Houdini Blackjack

Seems like we're going to have to deadbolt the door when we leave in the future.  We were just out for less than 2 hours and as we walked home from the tram, someone that works in the apartment office passed by and told us that our dog was running around on the stairs.  After hurrying back home with visions of Blackjack escaping from the common area stairs out into traffic, we found that the landlord had just finished replacing Blackjack in our apartment and deadbolting the door for us.  Hopefully Blackjack wasn't out too long...I guess it's either the crate for him when we leave or deadbolting the front door.  The only problem with using the crate is that I took the door off and I've wedged the door into a corner and tied the potted palm to it (I don't know where to buy the more common stakes that would support the palm). I'm pretty sure Blackjack won't be able figure out how to turn the little knob for the deadbolt.  Then again, I didn't think he'd figure out that he can stand up and push the door latch down and then pull it towards him to open the door.  He doesn't do this when we're around - if he gets left out when someone remembers to shut the doors to keep the heat in the room, he'll just paw the door politely and wait for us to come open it.  Oh well, I'm just glad he didn't run out of the building when some unsuspecting tenant opened the outside door.

Traveling vacations

I have been sadly remiss in my updates....and then the more time passes, the easier it is to put it off.  Well, as they say here:  Na ja. (This makes a change of pace from my usual "oh well.")

Toward the end of October we had our first visitors in Dresden:  Pablo's parents.  They bought their tickets to come visit us before we had even bought ours to get over here!  :-)  We met up with them in Prague and went from there to Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic, and then went to Budapest instead of our plan to visit Poland.  We had an amazing week with them and all 3 cities were well worth the visit.  I think I was most impressed with Budapest, but in part that was because I hadn't looked at any information about the city prior to our arrival, and therefore, everything was an unexpected pleasure.  The Parliament building and the Fisherman's Bastion were just amazing and in pristine condition.  I'll post pictures once I get them off the camera... I think my favorite thing in Prague was going into St. Vitus' cathedral.  I've never seen such beautiful stained glass windows, and I've dragged my family into a lot of cathedrals!  We weren't able to enter the Church of St. Elisabeth in Bratislava, but I, of course, made sure we all appropriately admired it.  Fortunately for the rest of the family, it was actually worth the walk to see it - it's all blue and art deco style.

It's been pretty amazing touring about the old Eastern bloc.  One restaurant in Prague offered several Czech specialties and one entitled "Specialty from the 25 years of unpleasantness".  In Budapest we took one of the bus tours and quite a bit of the taped information related to the years under Soviet domination.  Several of the buildings there have intentionally been left with bullet holes from WWII and the 1956 uprising. 

We also made our way up to Berlin to visit an old friend of mine.  I was in Berlin in the spring of 1989 and after crossing over to the eastern side and seeing the incredibly stark contrast between East & West, I couldn't imagine how the wall would ever come down and the two sides ever reunited.  Just goes to show that I clearly lack imagination.  East Berlin is completely transformed and we needed the line on the map to see what section used to be east.  It's quite something to see the remnants of the wall that are memorialized here and there.  They also have some impressive museum/memorials to the time of the Nazis and the Holocaust.  We haven't been to visit a concentration camp, but we did step inside an old boxcar that had been used to transport Jews during the war.  Horrible, but it's better to remember than to forget what atrocities we humans are capable of.  Vicente and Miguel are certainly getting a hands on education in differing political systems.

Opera - it's better than you think; it has to be!

This is one of my favorite marketing lines of all time, I think, and it turns out to be true.  We went to see the Barber of Seville on Sunday; to Vicente's & Miguel's surprise, it wasn't that bad.  Pablo & I had a great time and the German supertitles (is that the opposite of subtitle?) were actually quite helpful to me.  One translation I particularly liked for when Figaro landed on his feet particularly well was:  "This time the cheese has really fallen onto macaroni."  I'm looking for an opportunity to work this into conversation at the dog park sometime.  :-) The opera house was as lavishly beautiful as it's publicized and we had absolutely amazing seats.  Not only was it was a performance with a special family price (kids are free and adults with kids are half price), I think that they reserved most of the best seats for family tickets.  Although not quite as catchy as the above opera marketing line, I think it's probably a more effective technique.  There were certainly lots of other families there and all of those kids will realize that opera isn't always that bad.  :-)  It also helps to be seeing "Barber of Seville" instead of Wagner.

