Last night we had a couple friends over to help us eat some of our Thanksgiving leftovers and light our first Advent candle. There were no other kids at the house, so Vigo was stuck hanging out with grown ups. He was very sweet and charming, and he even sang some Christmas songs with us around the Advent wreath.
When Vigo was in bed and I was turning off his light for the night, I told him that I was really proud of how nice he had been with the guests. He said, "Yeah... sometimes nice gets more respect than cool."
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Summer Vacation in the Harz
In August, we decided to go check out the Harz Mountains, which are only about three hours from Berlin. I'd love to get Vigo skiing again this winter, and these mountains would be our closest, easiest option. We want to explore Germany a lot more this year and Vigo is very interested in the Middle Ages, so the main focus of the trip was to see ruins of old castles. Vigo and Erik spent part of the train ride from Berlin to Bad Sachsa, looking for castle ruins on the map.
Our vacation rental apartment was fine. The best thing about it was the sauna in the basement. We bought some Deutschmarks from the landlady to use in the sauna controls. For about 1,50 Euros per night, we were sauna-ed to satisfaction. Vigo apprecaited the television. He slept on the sofa bed in the living room and got to watch cartoons on low volume until breakfast every day.
There wasn't much to explore in Bad Sachsa itself, but we spent the first couple days checking out all of the sights that were within walking distance.
The first castle ruin we hiked to was Scharzfels. This castle was built in the 10th or 11th century. Like most castles in this part of Germany, it was demolished by the French during the Seven Years War in the 18th century. The stairs up to the top of the ruin are pretty recent. Once you get up to the top, you have a great view of the area. All of the castles we visited were properly ruined for Vigo's taste. He was very disappointed last year when we visited Wartburg Castle and found it entirely intact.
Just a short walk from the castle, there is an impressive cave, called Einhornhöhle. That means Unicorn Cave. It's the biggest cave in the region, and the guided tour is well worth taking. The guide explains how the cave was formed and how it has been used by Neanderthals, Humans, cave bears, and other animals for millenia. The cave is full of bones, especially from the last ice age. One room of the cave is covered in graffiti, all written in remarkable old-fashioned print or calligraphy fonts. It used to be the done thing when visiting the cave to write your name on the wall in this room. Goethe's name is there, we were informed. Unfortunately, we aren't allowed to take photos inside the cave, so the only photo I can show is one I found on the website of a vacation rental.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is responsible for the cave's name. Apparently a better mathematician than biologist, he believed that they had discovered unicorn bones in the cave. The unicorn skeleton which convinced Leibniz had long front legs and a small wheel at the end of its spine. Yes, a small wheel. It had been reconstructed by the mayor of Magdeburg from various prehistoric mammal bones, plus a narwhale tooth.
Leibniz, who was a pretty good businessman, made this cave famous for its unicorn bones and supplemented his mining income selling various tinctures of unicorn-bone powder all over Europe.
The next day we went to explore the dwarf caves and another little ruin Vigo had spotted on our hiking map.
The brick work in the remains of this old tower was pretty interesting.
The dwarf caves are pretty cool. They are just big enough for Vigo to sit up inside.
After a few days of hiking around and exploring the nearby villages and sights, Erik took a train to the next slightly larger town and rented us this car. Those of you who know Erik well will be aware of the fact that Erik hates to look like a tourist. This car blew his cover, though I'm pretty sure every single person in Bad Sachsa personally knows every other person in the town by name, so we weren't fooling anyone.
We took this ambulant advertisement to visit a farther-off ruin which Vigo had found out about on the internet before going on vacation. Burg Hohnstein has a lot of its walls still standing, and much of it has been reconstructed or repaired. You really get a sense here of how uncomfortable and unpleasant it must have been staying there. These are military fortresses, not luxurious palaces.
Vigo and I did a photo series there pretending to be various medieval caslte charcters.
The Thief
The Knight
The Prince/Princess
The Peasant
This castle also had a great view, of course. You can see in this picture that we had pretty iffy weather. It was raining on and off for the whole trip.
The next day, we visited Kyffhäuserdenkmal and the castle ruins it was built upon. This impressive monument was built in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm to express the opinion of Prussians that Wilhelm was the legitimate successor to the German empire, in direct (spiritual) lineage with the medieval king Barbarossa. The whole affair is basically a bombastic love poem to Germany's military strength. Here you see Barbarossa slouching at the base of the monument. This was my favorite part of the sculpture. He looks like some slovenly Greek god, and there is a nice little chasm of raw stones preventing you from getting too close.
