Month: June 2019

We popped in to Amsterdam for a fast visit between Germany and the UK. (We visited in a quick way.) Knowing things would be very expensive and mostly geared toward a more mature visitor, we tried to adjust our expectations to an abbreviated schedule. And actually we left very satisfied with our time spent. Here’s what we did:

We popped off the train and walked zig-zaggy through streets and canals to the museum district. The van Gogh museum is particularly well-suited to keeping kids entertained. There was a fabulous scavenger hunt for Maggie and Tessa (that I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot through) while Bill lurked around the tour guides soaking up all their knowledge. 4 floors of amazing art — he was quite a prolific artist — and biographical information later, we are all van Gogh specialists (it says so on my, I mean Tessa’s, scavenger hunt).

The next morning we headed out early to the flower auction house, the world’s second largest building (by footprint). A huge number of flowers and plants are moved through this facility every day, being shipped in, purchased, packaged, and shipped out in a matter of hours. Little tractors buzz around tugging little carts full of flowers while lights blink on and off, horns beep, conveyer belts click along, and colors flash by. It is such a busy place — 5 lanes of tractor traffic — with seeming chaos melding into a semblance of order once you slow down to watch. And huge! We walked for 15 minutes just to get down the end of one warehouse! It smells lovely, everyone is friendly (when they can spare a glance up from traffic to wave), and so many shapes and colors make for a pleasant and fascinating visit.

Afterward we bussed into the old city to wander, as we do. Crossing canals, waving to boats, getting delightfully lost, giggling at the Dutch language, choosing houseboats to call, searching for the crookedest buildings — it was a full and fun afternoon!

Although it doesn’t seem like we did a whole bunch of activities, it felt like the right amount for us. We got a good taste. And it was a nice send-off for the Continental Europe portion of our year.

We are off to Ireland!

We spent our last week in Germany in Cologne, which is actually one of the biggest cities in Germany (who knew?). But you’d never know it, really, being there.

Well, there’s lots of attractions. Like Germany’s largest cathedral — Episcopal, not Catholic. And a zoo with an amazing elephant habitat. And an indoor water park with slides galore. (Remember that place we went in Prague? This was very similar, with one additional slide that scared the pants off me: You stand with your arms crossed over your chest, and then the floor drops out from under you. You fall until the slide actually goes back up to almost your original altitude, then shoot down toward the light at the end of the tunnel. Lucky to be alive, people, I am.) And a chocolate museum, and an Olympic museum. And the beautiful Rhine River, with amazing green space everywhere.

But it also feels safe and lived-in and easy to explore.

Now it’s time to keep exploring the world!

We can hardly believe our almost year in Würzburg is over. It seemed like such am impressively long span of time when we first began looking for an apartment. Preparing our documents for residency application. Registering Maggie for third grade and searching for a kindergarten for Tessa. Unpacking our few cardboard boxes and finding the perfect uses for everything we had decided (months before) would be useful.

And we did all those things. Plus making daily routines and memorizing neighborhood routes and forming friendships (at least the kiddos). We accustomed our ears to not understanding everything. We formed preferences for certain shops and bakeries.

Never did we lock ourselves out of the apartment. Only once were we ever asked for our bus tickets. One appointment with the dentist for what turned out to be a loosening tooth and one doctor’s visit for antibiotics for strep throat.

We all acquired favorite pastry types: nußschnecke, quarktasche, Kissinger mit marmelade, butter croissant, mandel bretzel, bretzel bretzel, butter streusel, apfeltasche. (We were pastry rich. Now we will take a break and that’s ok.)

We will miss the bells ringing and glockenspiel playing. The weekends walking along the river to find an open ping pong table. The sight of the old castle perched on the hill and the glorious palace standing firm amongst modernity.

(We will not miss the teeny tiny kitchen or receiving official mail we don’t understand. Neither will we be nostalgic for homework or seemingly pointless school rules or random shop closures. And it will be nice to be able to communicate with strangers again: “Your backpack is open,” “That woman is trying to get your attention,” “Your kid fell off the top of the slide.”)

Living in such an historically rich, well-connected, safe, and beautiful little city was an overwhelmingly positive experience for all of us, individually and as a unit.

Thank you, Würzburg, for teaching us, testing us, enriching us, treating us, and sustaining us. Until we can visit you again: auf wiedersehen!