Europe Diary - Post #6 by Kathy

It's laundry day at the Stuttgart Youth Hostel -- a timetaking process as there is only one small washing machine and one small dryer and after careful consolidation and reuse of clothes, I have managed to narrow it down to no less than 6 small loads of laundry after one week of wear x 4 people. No, I'm not going to wash out clothes every night and hang them to dry on every available surface in our room, only to have them never get dry so I can display them drying out the back window of the car, as we move from place to place. I do laundry once per week at home so this is also how we're handling it here on our month long journey. It also gives us some downtime to relax and get caught up on stuff.

Unfortunately, we are having technical difficulties here at Our Tripping Mystery, as as this seems to be a running theme in my life. I was so ready for this vacation after the hospital where I work went to computerized charting on March 1st, and my stress level with this process was at an all-time high. Give me the most difficult patient, drunk or dying, and I can handle it better than the frustration of trying to figure out a new computer system with limited help.

The beginning of our vacation technical problems started in Heidelberg when we programmed the Renault GPS to go to the castle when we were about 100 km away. All was going well, it is our first time using a GPS, and I was starting to get used to following the little red line everywhere -- it is brainless. However, when we got into the old city of Heidelberg, the GPS was trying to get wind us up the hill, and I didn't want to go there, as I wanted to park down below and take the funicular up. Well, when I started leading us to the parking garage, TomTom got pissy and kept trying to reconfigure our route to reroute us back up the hill. It became a battle of TomTom vs. Kathy in Old Heidelberg, and I suppose TomTom won as the red line has never since reappeared. Now we just have a blue triangle that just tells us where we actually are rather than where we're supposed to be going. All it's really good for is showing us if the side of the road is green or beige at any given moment. We tried calling Floris in Amsterdam, but I think he's done with us after my comments about the stretchy Peugeot get-up so he was no help in telling us how to reset it, and instead he told us to find a Renault dealer then promptly hung up the phone. Finding a Renault dealer would be a lot easier if the GPS was working. Duh. I was able to get us to Stuttgart, and then we picked up a city map to get us to our destination.

Then the follwing technical problems all happened in rapid-fire succession after the broken GPS -- even I'm not sure WTF . . . The hostel doesn't have free wi-fi; it costs 5 euros. Mike paid the 5 euros so he could quickly look up the Stuttgart Renault dealer on his iPhone (which is now on a "global plan" but not a "data plan" because that#s super expensive.) We have been charging the 4 cameras, 2 iPhones, 2 iPods, and a netbook nightly on two 220v to 110v converter boxes with Mike's homemade mission control. Here's a photo:

Also, the wi-fi only works in the lounge area of the hostel and not the rooms. So we're all sitting in the lounge pulling out the laptop to get a better idea of where the Renault dealer is and maybe blog or post pictures, and Mike realizes that the wi-fi code is only per device so we elected to pay another 5 euros to get the netbook on the wi-fi. Ouch. Mike heads up the stairs to the lobby to get the new wi-fi code. Meanwhile, the netbook is plugged into the wall through the converter box, and the kids and I are seated around the table. A few minutes later a loud "pop" goes off and the outlet where the netbook is plugged in is smoking. Mike comes back and asks, "What's on fire?" and we tell him, "The computer," and he gets all excited. He's not the ER nurse of the family, and he loves his computers so you gotta feel bad for the guy. I have no idea why the fire alarm did not go off. Mike opened the window really fast, and no one was down there when we were there, but I listened to subsequent people walk through and say over and over again, "Do you smell smoke?" Later, we took this picture on the back of the door in our room. Made me laugh . . .