The monument was on the Soviet side during the DDR times. The Soviets famously decided not to touch this site, stating that the Germans must learn to live with their history and their monuments.
The monument is connected to two castle ruins. One of them boasts the deepest castle well in the world. The tourist attraction connected to this well is a machine where you can buy Barbarossa's gall stones in order to wake the ghost of the well. You have to roll the precisely-sized stone through a special hole in the well cover. As it falls, it triggers a recording of the ghost. There are three or four sad, comical statements which play in rotation.
On a lot of the tourist sites we visited, we saw signs warning us that we were in mortal danger if we failed to follow posted rules. Vigo and I found these signs kind of hilarious in their overstatement.
I am going to guess that you are starting to be as bored of castle ruins now as I was by the time we got to this place, so I'll just post the pictures of the view and the half-standing walls without further comment.
My favorite part of the vacation came on our last day, when we drove to Shierke and took the narrow-gauge railway up to the top of the highest mountain in the region, the Brocken. The Harzquerbahn has been running since 1897. It was fun standing on the back deck of the old train car, listening to the sound of the machine on the track. When we got to the top of the mountain, it was cold and foggy.
After the train ride, we had enough time to visit one of the other major caves. Baumann's Cave has a theater inside, named after Goethe, where you could see a performance of Little Red Riding Hood, if you were so inclined.
The best thing about the cave are the stalagmites and stalagtites. This cave has been a tourist attraction since the 1500s, so it's got orderly paths and lots of fancy lighting. I felt a little twinge of sadness thinking of all the stalagmites they cleared away to put in those stairs and walkways.
As with the other big cave, no photos were allowed. Interestingly, the guide at Baumann's also claimed that the cave was the largest in the region. Probably depends how you measure it.
Here's a postcard I found online.
We caught our train home on Sunday, the last day before the new school year started.
If you want to see all of the photos from this vacation, you will find them here
Our vacation rental apartment was fine. The best thing about it was the sauna in the basement. We bought some Deutschmarks from the landlady to use in the sauna controls. For about 1,50 Euros per night, we were sauna-ed to satisfaction. Vigo apprecaited the television. He slept on the sofa bed in the living room and got to watch cartoons on low volume until breakfast every day.
There wasn't much to explore in Bad Sachsa itself, but we spent the first couple days checking out all of the sights that were within walking distance.
The first castle ruin we hiked to was Scharzfels. This castle was built in the 10th or 11th century. Like most castles in this part of Germany, it was demolished by the French during the Seven Years War in the 18th century. The stairs up to the top of the ruin are pretty recent. Once you get up to the top, you have a great view of the area. All of the castles we visited were properly ruined for Vigo's taste. He was very disappointed last year when we visited Wartburg Castle and found it entirely intact.
Just a short walk from the castle, there is an impressive cave, called Einhornhöhle. That means Unicorn Cave. It's the biggest cave in the region, and the guided tour is well worth taking. The guide explains how the cave was formed and how it has been used by Neanderthals, Humans, cave bears, and other animals for millenia. The cave is full of bones, especially from the last ice age. One room of the cave is covered in graffiti, all written in remarkable old-fashioned print or calligraphy fonts. It used to be the done thing when visiting the cave to write your name on the wall in this room. Goethe's name is there, we were informed. Unfortunately, we aren't allowed to take photos inside the cave, so the only photo I can show is one I found on the website of a vacation rental.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is responsible for the cave's name. Apparently a better mathematician than biologist, he believed that they had discovered unicorn bones in the cave. The unicorn skeleton which convinced Leibniz had long front legs and a small wheel at the end of its spine. Yes, a small wheel. It had been reconstructed by the mayor of Magdeburg from various prehistoric mammal bones, plus a narwhale tooth.
Leibniz, who was a pretty good businessman, made this cave famous for its unicorn bones and supplemented his mining income selling various tinctures of unicorn-bone powder all over Europe.
The next day we went to explore the dwarf caves and another little ruin Vigo had spotted on our hiking map.
The brick work in the remains of this old tower was pretty interesting.
The dwarf caves are pretty cool. They are just big enough for Vigo to sit up inside.