Okay, if the horse & carriage were inside the opera house as part of the performance, that really would be impressive, but this is just a random photo thrown in since I liked it. 

Anyway, it was certainly a lot of fun and I feel like we've finally participated in Dresden's unique offerings.  Now we can go back to our regular low-brow entertainment with the inner conviction that we are truly cultural.  That will last for several more soccer games and James Bond movies.

Vicente & I also went to the DDR/East Germany museum.  It wasn't bad, but I think that Pablo & Miguel did well staying home.  There were some pretty cool exhibits like the one showing what people did right after the war.  Note the gas mask in the upper left hand corner:  it's been transformed into a coffee filter.

I wasn't sure what the point of this was, but it made me laugh....

And finally, a useful phrase for daily life:  Workers of the world, unite!

Mathematik, Chemie, Physik und Geografie

Vicente & Miguel have been in school for almost 7 weeks now and they're doing very well.  The first 5 weeks they went to school for only 3 1/2 hours each day and learned only German (DaZ Klasse).  Now they have added in some regular German classes as well, so their school week is divided between DaZ and regular classes.  I was under the impression originally that their first regular classes would be things like gym, music and art.  However, the German school system has proved to be a bit more flexible than I anticipated.

In the initial meeting with their German teachers we explained that both our kids like math and are good students.  Vicente & Miguel are probably regretting that.  Miguel is taking gym, math, physics and geography.  Vicente has gym, math, physics, chemistry and biology.  The school week is quite different from what we're used to at Dumbarton.  One day Miguel goes all day long (7:30-2:00), but every other day they both start off with 2nd period at 8:30.  There are two long (20/25 min) breaks during the day where everyone goes outside, and two short breaks inside.  There doesn't seem to be a cafeteria, although you can buy food at the school - the DaZ teachers strongly advised against it.  Apparently everyone eats outside during one of the long breaks.  Vicente comes home after 6th period at 1:10 most days and Miguel comes home after 7th (2:00) or 5th (12:00) period.  They have math 5 periods a week, but it's 2 periods on 2 days and 1 on another.  Physics and geography are only 2 periods a week.  There seems to be a lot of rearrangement of the schedule if one teacher or another is out.  So some days they come earlier or later than expected.  They don't have much homework to turn in as far as I can tell, but that might just be that the teachers are letting them ease into the class.  It does take them quite a while to read a page or two of one of their books, which I am "encouraging" (as in they have no alternative!) them to do in order to learn the vocabulary for those classes.  I'm very glad that I can help them with this, my college education finally coming in handy, and I'm having fun learning new words myself.  If it ever comes up at the dog park or grocery store, I'll be all set to discuss current, volts, amperage and resistance!  

Tomorrow is the last day of school before the 2 week fall break!!  Poor Pablo will not be taking 2 weeks off, but he'll be taking off at least a week as his parents are coming to visit.  We are looking forward to our first visitors in Dresden.  And, of course, if anyone else wants to come over for a visit, we have quite a bit of floor space!

Weekends in Dresden

Dresden is a cultural center and has been so for centuries.  There are several museums with world-famous paintings, porcelain, statues, etc.  There are musical performances constantly: operas, symphonies, choral works, and organ concerts to name just a few.  So, you might be wondering, which of these cultural offerings have we sampled, which famous museums have we seen?  We've been to the military history museum and to a soccer game.  Now that's high culture!

We will eventually make our way into the famous museums and view the interiors of ancient churches, but we didn't want to burn the kids (or ourselves) out too soon.  So we're leaving this sort of activity for when the grandparents come visit, or when we go visit other cities.  Now watch, it'll be our last week here and we'll be rushing to go to all the famous museums at once!  We will all be attending the opera next weekend though to see the Barber of Seville.  They have a some pretty great family deals and this will be a special afternoon show particularly geared for families.  Vicente & Miguel were a bit concerned that they wouldn't be able to understand the words, but I told them not to worry, there will be German subtitles.

