We are home!

Elias, Matthew, and I made it back home safely. We are a little bit worse for the wear, but Elias is happy and did great on the flight. We are hoping to be adjusted back to German time in a few days, but with the jet lag we may actually be able to stay awake for the change over to the new year (we will be happy to provide insight as to how 2007 is going to go as we will be entering that year 6 hours ahead of you).

We will post photos of our Christmas in Baltimore soon (including a picture of Elias meeting his great grandparents Powell).

For now here is a picture of Elias in his new bathrobe adjusting to the time change in Baltimore.

Elias and Matt

Playtime

Elias has really begun to enjoy playing on the floor with his toys.

What Time is it in Frankfurt?

Time to go back for Christmas! We'll be there December 20-28th.

Frankfurt

Elias meets Santa

We took Elias to the mall to see Santa. The German Santa Claus is much thinner than the American one, but that is true of most German people. Jenny had me look up the stats on this. 14% of Germans are obese, compared to a whopping 32% of Americans. Even though Germans and Americans have the same average height, American men weigh 10 lbs more than German men--but the real burden is being carried (I guess literally) by American women, who on average weigh 15 lbs more than German women. It would be hard to say they aren't pulling their weight. Poor Santa must have to stuff himself on doener kebaps and beer to become portly enough for his arrival in America.

As long as we are talking numbers, one very noticeable thing about living here are the short days. Sunrise isn't until after 8am, and sunset is around 4pm. I looked this up, and right now we have 1.5 less hours of daylight each day compared to Baltimore. And the Sun is much lower in the sky at noon. Frankfurt is at 50 degrees North latitude! That's farther north than Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. In comparison, Baltimore is at a lower latitude than Madrid. But the climate is pretty mild and we haven't had snow yet.

Although we aren't looking forward to the plane ride or jet lag, we are looking forward to seeing everyone at Christmas. We probably should have had everyone over here, the Germans do Christmas so well. December 6 is Saint Nicholas' Day, when children get candy in their shoes. [Jenny's note: I vaguely remember trying to get this holiday celebrated in my house one year, but I guess St. Nicholas doesn't have time to fill American shoes. [Matt's note: who can?]] One scary thing about Christmas here is Knecht Ruprecht, who travels with Santa. I found a picture of him on Wikipedia:


He whips children who misbehaved during the year (Crystal???). I guess the underweight German Santa needs back-up.

We have been regularly visiting the Christmas markets to get into the Christmas spirits--hot spiced wine of all flavors (cherry wine, blackberry wine, etc.) and feuerzangenbowle, hot wine with flamed rum. We haven't gotten any photos of the Christmas market yet because it's too crowded, but we will try. They are a sight.

A rose by any other name...

The flower lady at the farmer's market gave Elias a rose. Not sure it would taste good, although Elias seems to think so. Elias is definitely not a food connoisseur as of yet, but he does enjoy putting things into his mouth.

Elias' 4 month check up went well. The German doctor was a bit gruff, but said that Elias is doing fine. Elias got vaccinated and put on a vitamin D supplement. I was told that I could begin him on solid foods whenever I wished. Matt and I began feeding him rice cereal last week. He likes it okay. We are thinking about trying him out on some vegetables in the next few days.

Eating Rice Cereal for the First Time

A longer post on this on this later. ("Dienstag" means Tuesday.) We have video of him eating. And video of him rolling over, front to back! He's still working on back to front. He tips most of the way over but can't get his arm out to complete the roll. Give him a week and he'll have it.

The Powells of Hampden pay a visit

Well, we had a very fun and exciting week with Mike, Tracey, and Tucker. No Michael Braden, but he was always in our thoughts.

The cousins met again and were even mildly aware of each other this time.

We did a lot of sight seeing, grilled meat eating, and beer drinking. Three of our favorite things to do in Germany.

We visited the town of Bacharach and toured a castle and some cathedral ruins.

There were also some other sights in the town that piqued our interest...