After a few days of hiking around and exploring the nearby villages and sights, Erik took a train to the next slightly larger town and rented us this car. Those of you who know Erik well will be aware of the fact that Erik hates to look like a tourist. This car blew his cover, though I'm pretty sure every single person in Bad Sachsa personally knows every other person in the town by name, so we weren't fooling anyone.
We took this ambulant advertisement to visit a farther-off ruin which Vigo had found out about on the internet before going on vacation. Burg Hohnstein has a lot of its walls still standing, and much of it has been reconstructed or repaired. You really get a sense here of how uncomfortable and unpleasant it must have been staying there. These are military fortresses, not luxurious palaces.
Vigo and I did a photo series there pretending to be various medieval caslte charcters.
The Thief
The Knight
The Prince/Princess
The Peasant
This castle also had a great view, of course. You can see in this picture that we had pretty iffy weather. It was raining on and off for the whole trip.
The next day, we visited Kyffhäuserdenkmal and the castle ruins it was built upon. This impressive monument was built in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm to express the opinion of Prussians that Wilhelm was the legitimate successor to the German empire, in direct (spiritual) lineage with the medieval king Barbarossa. The whole affair is basically a bombastic love poem to Germany's military strength. Here you see Barbarossa slouching at the base of the monument. This was my favorite part of the sculpture. He looks like some slovenly Greek god, and there is a nice little chasm of raw stones preventing you from getting too close.
The monument was on the Soviet side during the DDR times. The Soviets famously decided not to touch this site, stating that the Germans must learn to live with their history and their monuments.
The monument is connected to two castle ruins. One of them boasts the deepest castle well in the world. The tourist attraction connected to this well is a machine where you can buy Barbarossa's gall stones in order to wake the ghost of the well. You have to roll the precisely-sized stone through a special hole in the well cover. As it falls, it triggers a recording of the ghost. There are three or four sad, comical statements which play in rotation.
On a lot of the tourist sites we visited, we saw signs warning us that we were in mortal danger if we failed to follow posted rules. Vigo and I found these signs kind of hilarious in their overstatement.
I am going to guess that you are starting to be as bored of castle ruins now as I was by the time we got to this place, so I'll just post the pictures of the view and the half-standing walls without further comment.
My favorite part of the vacation came on our last day, when we drove to Shierke and took the narrow-gauge railway up to the top of the highest mountain in the region, the Brocken. The Harzquerbahn has been running since 1897. It was fun standing on the back deck of the old train car, listening to the sound of the machine on the track. When we got to the top of the mountain, it was cold and foggy.
After the train ride, we had enough time to visit one of the other major caves. Baumann's Cave has a theater inside, named after Goethe, where you could see a performance of Little Red Riding Hood, if you were so inclined.
The best thing about the cave are the stalagmites and stalagtites. This cave has been a tourist attraction since the 1500s, so it's got orderly paths and lots of fancy lighting. I felt a little twinge of sadness thinking of all the stalagmites they cleared away to put in those stairs and walkways.
As with the other big cave, no photos were allowed. Interestingly, the guide at Baumann's also claimed that the cave was the largest in the region. Probably depends how you measure it.
Here's a postcard I found online.
We caught our train home on Sunday, the last day before the new school year started.
If you want to see all of the photos from this vacation, you will find them here
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Birthday Party
We finally got around to celebrating Vigo's birthday yesterday. He invited 9 friends for a movie and Indian food. We went to see Rango (in German).
Most of the kids met up with us at our house and at about 1:30 and we walked across the Volkspark Friedrichshain to the Kino. We met up with a couple other people there, got a couple giant bags of popcorn, and enjoyed the show.
After the movie, we walked to the grocery store to get some drinks for our after-movie snack and the boys ran around the park for about an hour. Our dinner reservation was at 7.
We went to Vigo's current favorite Indian restaurant, Chandni. Unfortunately, it took them a full hour to give us our food. The appetizers actually came after the main course. We were starving! The boys showed great patience and didn't even complain too much. We ate loads of chicken curry and everyone left too stuffed to eat Erik's beautiful cake. We've been eating it for breakfast.
It was a great party. Personally, I much preferred it to last year's "stay up all night" party.
Most of the kids met up with us at our house and at about 1:30 and we walked across the Volkspark Friedrichshain to the Kino. We met up with a couple other people there, got a couple giant bags of popcorn, and enjoyed the show.
After the movie, we walked to the grocery store to get some drinks for our after-movie snack and the boys ran around the park for about an hour. Our dinner reservation was at 7.