Luckily, the computer is fine, but when this battery life is done we will be out of luck. We do have another converter box, but it is smaller and doesn#t run the netbook. So after laundry this morning, we are going to "Media Mart" to look for another converter. Oh joy. Right now I'm on a pay hourly hostel computer with this funky German keyboard:

We are still having a good time, despite attempting to burn down the youth hostel. I'm super excited because this afternoon we are going to the Staatsgalerie for a special show of Turner, Monet, and Twombly together. I wanted to see J.M.W. Turner's, "Peace: Burial at Sea" again at the Tate Gallery in London because I did my first sketch of this painting back in 1989 when I took an art history class while studying in London. Turner is one of my favorite painters, and I was so sad when I read that the Tate had this particular painting out on loan right now. But then elated to research that it was on loan to Stuttgart's Staatsgalerie, and I would be staying 3 blocks away from the museum! Coupled with a show that includes Monet AND Twombly, and I am in art heaven!!! All is good, and we are off to Switzerland and then the Cinque Terre over the next week for some R & R. I mostly miss my doggy (a little), but I know he's in good hands with Grammy Christine whom I love so much :) My brother-in-law lost his 7 year battle with cancer on Monday so I was thankful that I had some technology and connection to home at that moment. Mary, I didn't light that candle for Michael yet, but I said a prayer here in the chapel of the Heidelberg castle. I will be at Tim's graduation with you come hell or high water . . .

Europe Diary - Post #5 by Rebecca

German Food: One word, Yum!

After our anything-but-fantastic lunch at McDonald's, we drove through Belgium, Luxembourg, and finally into Germany where we spoiled ourselves with their flavorful dishes.

We enjoyed dinner at Kurz Gasthof in Hutschenhausen after our long drive from Amsterdam. I was pleased by my choice of meal which was a mix of my two major ethnicities, it was a Parmesanschnitzel! My mom got the Rahm schnitzel which was schnitzel in a cream sauce. Patrick got the Jaegerschnitzel which is schnitzel in a mushroom sauce.

I've just realized that for some of you who don't know what schnitzel is, this story is very confusing, so I will take a moment to explain. Schnitzel is a pounded-out pork chop that is usually breaded and fried, but not greasy. Now back to my story.

My dad got the daily special which was Zigeunerrouladenbraten. It was a rolled roast, stuffed with bacon and sauerkraut with brown sauce over the top. My mom and Patrick's schnitzel came with fries (or Pommes Frites) while mine and my dad's meals came with noodles, mine covered in spaghetti sauce. We rounded off our filling meals with a typical German treat: ice cream.

After one night in a nice hotel in Landstuhl and a very satisfying breakfast, we drove up to Burg Nanstein (built in 1162 by Emperor Barbarossa, but owned by knight Franz von Sickingen) to see the ruins. The ruins were great for pictures and we had great views of the city from the hill it is on, but those views were nothing compared to the beauty of the plate we ordered at the restaurant next to the castle.

We ordered Tomtaten Suppe (or tomato soup) and Burgunderragout with spatzel. Our dishes were so big, we only ordered one tomato soup and one Burgunderragout for the four of us, and we were still full when we headed to the car. The tomato soup was very good and creamy, but not nearly as impressive as the Burgunderragout. One half of our plate was a stew-like mixture of beef pieces, broccoli, and carrots under a magnificent, creamy red wine sauce.

The other half of our plate was entirely covered with my favorite German food, what I had been craving since we crossed the border, something totally worth flying over the Atlantic for: (pause for dramatic effect) SPATZEL! I must admit, this spatzel wasn't nearly as good as some of the other versions I've tasted, (not even close to as good as my mother's recipe) but it's really hard to mess up spatzel. We later realized that this was a different type of spatzel than we were used to, which cleared everything up.

Full form our lovely lunch, we drove to Heidelberg to see the Schloss (or as I put it, the Scloesh). Built originally before 1214, the castle was later expanded into two castles around 1294. It is unknown who originally owned the castle, but the first known occupant was Ludwig I in 1214. It is crumbling a bit in some places and a whole half of one tower has been planted on the ground next to it since it fell from a lightning strike, but it is intact enough to take tours in, to have your wedding in the castle's chapel, and to have your prom in the King's Hall.

