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Tag Archives: vacations

Goodbye…and Hello!

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by Elizabeth M. Johnson in Food, Travel, Vacations

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Berlin, children, Delta, food, Heidelberg, public transport, travel, vacations

We leave left Germany tomorrow yesterday (still trying to get home…HATE Delta) for our home in Durham, North Carolina after seven weeks away.  I have been ready for well over a week.  Perhaps this is a sign about how long future vacations (with work, too) should be for me moving forward.  As you’ve noticed, I’d fallen off the bandwagon a bit when it comes to chronicling my Germany adventures.  I have totally moved on.  But I thought that I should take a moment and reflect about what I’ll miss about my time here.

  1. The play areas for children, even toddlers.
    Child wading pool (1 of 2 connected pools) with fountains and other play pieces

    Child wading pool (1 of 2 connected pools) with fountains and other play pieces

    From fancy playgrounds with plenty of safe crawl space to swimming places with child-size wading pools, Heidelberg and Berlin really delivered on fun for kids.   There are public pools in the US but they aren’t usually child-friendly in a creative way. And sure there are playgrounds, but they don’t have cool hand pumps that kids can pump to get water flowing into a stream that they carved out themselves in a massive sand pit! Pretty cool, even for this 40 year old kid.

  2. The baked goods.  You know I love to eat and boy, do I love
    Currant and coconut cake

    Currant and coconut cake

    cooking in my own kitchen but I will truly miss the gorgeous and plentiful selections of delicious cakes and pastry that I’ve found here.  And because there are SO many bakeries, this is one thing here that is usually pretty inexpensive. A gorgeous slice of cake (above) at Cafe Anna for example was only 3 Euros…where in the US, it would easily be $4-6.

  3. The smart use of space.  Buildings are old here and while that sometimes means decrepit, more often it means unique and well-designed.  And it’s not just the buildings.
    _The Secret Garden_ anyone? The door to your afternoon getaway...

    _The Secret Garden_ anyone? The door to your afternoon getaway…

    In some cities, Heidelberg included, there are “gardens” to rent.  The plot of land which is maybe 1/2 – 34 of an acre often includes a small, outbuilding and has water but no electricity but it’s most wonderful feature is that it’s a patch of green that you can cultivate or not.  Or just use it as a place to host an afternoon coffee and cake with friends.  These plots are old, “pied-a-terre” type “homes”, for lack of a better word, that railroad workers used to live in while they were away from their home city.  The railroad line closed and the city now rents these plots. And they are gorgeous.  This is just one example of a dozens that I can think of where the Germans have really used space extremely smartly.  I’m still envious.

  4. Public transport.  Sigh. We have jumped on to trains, buses, subways and trams (with toddler and BOB in hand) in each city
    The "S-bahn" stop in Marienfelde where we spent a lovely afternoon

    The “S-bahn” stop in Marienfelde where we spent a lovely afternoon

    we’ve been in during our vacation.  Glorious…and so freeing! Sadly, while Durham has the Bull City Connector, public transport isn’t anywhere near what  it could/should be in the US.  Public transport has allowed us to get to friend’s houses that weren’t close to our apartment and helped us explore new places.  Same reasons (and others too like costs, etc.) are why we really should have better public transport here.

Of course I’ll also miss things like the endless fresh flowers everywhere we went, seniors on bicycles, everyone (even men in suits) eating ice cream when it gets hot, Sunday afternoons when NOTHING is open and how the heat of the day gives way to quick cool in the evenings.  We also had a few really nice evenings with my husband’s friends and colleagues that were some of our most special times here.  But I’m glad to be almost home.  We left on Monday and as I write this, we’re still not home but getting closer all the time.  Ah, yes, another reason we need better public transport!  Oh, Germany.

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Road Trip

11 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by Elizabeth M. Johnson in Vacations

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Autobahn, driving, eating, Germany, road trips, vacations

When people asked me how we’d planned to get around Germany once we’d arrived, I told them what my husband told me: train. We would be in cities the whole time and everything would be either walkable or bus-able but trains would be our main source of transit. When we decided to take a day trip last Saturday to see my in-laws, however, we decided that a road trip by car was the way to go.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. My dentist was disappointed that we’d be missing an Autobahn experience on our trip so much so that I almost felt compelled to call him & let him know of this new plan. I know my husband to be a careful driver who always spoke of those on the Autobahn as “driving like idiots” so I was surprised when he got right on there with the rest of the (date I say it?) idiots people early Saturday morning when we set out. I may not look it but I’m a car freak – a holdover from my first real job at Skip Barber Racing School– and I have to admit, I was a bit thrilled by this. Our rented BMW was snazzy enough to include a feature that indicated the speed limit below the mileage. So once we got going, the indicator flashed the no-limit sign. We were off!

the "no limit" sign (a white circle with dark lines through it) is above the mileage indicator

the “no limit” sign (a white circle with dark lines through it) is above the mileage indicator

But not for long. Elisabeth woke up hungry & I was too. We pulled into at a rest stop that was quite nice. A gas station, cafe & cafeteria seem to be the standard at such places in Germany, at least where we were. If the cafe had been a Lavazza, that would have been a different story.  I definitely would have had a cappuccino but this one wasn’t so I settled for a coffee from a machine which wasn’t terrible. We split an apple pastry & a “side” (meaning approximately 3/4 of a pound) of roasted potatoes. I’ve learned from my previous trip to Germany in 2011 to always get a second pastry in case your first one isn’t great so we also chose a slice of plum cake. I’m such a smartie! This lesson has yet to be proven wrong and true to form, the plum cake was boring & dry. Luckily the apple cake was passable. Germans do their potatoes well & ours were excellent.
We made good time, due to the urgency both of a restless baby and the frequent lack of a speed limit. The bulk of the day then was spent sitting, talking and eating with my mother and father-in-law who had never met our daughter.  To say that it was quite the special day is a huge understatement.  As everyone knows by this point, I don’t speak any German, aside from the occasional “thank you”, “cheese” and “2 apple turnovers, please.” so I mainly listened to what was said and tried to pick up on a few words.  Some moments were more successful than others but I didn’t need to know German to recognize the song my father-in-law sang to our daughter; it is one of my husband’s go-to’s for a bedtime lullaby.  Worked like a charm then too.
Never one to pass up another opportunity to eat, in spite of having consumed two massive slices of cake (a blueberry cheesecake-y & a creamy apricot) just a few hours earlier, we stopped again at one of the cool rest stops. This time it was close to dinner and there was a salad bar out with an assortment of cold salads.  IMG_2591Luck was on my side: a “farmer’s salad”, cold mini penne, sliced red peppers, more potatoes (this time with parsley) and a cole slaw like dish.  Carbs aplenty so why not add a dinner roll? Needless to say, it was all delicious.
After Elisabeth fell asleep, the rest of the ride home was quiet.  I watched the cars zoom by us and thought of other road trips that I’d taken.  This was the first one in Germany but hopefully not the last.
What are your favorite road trips?  Heading somewhere familiar or new?  Leave me a comment and join the conversation.  All comments are confidential until approved by me.

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