We even ventured to Baden-Baden (Baths-Baths), a town south of Frankfurt on the edge of the Black Forest and the border of France. Where as you can guess there are bath houses (of the nude and not so nude variety). Mike and Tracey paid a visit to one of the bath houses (they did bring bathing suits). [Matt's note: which they didn't use....] Fall came a little later over here, so there were beautiful fall trees to gaze upon.

All around it was a nice trip. Our boys did very well on the train rides.

They only melted down on the last leg of our journey, whereby we each blocked a train exit with a crying child. If one of our goals is to leave a lasting impression here, that may have done it!

In other news, Elias ate solid food (rice cereal) for the first time yesterday. We think it went rather well. He seemed to enjoy it. We will post pictures and video of that soon. We also have some video of Tucker and Elias that we will put up ... eventually.

Happy Thanksgiving!

No turkey here, of course. We had crepes from the Christmas market. Delicious, delicious nutella and banana crepes.

We'll post pics and video from Mike, Tracey, and Tucker's visit soon. To tide you over, here's one of Tracey and Tucker overlooking Baden-Baden.

"all i see is eli eli eli but no eric"

Video: Life So Far

Visit to the Art Gallery

Although art museums are not really our thing, the Staedel Museum in Frankfurt is a pretty big deal and it was cold and raining on Sunday. So we went. And it actually was fairly nice. Elias slept through the Old Masters and didn't wake up until Expressionism. We saw a bunch of paintings that reminded us of family: Vermeer's "The Geographer" for Mike; and for Jim, Manet's "The Croquet Party". (I will let the rest of you puzzle that out: Jim knows why.) Jenny thought Boticelli's "Ideal Portrait of a Woman" looked like Kate Winslet. And it was nice to see that even in Monet's paintings, the babies leave their toys all over the floor (from "The Luncheon").

There were a lot of paintings by a German artist Max Beckmann, who lived in Frankfurt for a while. We liked his paintings and thought they captured Frankfurt well. We stole two from the web to post here, but in fairness if we were allowed to bring in a camera, we would have had our own photos. The one in color above is the Eiserner Steg pedestrian bridge over the Main River. The sketch below is also the Main River, which cuts through Frankfurt.

Halloween

Here are two quick pics of Elias in his Halloween costume. He's a tourist (inspired by Aunt Megan). Halloween is not really celebrated here, well at least not anywhere that we saw. We saw three young girls dressed as witches visiting the bakeries on Leipziger, but that was it. Matt, Elias, and I celebrated by eating American candy, dressing Elias up, and carving a pumpkin. It was fun.

Video! Three Minutes of Joy

Well, we have finally progressed from being luddites to merely technophobes. Hopefully this video posting will work...



[Oct 29 update:] Did it? No, it probably didn't, because I had to change some YouTube settings. But it should work now. And the file is now much smaller, so it should download and play faster. It is still worth the wait.

Lions and Monkeys and Rhinos (and Castles), Oh My!

Hola amigos! (We bought that shirt here in Germany.)

It took us some time to settle in to our new apartment. It needed a good cleaning, and of course the move meant another trip to the registration office and the perils of German bureaucracy. The apartment is small but seems large compared to our last place. It's in a nice part of town, Westend, and we found what may be the best bakery yet, Mayer’s, close by. We’ll post some pictures of the neighborhood soon.

The nearest subway stop is a five minute walk. We have monthly passes now so we can come and go as we please, even if it's only to ride to the next stop down the line. Elias is a little hobo! He loves trains. Sometimes when he gets cranky, we take him out just to ride the subway. But he absolutely does not like wind blowing on his face, so when the train first enters the station he starts hooting.

Two weekends ago we went to the Frankfurt Zoo. It was a great zoo. Elias enjoyed the few parts he was awake for, especially the baboons. We actually saw lions, which unlike the Baltimore Zoo were not caged, but pretty much right across a moat (can’t lions swim?).