When we first entered the castle grounds from the garden, I thought, "Huh, this would be the best place to sit on the grass, under a tree, and write stories about the castle." Unlike Burg Nanstein, Heidelberger Schloss still looks like a true castle (that is to say, it's more intact). So, pretty much, I've seen everything I've ever wanted to one this Europe trip. My life is complete . . . -ish.

The first thing we did was take a tour inside the castle. They had a few really neat original furniture pieces and decorations, and the history about the castle was pretty cool, but I think that the most interesting part of the castle is it's architecture. It's easy to see where additions were made to the castle because of the usually confusing staircases and hallways. One interesting fact I learned on the tour was that the builders of the castle had to engrave their symbol into the walls of what they had just built if they wanted to be paid.

It was a really amazing feeling to be at the castle live and in person. I love the idea that just being near the castle is like being near history itself.

Europe Diary - Post #4 by Rebecca

Some of the most significant parts of Dutch history are the holocaust and boats. When the Germans started banning Jews in their country, many of these German Jews fled to the Netherlands. The Franks were some of them.

Then the Nazis started to invade other countries. Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father, tried to move the family to England and twice tried to move them to America, but emigrating was impossible because they were no longer German citizens and they weren’t Dutch citizens yet either, so they were forced to go into hiding.

They hid in the secret annex above the jam factory the Otto Frank managed. They lived there with the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeiffer. The annex was found two years after they went into hiding and Otto Frank was the only one that survived the concentration camps.

When I first saw the Anne Frank Museum, I thought,”Why is there a museum about this? What’s so important about a girl’s diary and where she hid for a few years?” But that thought was short lived and I quickly realized that this is all here to keep that kind of prejudice from happening again.

The museum takes you through the factory and through another building with more history of the holocaust. In the latter building, we found a cool room where they showed us recent problems on a TV screen and had us vote on what we thought of the problem. It wasn’t an official vote, but more like a way to practice working for the better. I think that was the most interesting thing in the museum, though it was all worth seeing.

My two favorite things mentioned in history are castles and ships. I like manors, houses, and other boats as well, but the first mentioned are my favorites. I want to be a pirate! Yes, I’m aware that I sound like an unsocialized, homeschooled weirdo, but most pirates aren’t well socialized anyways.

I got to partially live my dream when we visited the Scheepvaart /Maritime Museum. The museum is in an old ship-cargo-loader-thing with an awesome boat tided up out at the deck next to the building. The boat Amsterdam is a typical 18^th century cargo ship. It has really neat decorations on the back including full color statues of Neptune and Hermes.

Inside the museum, we saw multiple exhibits about subjects such as whales, globes, and the Dutch trade routes. One exhibit about the modern use of ships in the Netherlands has a room that stimulates what it would be like to be shipped. My dad was fully convinced that we were cheese. Oud cheese.

To end of our day, we took a boat tour through the canals of Amsterdam. It was a perfect summary of Dutch history from the water view.

Well, as I’ve been writing this, we’ve gone through multiple different countries, visited the World War II museum in Diekirch, Luxembourg, and saw a Roman guy yelling from the Porta Nigra (no, it was not my dad), so I need to wrap this up so that I can start writing about those. So . . . I saw cool stuff! It was really interesting seeing the importance of those in Dutch history.

Europe Diary - Post #3 by Patrick

I learned quite a lot about the Dutch Golden Age yesterday while at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. For instance, before the English became the major nautical power, the Dutch controlled most of the trade between the rest of the world. The Eastern trading route or the “Voc” had bases in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, China, and Japan. The western trading route, or West India Company had bases in Central America and all of western Africa.

Two of the greatest artists of the Golden Age were Jan Steen and Rembrandt von Rijn. Jan Steen’s paintings are easily recognizable by how chaotic they were. In his painting, The Merry Family, the scene shows a family gathered around a table doing a variety of different tasks. It was so chaotic that it was difficult to remember everything that was going on in the painting. The only part that I remember distinctly was that one of the children was balancing at the edge of the table playing a flute, while a dog was running around the table with something that I think was a sock. Rembrandt’s painting The Night Watch was originally never meant to be called that. He had named it The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq. However, because of a buildup of soot and dust in the protective lacquer, the colors appeared darker and it was dubbed the Night Watch. Once this was realized, the lacquer was removed and the true appearance of the painting was realized. However, despite the fact that it is a day scene, everything about the painting looks like it is a night scene. Thus, it remains the Night Watch.

