded with Lego Batman 3 which he was super excited about:



He and Dalton jumped right into the new game:



Easton loves seafood, especially crab, but my asking various other Berliners led to the realization that crab is really not available here, especially not in restaurants. Hmmmm. So, then Easton was like, "Okay, how 'bout ravioli". Once again, a search of various menus revealed not a ton of ravioli nearby either. Plus, he was sort of into his video gaming, it was still raining (when is it not lately, though?) and so he picked quesadillas for dinner to be picked up by Jason so he could keep gaming. :) We had a quick dinner, some more chocolate chip cookies with a candle for dessert and let him stay up a little bit late playing his game. He really only stopped to chat with his aunt and cousins who called on Face Time and his Gramoo who called a bit later too. Oh, and a brief pause to re-create this pic from when he was a baby:



We're a good time.

It was a low-key day, for sure, but hopefully he enjoyed it enough. His party isn't until next weekend. He is having a small "science party" here at the house, but man, I'm having a tough time finding experiments we can manage over here in Germany. So many ingredients are hard-to-find or straight-up not available. So, that's why I delayed it by a week. I'm sure I'll post about that eventually too.

Half a Year

Exactly 6 months ago, the kids and I arrived here in Berlin.  This isn't temporary.  We live here.  It's real.  We got Visas.  And driver's licenses.  That's how you know. ;)   


Jason's job was technically on a probationary basis for the first 6 months.  Then either party was allowed to say "never mind".  But now, it's apparently much much harder to lose a job.  We are staying. 


We have found a church.


We have found friends. 


We have found a home.


We have found schools.


We have found our way around.


If I'm being totally honest, I thought we'd be a lot further along with our German.  Especially my three little sponges.  But, nope.  They weren't really exposed to much German till they started school.  But then Easton didn't even have a German teacher till half way through October.  Autumn was only in school for a month or so before Christmas break and her teachers mostly talk to her in English.  These kids don't know nuthin'. :)

I think that Dalton might understand more than he realizes he understands, but I'm not certain.  I know some of his teachers speak to them in German and I assume he follows along to a degree without realizing, "Oh that was in German".  You know?  Like his brain hears it and he just processes it.  But I could be wrong. 


Sometimes they answer us in German.  Without really thinking about it.  Just little things like they didn't quite hear what I said so they'll go, "Was?" (what?)  Or, something will go wrong and they'll be all, "Oh nein!"  (thanks to German Mickey Mouse Clubhouse).  Easton can rock the numbers all the way up into the thousands in German now.  When we arrived, I (and the kids) could count to 11.  That's it!


I definitely find us tuning out less too when we hear German.  Before someone would speak to me and I would look at them blankly all, "Sorry".  Now I can understand a lot more from waiters to grocery clerks to people asking me for directions.  I'll recognize a lot more words here and there.  I got through checking in at a doctor, having blood drawn and an EKG all in German.  I was able to tell a cashier I needed three gift cards and the different amounts to put on the gift cards all in German.  I got through a guy coming to look at some broken windows, schedule a follow up, and give him my new phone number all in German. 


But still, I had higher expectations language-wise. 


Now that we live in the former west, people really do all seem to speak some English.  It's funny because you can ask, "Do you speak English?" and they'll be all, "A little".  Except "a little" means, "I understand everything you say and might just sound a little awkward and feel uncomfortable responding to you".  If I say I speak a little Spanish, I really do mean a little.  And I've learned that even now that I know a little German, if I say that to a German, they think that means the same as their "a little" bit of English.  So, I just say no German. We have neighbors, teachers, and such that know " a little" English and they can completely communicate except they'll get stuck on the random word.  Like "stroller".  Or, Autumn's teacher got stuck on "cake" or "pretzel".  The other teacher couldn't think of "change" as in diaper.  (Lucky for me, I know all those in German.)  The kids' doctor got stuck on "standard deviation".  You know, I think even native English speakers get tripped up with that one. ;) 


Anyway, I'm pleased with how we're doing here overall.  The kids especially.  The novelty has started to wear off and we're still doing okay.  Jason went to Munich for work recently and realized he was ready to come "home"...to Berlin. 