Here’s Elias at the zoo:














Last weekend we rented a car and went to the Rhine valley to see some castles and vineyards. There are castles about every mile or so; here’s a view of Burg Maus (Burg Katz is just upriver…) on a misty Saturday morning. The castles are on cliffs above the river, but don’t project above the surrounding mountains so that they were hidden from invading armies. Our favorite was the Rheinfels castle ruins. Elias liked it too, since he could nurse in (what used to be) a castle courtyard.




















That's Jenny on the castle wall...
















The valley walls above the Rhine river are steep and covered with vineyards. Most wines made in the Rhine valley are white wines (they’re good, although I also continue to research the local beer). Here’s a view of the Rhine valley from the turret of Rheinfels castle (Burg Maus in the background):











And a view of the slopes across the river from Rheinstein castle:











Above the town of Bacharach are the ruins of Werner Chapel, which was built in 1293 and fell into ruin in the late 1600s. Victor Hugo wrote about it in 1842: “No doors, no roof or windows, a magnificent skeleton puts its silhouette against the sky. Above it, the ivy-covered castle ruins provide a fitting crown. This is Bacharach, land of fairy tales, covered with legends and sagas.” The castle above the town has been rehabbed into a youth hostel.
















Elias continues to grow and be cheerful. He is babbling more and more each day.









He drools a lot and loves sucking on his hands. All the child-raising books say you can’t tell what the eye color will be yet, but we think his eyes are turning brown. We don’t have a play chair for him, so he sits in his car seat with a foam pad. Very ghetto.















Jim, we bought Jamie Oliver’s new Italian cookbook and it’s fantastic—you should get it. Probably his best yet. And it’s good for bedtime stories:











We have an internet connection in our apartment now, so we should be able to update the blog more frequently. You can try Skyping us if we’re online, although the connection is slow and we’re not sure how well it will work. We’re excited that Mike, Tracey, and Tucker will be visiting soon. Other upcoming adventures: Halloween in Germany (with a Megan-inspired costume), a coat for Jenny and a crib for Elias, and of course more Beer Research.

Castles ... Coming Soon!

New Address and Phone Number

We moved! Here is our new address:

Beethovenstrasse 36, App. 11
60325 Frankfurt am Main
GERMANY

And our new phone number:

011-49-69-798-28560

This contact info should (?) stay the same for the rest of our stay here.

A busy week 4

As you have noticed, this blog has been more about parenting than about living in Germany. It turns out parenting is the bigger deal. Go figure. But that doesn't mean that we don't notice the change in scenery. Here's view of the Frankfurt skyline from across the river.



Our rudimentary German is still a problem, although it's possible to get by without it. A lot of signs and such are actually in English.

And some things are self-explanatory...









So it hasn't been too hard to make ourselves known, although I hope to start German lessons soon. We visited the cathedral in Mainz last week, which was nice, although the farmers market on the plaza outside was actually more interesting. The outdoor markets here are really great. Last week in Frankfurt we went to one (accidentally happened upon it, actually) that had a blacksmith tent and live animals for sale. We got dinner from a stand; it was five baked potatoes in a bowl of dip (3 euros!). Churros for dessert. And I had pumpkin wine. Delicious.

Elias travels well, which is good because we go out a lot. Here he is on the train.

Elias continues to grow and be wonderful. He's not sleeping through the night yet, but when he's tired, he's tired.

Maybe it's from all that exercise.












We finally got our bank account and EC card. We went shopping for clothes for Elias, because it's gotten colder and he didn't have enough warm stuff. Here are nice corduroy overalls.

Playtime is always fun. He's very active.





This morning we went to the flea market on the river bank, in a neighborhood called Sachsenhausen. It was CRAZY. Think of anything--anything at all--that might conceivably be sold for under $10, and you will find it there. The saying "everything but the kitchen sink" might apply, but we did see a kitchen sink for sale. More candelabras than you could dream of. Not one but two stands selling secondhand surgical equipment. Plenty of big-screen TVs. A miniature working cannon. Mannequins! We could go on. We can't wait for the Christmas markets!