We also went to the Van Gogh Museum which I was honestly far more impressed with than the Rijksmuseum. The Van Gogh Museum had hundreds of different works by many people who used the impressionist style including Van Gogh. One of the great impressionist paintings was one by Paul Gauguin which was of Van Gogh while he painted his Sunflowers.

We also had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant called Sama Sebo, where we had a Rijstaffel dinner which is rice along with about twenty side dishes that you pile around the rice and can mix different flavors together with the rice. I recommend it.

Europe Diary - Post #2 by Mike

 We had started the day after some sporadic sleep trying to recover from slight jetlag.  Breakfast was hard rolls, cheese, sweet rolls, hardboiled eggs, juice and coffee with the United Nations of Hotel Guests. The only reason I mention this is that the woman working the breakfast for the hotel we are staying at would answer questions from the guests in any language but her own…  English, check…. French, of course…  German, why not…? One of the most amazing things about the Dutch is how many languages they know…  Getting cheese at the Kaas Specialist for our picnic, the girl behind the counter was able to switch from Dutch to English with no problem… She explained that with the purchase of 500g of cheese, you’d get a piggy bank and some portion going to a children’s charity. Needless to say, we got the items for our picnic at Keukenhof there along with the bank; Rebecca chose the cow bank.  At Keukenhof, the picnic area was just some straw bales that had gotten wet in the rain.  I decided that instead of getting wet sitting on these, I would sit on my coat while I ate. This resulted in a large mud stain on the back of the coat that required a trip to the dry cleaners. The man at the dry cleaner was working on fixing a seam as I came in with my dirty jacket, “Give me 45 minutes… No problem!”  Then back to the conversation he was having with his friend in Dutch. The man collecting the parking fees at the exit of Keukenhof saw our French license plate and sent us off with a “Merci, au revoir…” 

I am feeling a little overwhelmed by not knowing Dutch, so I’m trying to pickup words here and there.  I learned from Google Translate that thank you is “Dank u” and that I will have to use it almost never.  We did learn a new Dutch work from walking around Keukenhof; Beenham! It’s ham that’s cooked on a pan, then served in a soft roll with a mustard sauce. One of those, split four ways, got us through our cheese, cracker and apple picnic. With all this Dutch, I was feeling a little cocky. While we were waiting for the jacket to get cleaned, we went to a place called the Family Cafeteria in Lisse.  On their menu, they offered milkshakes, so we ordered 4 klein(small) milkshakes; 2 in chocolade, 1 in vanille, and 1 in aardbei (strawberry). I was feeling pretty high and mighty until the girl ringing up our order told us what we owed in Dutch… I just kind of looked at her for a few seconds, then had to admit I had no idea what she just said, then she gave a small laugh and told us what we owed in English…

Tonight, it is 9:00PM (Noon in Arizona), the kids are fast asleep, Kathy and I are having an Amstel and trying to decide which of our 400 some odd photos to share. I’ll post a few of the best here and figure what to do with rest later…

Keukenhof

The Kaas Specialist - Where we bought 500g of Oul Cheese.

The Picnic

BEENHAM!

Oskaar The Grouch from Sesamstraat

Learning Dutch - The Duck goes Kwak Kwak Kwak!

The flower fields of Lisse

Europe Diary - Post #1 by Kathy

It is 9:00PM on our first night in Europe. Our plane landed at 11:00AM this morning, which was 2:00AM Arizona time, and despite all attempts, none of the four of us slept on the plane. I kept everybody up as long as I could today, to try and convert them to Europe time. Patrick was falling asleep in his pancake at 3:00PM today so after much rousting, I pushed them out until about 5:00PM when I let them go to bed for the night. Rebecca had some complaints that it was still light under the angled wall window where their bunk beds are situated, but she quickly conked out, and here it is 9:00PM, it just got dark, and guess who's the only one up?!