We've gone on a couple of hiking trips into the area of Germany known as "Saxon Switzerland".  It's not exactly the Alps, but it's fairly hilly and there are amazing sandstone rock formations poking out of the forest.   Amazingly, Vicente & Miguel are underwhelmed by walking uphill 2 1/2 hours just to see a natural sandstone bridge, but it's been one my highlights so far.  They also weren't as impressed as I was by walking around the beautiful gardens and grounds of a nearby castle a couple of weekends ago.  However, Pablo, Blackjack, and I are thoroughly enjoying these outings.  The kids were also quite pleased with being able to walk over the border into the Czech Republic.

We have located scouts in Dresden, both the American variety (a small Cub Scout pack) and the German variety (co-ed Pfadfinders).  The boys have both gone to a few Cub Scout meetings to serve as den chiefs and that works out well for everyone - our boys have a good time being looked up to, the Cub Scouts think they're great, and they actually do pay more attention when our boys are around apparently, so the adults are happy.  The only drawback is that it takes an hour to get there via public transportation - that was what led us to combine a trip to visit the above mentioned castle gardens on a Cub Scout meeting day.  The Pfadfinders seem to be a bit different from our Boy Scouts.  They have 2 hour meetings most Saturdays and nary an adult is in sight - there is an older boy that seems to be the leader and kids arrive by themselves via bike or public transport, they play a bunch of games and then head home.  We haven't figured out if they do camping trips or merit badges or anything like that, but Vicente & Miguel seem to enjoy the meetings so far.

We have been going to an international English-speaking church that is quite close fortunately.  It's quite a change from Central Presbyterian, with its 3 different services each Sunday, and 80-100 kid middle school youth group on Fridays.  This church has around 40 people showing up on a Sunday morning and there is only one other boy that is Vicente's & Miguel's age.  Fortuitously (or should I say, providentially?) this boy also goes to the same school, so they actually knew someone on the first day of school.  Most of the people attending are students of some sort or young families with infants.  The church is also very international, with people from Africa, Asia, Australia, and both Americas.  We're only missing Antarctic penguins!  The people have been very kind and welcoming.  The pastor is from Michigan and a Detroit Lions & Tigers fans, so Vicente likes talking to him about that.  (Go Orioles!!!)  The pastor is also quite good at karate apparently and offers a karate class on Thursday afternoons.  Vicente & Miguel have been going and I walk over with the dog so that I have a good reason not to participate.  As I explained to Miguel, I once might have wanted to learn karate, but I'm just not so interested anymore.  I figure Blackjack is a much better defense than anything I would come up with.  The church has had a few other activities as well, one of them being going to a ropes course.  We had a lot of fun with that and I had muscles I didn't know existed hurting for days afterwards.  If I can persuade Pablo to do two major activities in one weekend, then we'll go with the church to a museum of life in the GDR on the same weekend as the opera.  I'm not sure though, both Pablo & I are enjoying a sabbatical from constant activities.

The Good, the Bad, the just plain Different

It almost goes without saying that the chief thing we miss here in Dresden is face-to-face contact with our friends (and yes, friends includes family).  However, there are other things we miss here too, so I thought I'd make our family compile a short list of what we miss, what we like better, and then since that was a bit boring, we added what is just different, like it or not.

The Bad
Vicente misses school, watching American football, and English.
Miguel misses longer school days (not to worry, he'll get those in just a week!) and soft, airy hot dog & hamburger buns
Pablo misses playing the drums and going to Five Guys.
I miss our comfortable couches and having a dryer (I know I see how much lint comes out of the dryer each time I use it, but I never really grasped how many little hairs would be covering all our clean laundry without having a dryer.)

The Good
Playing soccer every day at school during Hofpause
Getting bread from the bakery across the street
Getting pastries from the bakery across the street
Geocaching & playing Ninja with the Pfadfinders German scouts)
Watching TV for homework
Using military time

Climbing all the stairs (okay, this is in theory quite good, but in practice it belongs above)
Full fat yoghurt
Learning & using German
The Doener/kebap shop
Trains & trams all over the place; and they're all on time!
Going to the Dynamo Dresden soccer game
Watching soccer on TV (this is principally Pablo's item)
Model train stores everywhere (maybe the train table will finally be finished when we return)
Seeing new places
Walking over the border into the Czech Republic


Different
Bike paths on all major sidewalks (they use a different color brick to note where the bikes go)
Milk only comes in 1 liter cartons
Beer & wine are extraordinarily cheap
Soda is really expensive
There are 4 specific sorts of trash (compost, packaging, paper, other) and various bins for glass (clear, brown or green)
Seeing child's car seats in the front seat
Little spires on all the roofs
Some roads and sidewalks are made out of paving stones - there are virtually no concrete sidewalks
Blackjack can go into pretty much any non-food related store/place
We walk to most places (school, work, grocery shopping) and take the trams for things a bit further away like church & doctor/vet visits
The kids have to use fountain pens at school
There isn't a lot of beef at the butcher's; it's almost all pork of some sort
All the graffiti (and there's plenty) is about Dynamo Dresden

I'm sure there are plenty of other things we could have listed, but this is all we have for the moment!