Berlin is home. 


Wow.

Silvester

Happy New Year's Eve, folks.  Or "Silvester" as it is known here.  An expat friend clued me in on that odd name a couple of months ago and I had to look into it because, well...huh?!?  Who?!? Why?!? I discovered it's named for Saint Sylvester, some old pope dude.  I guess he died on December 31st so today is his feast day.  Lucky Sly.


(Fun Fact: Our Scottish friends call New Year's Eve "Hogmanay". Who knew?! We're becoming so worldly.)


Silvester is HUGE here.  I had been warned.  Mostly from families with young kids like ours who have been here for New Year's Eve in the past and have resolved to get out of this town because it is crazy.  It is only 8:30 p.m. here and I understand why. 


Madness.  It sounds like a war out there. 


Fireworks are legal tonight and they started selling them everywhere as soon as Christmas was over.  You don't have to go to the border of the city limits to purchase them on the down low like "we" (not me) did at home.  You just impulse-buy them in line at the grocery store.  Big ones.  And now everyone and their mother is shooting them off all over town.  Some folks just across the street out our living room window have these gigantic, legit, you-see-the-same-ones-at-a-fireworks-show fireworks that they've been lighting all evening.  I wonder how much money they've blown up so far. 


I'm already planning where I'm going next year.  I'm not staying here for this.  Midnight is hours away yet. 


We've never really been big New Year's Eve people.  The kids at 9, 7, and 5 don't seem super excited about the idea of staying up till midnight yet.  And I sure don't.  I'm old and boring.  Maybe when they're a bit older, maybe when they learn they beauty of "sleeping in" we can celebrate a Berlin Silvester.  But next year?  I'm outta here.  I just sat here laughing with Jason after we tucked the kids into bed tonight.  It's almost unbelievable how noisy it is, and I knew we wouldn't believe it till we "saw" it.  Well now we know.  Lesson learned.


Jason's boss was mentioning to me at the Christmas party that their office is a popular spot on New Year's Eve.  It's on the 10th floor with a great view and floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall windows.  You could see the happs all across Berlin from there.



Now that I have an idea just how hard sleeping might be tonight, I sort of wish we had made plans to head over there. Although we have also been warned to "stay inside" because of all these crazy people just shooting fireworks around all willy nilly, it's not necessarily safe.  And the crowds, I'm sure.  My small children could easily be trampled as we nearly learned at the Fall of the Wall celebration in November.


Fourth of July, an obvious day for pyrotechnics, for example, was annoying back home in the 'burbs where fireworks are illegal.  Facebook friends were always all, "Won't my [one set] of neighbors with the teenagers stop shooting off fireworks so I can go to sleep?  It's 11:00 p.m.  My dog is scared."  Peeps, I live in the city now.  A huge city.  A "young" city (duh, Berlin is super old, it's just full of all these young, vibrant people.)  Where fireworks are not illegal today.  And the real fireworks displays won't start until midnight.  It's going to be insane.  I mean, I was here for the World Cup win.  This is going to be so much more!!!  It already is.  Aaaaaaah! 


The Hoff is here tonight, singing at the Brandenburg Gate. 

You know how the Germans love Hoff.  (What's not to love, really? ;) )  They're all down at the Tor right now being all, "It's going to be legend --wait for it-- DARY!"


2015 is still hours away and I can only imagine how crazy loud it's going to get then. 


Friends, I'm scared. :)


But Happy New Year!  Oh wait, I'm in Germany: Frohes neues Jahr!!!  2014 was such a huge year for our family, I'm excited to see what 2015 has in store.  Once the madness of tonight is over. 

Stay tuned.