We went to Vigo's current favorite Indian restaurant, Chandni. Unfortunately, it took them a full hour to give us our food. The appetizers actually came after the main course. We were starving! The boys showed great patience and didn't even complain too much. We ate loads of chicken curry and everyone left too stuffed to eat Erik's beautiful cake. We've been eating it for breakfast.
It was a great party. Personally, I much preferred it to last year's "stay up all night" party.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Stranger Danger Play
Vigo's class did a really interesting project. Working with the police and a local theater group, they performed a play about how to handle inappropriate advances from grown ups. It was a very well-done bit of work. It included not only strangers, but also the babysitter and the Karate coach. The main message of the play was, "trust your gut feelings."
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Bathtime Language Lesson
I was hanging out with Vigo at bath time tonight. He started asking me if I knew what some crazy-sounding words meant. I did my best to guess, but I was doing terrible. There are about 25 different nationalities of kids at his school, so I asked him which language these words came from.
"The ancient langauge," he replied.
"Which one? There are a lot of ancient languages."
"Elvish."
"The ancient langauge," he replied.
"Which one? There are a lot of ancient languages."
"Elvish."
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Vigo worked like a champ
Enough productive weekends like this and we might be able to move in there before the end of Spring. This was last weekend. Iris and Hartmut came to help us out.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
18. Internationales Elbe-Saale-Camp, Day 1
For the last couple days of my vacation in July, I took Vigo and his friend Kiran camping for one night in Saxon Anhalt. Iris had sent us some information about the River Festival she was participating in and we decided to go and join for a night.
We packed up our little tent and sleeping bags, grabbed our inflatable boat, and packed everything onto our bikes. Erik just found himself a cargo bike on Craigslist, which made lugging all this stuff possible.
The boys and I managed to get ourselves onto the 9:00 train from Alexanderplatz on Saturday morning and rode to Magdeburg, where we barely made our change. We had an excellent tip from Iris about getting off at Gnadau instead of Shönebeck. Schönebeck was 12 kilometers from the town of Barby (near the camp) while Gnadau was only 7.
The weather report had been forecasting rain and wind for the region for the whole weekend, so we were all geared up with rain boots and ponchos, ready to brave the elements. When we got off the train in Gnadau, we were excited to see a partly cloudy sky and not a raindrop in sight. We changed out of our rain boots, repacked our bikes, and looked at our gps coordinates, compass, and map.
According to the map, we just needed to keep going West and South and we would eventually hit either the Elbe River or the Saale. To the southwest of us was a vast expanse of corn and wheat fields, with dirt tractor roads running between them. So, off we went between the fields. Every time we got to a fork in the road we would check our bearings again to figure out which way to go, until eventually we hit a paved road with a bike path next to it. There was an arrow-shaped sign planted there, reading "Barby 4km."
We took our time biking the last few kilometers. We could tell the threat of rain was an empty one. In Barby we stopped at the store to get some extra food and when we got to the camp we were greeted by Jutta, the event organizer, who had been expecting us. She told us to plant our tents wherever we liked in the camping area and we set off to find a good spot. The boys picked a place between two trees, thinking that we might want to put up our tarp in case it did start raining in the night.
Once everything was all set up, we went over to meet some more of our fellow campers and to explore the river banks. Iris was out on her impressive inflatable boat, paddling a group of people on a tour of the Elbe. When she got back, I went to meet her. Then we fetched the boys, who were playing a game in the tent, and soon it was time for a big camp dinner.
Vigo and Kiran were eager to get the campfire going. They were shown the fire pit and the wood pile, but asked to wait until it started to get dark. Instead of starting a fire, we blew up our Red Leviathan (that is the name of our inflatable boat) and played in a sheltered bay on the river, behind a little point, where the current wasn't flowing. The river was high and the current was really fast. Both boys would have liked to have floated our boat down river for a while on the fast current, but I would have had to swim alongside and I didn't want to have to be responsible for fishing the two of them out of the current if the boat got knocked over.
The boys were impressed by Iris's giant inflatable Red Army boat, a survivor from the East German days. It easily holds more than a dozen people. The Elbe River association, which she works for, uses it to give tours of the river and to educate people about the ecological and political battles that need to be fought to protect it.
