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Schwimm!
09.13.05 (12:50 pm)   [edit]
Berlin week 2/Europe week 4

Greetings from Schoeneberg, West Berlin,

Hola! We have been in Berlin since 1 September. It's taken us the two weeks we've been here to figure out the neighborhood, how to get around the city, and basic language skills (ein milchkaffee, ohne caffiene = decaf latte), since Berlin is sooooo big and spread apart. We just yesterday walked down a different street in our hood and found "the good playground" with lots of kids and the good falafel joint - Big Harb's.

We got to see our friends from Williamsburg, Sandra and Fiona twice before they flew back to NYC where they are moving from Williamsburg to Harlem. Sandra grew up here and took us to a great outdoor baby pool (Kinderbad) in a beautiful park (Monbijou) in the middle of Berlin and the next day to a beach on a lake (Strandbad Grunau) with canoes and ducks only 1.5 hours by train from our place.

We found an amazing indoor pool in our neighborhood Stadtbad Schoeneberg that has a baby pool warm as a bath, it's waist deep on noey at the deep end, a baby fountain, a kids pool, a long slide and another olympic pool with 3 jacuzzis and ala carte services like sauna, massage, tanning beds and cafe. The building is beautiful, high ceilings, walls of windows and modern changing rooms and showers. We want to live at the Stadtbad. Link above is a picture of the kids pool (not the baby pool), you can swim under the bridge and the pool continues outdoors.

We walked into a sign language class and Andreas, who runs it and Noey had a whole conversation using signs, then Noey was very talkative with his hands after that, it was great.

My mom just left us today, she was visiting for 4 days and had to get back to NYC for a Broadway show. We hope to see Roger and Lari again in November when they will be traveling in Portugal. We want to drive over from Barcelona for a weekend visit.

We found a little open market in Mexicoplatz on Saturday while Grandma Lari was here visiting. There was a guy selling handset type business cards that he then printed by hand. So we ordered a small batch, it was fun watching them being printed.

Observations:
The word for vegetarian in Deutch is Vegetariash, which sounds like, "Yeah, it's SORT of vegetarian . . ."
There literally a playground or Kindergarten (daycare) on almost every block.
Everyone rides a bike here, including bambinos. Hence the Like'A'Bike phenomena.
Only the littlest babies, who can't yet sit up are in Prams (not strollers) with big wheels and shock absorbers for walking on all the cobblestones here. Even sidewalks are cobbled, so a sleeping baby is a jiggety baby.
Skype was just bought by Ebay yesterday.
Bring lots of books with you when you travel abroad. The english book selection here is slim. And I can't read in German yet.
Bring some friends or family with you when you travel abroad, it's great quality time to spend together.
 
Travel with Noey Berlin & Dublin
09.05.05 (8:15 am)   [edit]
Berlin week 1/Europe week 3

Prenzlaur Berg, East Berlin 09.05.05 Sunday

Shops are closed on Sunday in Berlin (not so in Dublin)

We ate at a great soup place called International Soup and sat next to another kid, his name was Oskar (pronounced Oskah!) and his dad reminded me of Mance's Dad of Kendall.  We are always missing friends and of course we've taken up Mance's mantra No-Wee No-Wee No-Wee -  whenever noey is sad for no apparant reason, we use this mantra and it turns his frown upside down.

We got a potty (another one) for noey in dublin bc he shows interest and sqauts when he wants to poo.  He doesn't like sitting in it, just likes to carry it around and sometimes stand in it.  I think he knows it's his tho and he likes having his own potty.

Our new routine is croissant while in his stroller in the am and i've been craving gelati in the afternoon which means Noey shares with me which means (like today) he freaked out on a sugar high when he was supposed to be taking afternoon nap.  Back to gelati, they have a great flavor call yogurt (Jogurt).

The hurricane is all consuming in the news. The first headline I read said "Katrina causes billions in damage" and I wondered who this euro starlette was that had only one name that had enough star power to cause so much damage, like a former spice girl gone crazy at the Ritz Carlton with her possee.

The npr like station we found in dublin was great because they'd play really nice folk irish tunes and all their news was in gaellic.

We found that there are 2 sports we've never heard of that are most popular in ireland:

1: Hurling: looks like lacrosse on first examination, but they are tossing a ball with a stick that is a cross between a hockey stick and and cricket stick. It's played like field hockey sort of, exept the ball is tossed and his with the stick.  kids as young as 5, 6 are practicing in parks.

2. Gaellic football: Like soccer (football) but you can kick, carrry, bounce, or hit (like volleyball) the ball to get it across the field. Both are baffling since we had never previously knew of their existance, and they are the biggest and most watched sports (over football which is soccer for us) in Ireland.

There is a big presidential election here in germany coming up and they had a duall last night (debate) between top 2 candidates. It's great to get BBC so we don't have to just hear propoganda from CNN.
 
Guttentach
09.04.05 (11:42 am)   [edit]

guttentach,


we are in berlin, a 5th fl. walk up.  when i found out, i just kept thinking about you, meg and the mom with twins who lives on the 4th fl. and thought, if they can do it, i should at least be able to for 1 month.


only the neighborhood where we are is far from stuff, so kind of a drag.  we hung out with sandra and fiona at a pool one day which was beautiful, made for little kids, only 1 ft deep and very nice with a park with trees and grass and a little snack bar.  the next day we went to a beach on a river where sandra's mom used to go with her family when she was young.  it was fun.  and in germany, all the kids go swimming nekid, so it's really cute with all little ones walking around with naked bums.


sandra, tony and fiona are leaving in a couple of days so we need to make new friends to hang out with.  it's a little difficult not knowing the language, but having noey is a good way to meet all kinds of people who he charms on subways and restaurants.


all the playgrounds are sandboxes and noey will have to relearn to get over his dislike of sand.  we just go every day hoping her'll get used to it.  the first grocery store we went to was hard core, we felt like we were in a third world country or at least a recently formerly 3rd world country.  i got a little sad and nervous, but then we found the Bio (organic) market and it was all right - phew.


one of the most useful phrases we use alot (bc we drink decaf, damn americanes!) is "Ohne kaffiene" which means "No caffiene".  they look blankly at you if you try to order a decaf.  speaking of corporate evil, we saw a cafe today called BALZAC COFFEE and laughed bc from a distance the typeface for the sign looked just like Starbucks.  But then we went in and everything looked EXACTLY like STarbucks, down to the wire baskets they sold their muffins in. and the grande, vente, tall, short language was used, even the chairs to sit on were identical.  we just figured that starbucks in germany is called balzac coffee but when we asked the 2 girls working there they replied that it was not related at all to starbucks and that they were in fact Better than Starbucks. . .