Hey, here's something that's different:  I leave the country and the Orioles finally do well.

DaZ Klasse (German as a 2nd language)

The kids have now been in school for 3 weeks and so far it's going pretty well.  They're acing their tests and yesterday Miguel actually said that he was glad that he knew a bit of German before we got here.  He hastened to add that he was NOT glad that I taught him over the summer.  I guess that's as much of a vote of thanks as I'm going to get.  "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."  :-)  Then again, how annoying it must be to have a mother that says, "I told you so!"

Anyway, they're in class for 3 1/2 hours each day and during that time they have a Fruehstuckpause (a 10 minute break to eat breakfast) and a Hofpause (20 minutes recess).  They're required to use fountain pens and rulers at school.  When we bought the rulers, we assumed that it was for measuring lengths, but no - its main use is for neatly crossing out any mistakes made with the aforementioned fountain pen. So they're learning not only German, but gaining practical experience in structure, neatness and overall orderliness.  Their handwriting is definitely improving and Miguel, although he's frequently come home with ink all over his hands and even his neck, hasn't dropped great globs of ink all over his clothes at least.  Who knew that you shouldn't take out the small ball that's in the ink cartridge? 

The recess is with all the school, around 250 students or so from grades 5-10, and Vicente & Miguel play soccer every day.  They say that not too many kids play soccer, most sit around talking.  I'm glad they get a chance to get to know some of the kids that aren't in their DaZ Klasse - they actually know 3 other kids' names.  Vicente says they communicate more in English than German with the other kids, but mostly they don't need to talk.  On one of the rainy days Miguel played chess with one of the other DaZ students.  He got slaughtered.  With the realization that not all stereotypes are true, I told Miguel that it's no wonder he lost - the other kid comes from Russia. 

The school also offers a German conversation class for the parents of DaZ students and Pablo went along to that yesterday for the first time.  He's enjoying learning German too and is understanding quite a bit.  The kids are delighted to be instructing him in German but even more delighted to demonstrate that they're learning much more quickly.  Pablo doesn't have too much of a chance to speak German during the day, but he's coming along.

Dog parks and shopping

Pablo was not a great fan of the idea of bringing a dog overseas, but really it wasn't that difficult to accomplish.  So we had to drive 3 hrs to Richmond 3 days before we left in order to get his proper paperwork stamped, and we had to get a second mini-van taxi from the airport in order to transport Blackjack in his huge crate, but other than that, it was fairly easy.  People have asked how Blackjack did on the flight - who knows?  He's here, but I doubt he enjoyed the experience.  We are all (I think) now very happy to have him here with us.

An older woman with a 10 month old puppy met us our first week here and invited me to go along with her to the dog park. So I've been happy to go and meet some people here. As is the case at home, I now know the names of all the dogs and only 2 people names.  However, everyone shakes hands with everyone else upon arrival, saying "Guten Morgen", so we're all very polite.  I haven't been able to go over the last week, though, since Blackjack broke a nail.  He did it earlier this summer and it's never quite healed up right.  While jumping around with another Standard Poodle (or King Poodle as they say over here, much to our delight), he broke it again, this time bleeding liberally all over the other dog owner who looked as if he were dressed for the office already.  Oops!  So we were off to the vet and Blackjack's been walking around ever since with a bandage or shoe on. 