When we came back from exploring the river, we noticed that our tent was looking a bit battered by the wind, and indeed one of our tent poles had snapped. Luckily for us, the camp was full of resourceful, helpful people and soon we had the pole repaired with tape and a metal cylinder. We moved to a more sheltered spot to avoid the wind and it held up the night.
The event organizers went out to a Bulgarian restaurant in Barby for supper that evening, but we were still full from our big, late lunch, so we decided to stay at camp and get the fire going. We had a big blaze roaring by the time everyone got back, and half a bag of marshmallows left. Our fellow campers were glad to see the fire and the boys felt pretty proud of themselves when they heard people pull into camp on their bikes and say "Oh! Look! The campfire!" We had a beautiful sunset behind us, the river to the right, and a big, fat full moon just over the horizon. The baby storks were standing on the edge of their nest clacking their beaks and it felt like the end of a perfect day.
(Next post... Elbe-Saale Camp Day 2)
We packed up our little tent and sleeping bags, grabbed our inflatable boat, and packed everything onto our bikes. Erik just found himself a cargo bike on Craigslist, which made lugging all this stuff possible.
The boys and I managed to get ourselves onto the 9:00 train from Alexanderplatz on Saturday morning and rode to Magdeburg, where we barely made our change. We had an excellent tip from Iris about getting off at Gnadau instead of Shönebeck. Schönebeck was 12 kilometers from the town of Barby (near the camp) while Gnadau was only 7.
The weather report had been forecasting rain and wind for the region for the whole weekend, so we were all geared up with rain boots and ponchos, ready to brave the elements. When we got off the train in Gnadau, we were excited to see a partly cloudy sky and not a raindrop in sight. We changed out of our rain boots, repacked our bikes, and looked at our gps coordinates, compass, and map.
According to the map, we just needed to keep going West and South and we would eventually hit either the Elbe River or the Saale. To the southwest of us was a vast expanse of corn and wheat fields, with dirt tractor roads running between them. So, off we went between the fields. Every time we got to a fork in the road we would check our bearings again to figure out which way to go, until eventually we hit a paved road with a bike path next to it. There was an arrow-shaped sign planted there, reading "Barby 4km."
We took our time biking the last few kilometers. We could tell the threat of rain was an empty one. In Barby we stopped at the store to get some extra food and when we got to the camp we were greeted by Jutta, the event organizer, who had been expecting us. She told us to plant our tents wherever we liked in the camping area and we set off to find a good spot. The boys picked a place between two trees, thinking that we might want to put up our tarp in case it did start raining in the night.
Once everything was all set up, we went over to meet some more of our fellow campers and to explore the river banks. Iris was out on her impressive inflatable boat, paddling a group of people on a tour of the Elbe. When she got back, I went to meet her. Then we fetched the boys, who were playing a game in the tent, and soon it was time for a big camp dinner.
Vigo and Kiran were eager to get the campfire going. They were shown the fire pit and the wood pile, but asked to wait until it started to get dark. Instead of starting a fire, we blew up our Red Leviathan (that is the name of our inflatable boat) and played in a sheltered bay on the river, behind a little point, where the current wasn't flowing. The river was high and the current was really fast. Both boys would have liked to have floated our boat down river for a while on the fast current, but I would have had to swim alongside and I didn't want to have to be responsible for fishing the two of them out of the current if the boat got knocked over.
The boys were impressed by Iris's giant inflatable Red Army boat, a survivor from the East German days. It easily holds more than a dozen people. The Elbe River association, which she works for, uses it to give tours of the river and to educate people about the ecological and political battles that need to be fought to protect it.
When we came back from exploring the river, we noticed that our tent was looking a bit battered by the wind, and indeed one of our tent poles had snapped. Luckily for us, the camp was full of resourceful, helpful people and soon we had the pole repaired with tape and a metal cylinder. We moved to a more sheltered spot to avoid the wind and it held up the night.
The event organizers went out to a Bulgarian restaurant in Barby for supper that evening, but we were still full from our big, late lunch, so we decided to stay at camp and get the fire going. We had a big blaze roaring by the time everyone got back, and half a bag of marshmallows left. Our fellow campers were glad to see the fire and the boys felt pretty proud of themselves when they heard people pull into camp on their bikes and say "Oh! Look! The campfire!" We had a beautiful sunset behind us, the river to the right, and a big, fat full moon just over the horizon. The baby storks were standing on the edge of their nest clacking their beaks and it felt like the end of a perfect day.
(Next post... Elbe-Saale Camp Day 2)
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