Helga

While walking around the duck pond in the center of the park in Berlin, we met a pug named Helga. Now, we all love pugs, but Ben REALLY loves pugs & this might have been the best day of his life. The kids played with Helga for almost an hour. The pug's owner and I sat, equally content with the energy being burned up. Random people were taking pictures of the pure joy in all of their faces. Such a nice day.

Another pug came by and they just ran and ran.

Sweet Helga

More of the park in Berlin

We found a little cafe around lunch, but all they had for us was a pretzel and ice cream. The kids were happy with that!

Another playground

My little explorers

Garden of Beasts

In the Garden of Beasts was a wonderful book by Eric Larson that Matt & I read in Germany. It was about Berlin during Hitler's rise to power & a University of Chicago professor who was there with his family. Good read. I don't think this was the "Tiergarten," but it was beautiful. Our hotel was just around the corner, but we had no idea that this giant park was there. It must have been miles and miles of parks. The entrance was set back and the kids & I decided to check it out on our last full day in Berlin. We were not disappointed.

Ping pong tables

One of the many playgrounds in the park. They are all made with beautiful reclaimed wood & have natural elements that just let the kids imagine and discover. We especially loved this water spout that we could move around and damn up. So fun!

This is what we found behind the hidden entrance.

Reporter Lil: All of Paris!

The roving reporter is at it again, this time, at the top of Le Tour Eiffel

reporter Lil: Mona Lisa

Lily's very detailed report, on location, at the Louvre.

Reporter Lil: Notre Dame

So, I know this is completely out of sequence, but Lily wanted to share this with her class :)

Legoland Berlin

I guess it wasn't really Legoland, it was a Lego discovery center and way overpriced, but you'd never know that from my kids' description. They had a blast & it was a nice way to spend an afternoon after seeing some heavy Berlin sights that morning.
A few bad things about Legoland Berlin:
It's expensive
Little kids can't go on the one ride and the older siblings can't go on alone AND since the little kid can't be left alone, no one gets to go on.
The ONE ride that both kids can go on appears to be scary, but is, in fact, lame.
There were a few boys playing with the earthquake simulator (pretty cool. you get to see if your building would hold up) and Ben was playing next to them. He didn't realize that a pile of Legos had been set asdie by one of the boys and took one. The boy hit him and Ben was so shocked that he just stood there. Eventually, he ran to me and cried & the boy's grandma did nothing. We've noticed that most parents have a pretty relaxed approach with their kids. They let them work a lot of stuff out on their own. Since the grandma wasn't doing anything and the boy clearly wasn't going to apologize, (plus, I don't know how to say, hey punk, check in with my son, in German) I thought it'd be best if we moved on. I guess that's how boys learn not to take Legos from random piles here.
A few good things:

Bubba & R2



Sassy Indy

Berlin Wall

We had seen the Berlin wall on our bike tour, but it was raining & Ben was asleep. So the kids & I went back for a better look. We talked about why the wall was a big deal (in PG terms) and the kids were really excited that Daddy's friend Nik was there when the wall came down in '89. It was pretty surreal to be there, standing next to it. I remember watching the wall come down on tv and we've seen so many of the images over the years. I hope the kids remember that they were there. At least we'll have pictures! (which are, again, out of order)

They built their own little wall & knocked it down



This is in front of checkpoint Charlie, which has become a big tourist spot.



I'm really not mad, just standing in the middle of traffic.



There is an image of an American soldier on the other side of the picture of the Soviet soldier. It's pretty scary to think of how tense this very spot was for so many years.



Lily & Ben at the Berlin Wall, 9/20/11

More of Berlin Zoo

FINALLY!! I've been trying to upload pictures and get back on track, but something always goes wrong. The photos take about 40 minutes to upload and I usually loose my internet signal half way through. Then my head falls off and rolls down the hall and I have to go retrieve it. You can imagine, this is all very distracting and frustrating. The worst part is that I know I'm forgetting things that have happened along the way. Oh well, play the glad game and move on. (We're reading Pollyana now).
So, these are from the Berlin zoo (last month). The zoo had the most amazing playground in the middle of everything. We spent as much time at the park as we did looking at animals. There were 4 main sections, each surrounding a trampoline. Then, the sections were connected by bridges, slides and different paths. From up top, we could see the bears in their nearby habitats and pretend they were coming to get us. There was also a giant pirate ship structure that the kids could climb down into and explore. Ben pretty much stayed on the ship, exploring with his trusty flashlight. It was awesome!!
The pics are out of order.

This is an example of the bridges connecting the sections.



The pirate ship. Ben is down there, so you can get an idea of the size of that ship!



Kids & I at the zoo

Cologne, Germany

A rooftop tour of the Cathedral in Cologne, Germany.

Frustrated

I can not upload any pictures. It's pretty frustrating. I try all the time, sometimes for up to a few hours and nothing is working!! I keep getting disconnected from the server, etc. I'll have to go to Starbucks or some place with a faster connection....I think.

Berlin Zoo

There were a few of these signs. Not sure what the connection with the L.A. Zoo is, but it is very far away.



They had a HUGE assortment of Apes (? Primates?). They were all so cool, and again, super active. The old orangutan looked like a giant walking rug. I wish I got a better picture of it. It was like something out of a Tolkien book.