I still find it hard to believe that you can go into plenty of shops with the dog, although clearly not into the butcher's.  Yesterday we went shopping for pants for Vicente (who now appears taller than I am, although it must be just an optical illusion) and I sent the kids in on their own, while I waited outdoors with the dog.  Miguel came back out several minutes later telling me that there was already a German shepherd inside, so Blackjack could come in too.  I think Vicente would have been happier on his own though, since I actually made him try on the pants to see if they would fit and that took much more time!  Blackjack can also go along with us on buses, trams, trains, etc. although we belatedly discovered that he has to wear a muzzle while on public transport.  Fortunately the conductor who exasperatedly informed us of this did not throw Blackjack off the train; he just moved on to scold a family that apparently hadn't paid enough for their stroller to get onto the train.  We're now completely legal with him, having purchased a muzzle and paid for the outrageously high dog license.  We're getting free school for the kids without paying any taxes, though, so I guess I can't complain really about paying a dog tax.

Not that hard after all - here are pictures.

There is NOTHING good on daytime TV!

I'm not sure why I even qualify that with daytime, but even Miguel is getting tired of watching TV.  There seems to be an interminable amount of Johnny Test, Timmy someone or other, and some shark & mermaid program, not to mention Hannah Montana, which my kids wouldn't be caught dead watching. However, we're willing to sacrifice our brains in the pursuit of learning German.  After all, we all now know how to say platypus in German:  Schnabeltier.  If that's not useful enough, we've also picked up on the word for taxes (Steuern) from watching Robin Hood.  So it's not a total waste time.

Besides watching TV, we've been busy with all sorts of paperwork and mundane things like shopping.  Imagine standing in front of a bunch of toiletries and having to read half of them to figure out which are shampoo, which conditioner, and making sure that you won't be washing your hair with something like Nair.  Not that I came close to that, but I do like to make sure that I'm buying what I think I am.  And who knew that Germans have the same word for eggwhite and protein?  What tipped me off was the high content of eggwhite in our milk.  It took me a little while, but I eventually remembered that egg whites are protein and that made a lot more sense.  I still haven't figured out what sort of margarine I'm feeding Pablo though:  relatively benign in the cholesterol sense, or the stuff that clogs your arteries just by looking at it.  They don't spell it out on the label.  Anyway, all that to say that shopping trips take longer than usual.  To make matters worse, everything we buy has to be carted down the street and up the steps.  I'm rethinking our 7 gallon a week milk habit.  That's a lot of weight to be carrying, although when I tell the kids to stop drinking as much, they assure me that they'll carry my share of the milk.  I think they think I'm old and frail, when really it's just laziness.  :-)

Vicente and Miguel are registered at school now, which starts on Monday.  It turns out that one of the 4 middle schools with German as a Second Language is actually within walking distance of us.  It's about 10 minutes away and there will be around 20 other kids in that program.  Apparently they'll be in school from 7:30-12:00 every day for the first 6-8 weeks until they're ready to start attending afternoon classes like gym, art, etc.  At some point, they'll transition completely into regular classes, although no one expects them to do so completely until the end of the year.  We'll see how it goes.  Vicente & Miguel will be doing math at home in the afternoons since they actually like it and neither of them wants to "get behind".  They are their father's sons.

By the way, I'll post some pictures if I figure out how.  If anyone already knows and wants to tell me, I would certainly appreciate it!

Week 1

As of today, we've been in Dresden for a week.  Somehow or other, it's hotter here than in Baltimore, so I haven't had a chance to use my fleece-lined jeans yet.  The flights all went smoothly and Blackjack's paperwork presented no problems, thanks to Pablo being willing to drive all the way to Richmond in order to get the right form stamped.  On arrival to our apartment, the reality of living on the top floor set in:  we had to lug nearly 200 pounds of luggage up 102 steps.  The apartment is fantastic though:  2 bathrooms, one room for Vicente & Miguel which is larger than their room at home, a smaller room for us, a living room/work area, kitchen/dining room, and the crowning glory is a small atrium in the middle with a glassed-in roof.  Despite being more in the city, you can see the stars better here than in Towson.  We have a nice view of the city center out our back windows.  We live on a fairly busy street and right across from us is a bakery.  Good thing we have 102 steps to climb multiple times a day!  So far we've been busy trying to get all the details set up here:  bank account, cell phone, registering with the foreigner's office, visiting a church, and today hopefully we'll find out about school.

Vicente, when offered a chance to put down his own impressions of life in Germany, refused.  So I'll just have to say that I think he's doing well, and I think he's even looking forward to school starting since a week of getting settled in is fairly boring.  Miguel has also declined to comment, merely asking that I tell everyone to have a good school year.