I want to compliment Mike right now on his fine driving of our Renault diesel Kangoo, manual drive so I am useless, that we are leasing. I want to compliment him now before he totals it. Just kidding. There aren't a lot of barriers between the canals and the roads out here in the Dutch countryside so I have only said, "Please don't put the Kangoo in the canal," about twelve times so far. He loves me :)

Pick up of the car was pretty uneventful. We took the Crowne Plaza Hotel shuttle to the Crowne Plaza Hotel. From there we were directed to a covert location on the second floor of the hotel, behind several closed doors, where was seated a man in a stretch white nylon leotard top with a metallic Peugeot emblem above his nipple. On later inspection, when he stood up, we noticed that he was wearing what I like to call "house-party jeans," extra electric-blue with back pockets that end just above the knees. The nice, farm-boy-like, middle-aged innkeeper that checked us in at the hotel was also wearing these jeans which we have also affectionately called "Simon's jeans" after our Scottish soccer coach who was young and hip and wearing these jeans a few years ago. So Simon, if you're reading this... what have you done with European fashion, man???

I have just a few pictures to share so far... The ferry, which is the only way in or out of Kaag... not sure why they don't just build a bridge... must research this...

Our Renault (brown) in front of the hotel:

Kaag village life walking down the main street... it takes about 5 minutes total to see the whole town...

And the pancake... We weren't sure what meal we were having... breakfast, lunch, or dinner, but our innkeeper assured us that, "We can have pancake anytime in the Netherlands..." :)

Slumptember Staycation

I've said this before: September sucks in the desert. While the rest of the country is pulling out boots and cute fall fashions, we are still scorching in above 100 degree weather that started this year with the first 100 degree day on APRIL 2nd!!! Enough is enough already! We're tired of this crap. We've been on our summer vacations. Our kids have gone back to school. Public pools have all closed. The local waterparks have closed or are only open on the weekends (when some of us work.) So now what?

Well . . . I looked into swimming at our local YMCA. Since we don't have a membership, the daily rate would be $30 for my family of four, with the open swimming time sandwiched between their water aerobics classes. Then I started thinking . . . where else can we go to cool off? I thought of our Phoenix and Scottsdale resort meccas. The last time I tried a summer staycation here, it was a midweek summer day, and the resort was still packed with party-goers and little kids running everywhere peeing in the pools. The lazy river was like a slalom river dodging drunk drivers.

However, this being September, I thought I'd try it again. I found a $79 room, midweek at the Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs, the week after Labor Day. It included a private bedroom with King bed and a separate living room with sofa sleeper. It was perfect for my family of four. The resort has 8 different pools with the "Falls Water Village Pool" having a 138-foot waterslide. Here are the falls:

Our favorite pool was "Hidden Valley Pool" which was way up at the top of a cliff carved into the hillside with views of the Phoenix sunset in front of you as you swim. We had this pool entirely to ourselves the whole night. The whole resort was deserted. We brought dinner with us to eat off paper plates so it wouldn't take any time away from our pool time. We also brought breakfast the next morning in ultimate cheapskate fashion, and we made coffee and tea with their equipment in the room. So really . . . it was $79 + the tax . . . no additional costs like waterpark food.

 

To continue with the "free" theme, we went 20 minutes down the road to Cerreta Candy Company the next day for a FREE tour including FREE samples. Awesome family-owned place! Later, we went just a bit further down the road to Cabela's to tour their FREE "Canyon Country Wildlife Museum" and learn about some animals. Here, I learn the difference between horns and antlers:

It was the perfect fantastic finish to my Slumptember, as I had no idea the difference between horns and antlers (and prior to my September, I felt no need to know this fact.) (And it's only taken me the entire month to finish this post!) Thank God, October is around the corner :)