Ben sat and watched these crazy guys. One of them would just sit and when you got close and thought he was asleep, he'd flip off the wall, swing on some branch and fly around his pen. It was hilarious. The others in his area just sat, totally still, like, "really Larry, you've gotta lay off the speed."



I call them monkeys for a reason.

more of Berlin-day 1

Just grabbed these from my phone.

Silly kids on the way back from dinner.



The crew at the Italian restaurant in Berlin



On the train. Taken by Lily, Instagrammed by Mom.



Pizza, same design team :)

Berlin

We got up early on Sunday, 9/18 and took the tram to the Bonn main train station. We met the students and Arianne (minus Callie, who overslept) and took a train to Cologne. (Callie's host mom drove her to the Cologne station just in time). There, we got on our train to Berlin. It was a nice 5 hour ride with beautiful scenery. The kids watched movies & played games on the iPad. Ben and I walked to the dining car and the waiter gave Ben a free Popsicle with pop-rocks on the top of it. I had him eat it there so that Lily wouldn't get jealous. Guess what he did immediately upon our return to our seats......... So then Lily and I took a walk to the dining car. She got Fanta instead. When we got to Berlin, we took a tram to our hotel and dropped off our luggage. Arianne got us an apartment which was great. It had a little kitchenette and a separate room with a door for the kids. We headed back toward the main train station in Alexanderplatz. There, we got our bikes and met our guide. Lily rode on one of those bikes that was an extension of Matt's. Ben rode in a seat on the back of my bike. We also bought them rain ponchos and tied them up because they were adult sized. It was sprinkling at this point. We took off and got a little history of the area. We then moved on to the statue of Marx and Patricia wiped out on the wet slippery path. I rode past her, afraid to stop and fall with Ben, and shouted, "I HAVE BAND-AIDS!" She was ok. We then rode on through Berlin, stopping at historical places and learning more about the amazing, yet very troubled city. Battles and wars started & ended in Berlin....only to start another conflict or political standoff. It was mostly destroyed and is now an eclectic mix of old, new and an attempt at a refurbished old-ish style. I loved it. I wish it wasn't raining so that I could have taken pictures. Lily was SUCH a trooper. She loved that bike and never complained about Matt's muddy "back spackle" (snigglet, look it up) flying at her. Ben was so tired and eventually fell asleep. He looked super safe with his helmet almost covering his face and covered in a blanket of plastic. Poor guy woke up when we decided to leave the group and head back. One of the students got a flat, so Arianne switched bikes with him and headed back. She showed us the way, then took the broken bike on a bus. We had and exciting ride in the rain, dodging giant double-decker buses, puddles & seeing some more sights. We made it back, took some hot showers & revived ourselves before dinner. We walked to an Italian pizza place. Seriously, Italians making pizza in Germany. Delicious! The kids devoured their pizza and we had a fun walk back under umbrellas. Needless to say, we were wiped out and went to bed.
The hotel had a great breakfast in the morning, so we filled up, kissed Matt goodbye (they went on a tour of the German Parliament building and the Jewish museum) and headed out to the zoo. It was a trek to get there, we took a bus to the end of the line & walked around to find the entrance, but we made it. We were amazed at the animals. There weren't really any exotic animals or ones we hadn't seen before, but they were so active. None of the animals were just laying around, they were all playing or running or just being awesome. It was really fun to see. It also felt like we were really close to the animals. The barriers between us are not like those in the States.
The pictures are all out of order, but they're uploaded!
I loved this guy!







Really excited to be on the top of the double-decker bus!



Lily & her favorite animal - flamingos!

hoping this works

So, I finally got pictures to load. .....And they're in opposite order. Matt figured that another browser might work, but it still took a really long time & several tries.
Anyway.....

Matt & I got to go out WITHOUT KIDS! Two of Matt's students, Callie & Rachel watched the kids While we went out. The Beethoven festival was still going on and there was a laser water show going on in Bonn. We decided to check it out and get dinner there. We knew of a restaurant with outdoor tables right next to the Beethoven statue, which is also where the show would be. Alas, all the tables were full. We decided to eat inside. We got our beers and the show began. The water shot out and acted as a screen for colored lasers to play different commercials, and shows on, while Beethoven's music was played. From where we were sitting, we could only see water spraying directly at the outdoor tables where we had tried to sit. Watching people run, drenched & screaming, away from their dinners was better than any laser spectacle I could imagine. Water was flowing past us like a river as we sat, mouths hanging open, wondering if this was really happening or if the beer was just that good.
After dinner, we decided to go (very far back) and see what the show looked like from a safe distance.
It was really cool.





Matt woke up to this fog one day. He couldn't even see the castle.



When I got up this morning, the fog was even thicker than in this photo. The kids tried to fan it away. It did lift about 20 minutes later, then it got foggy again. Now it's sunny and totally clear. The mountain is beautiful!

Well, Crap.

Now we have wireless & I can't upload pictures to the blog. I have tons from our Berlin/Dresden trip and can't get them to upload!

I'll keep trying............

WIRELESS!!!!YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!

We are finally up & running on wireless internet. No more sticks. No more waiting 20 minutes for one email to load. So, will try to catch up today!!

Visa

On Tuesday, we woke up early for an appointment at the visa office. We went in & filled out paperwork & got our passports back. We're free to travel now! Matt went into the office & the kids & I stopped for a croissant & coffee before heading home for school.

pals

Matt & the kids worked for a while on this Lego creation.

Little engineers at work.