Our first weekend in Germany

On Thursday Pete left his bike at the math building so we all walked with him to pick it up. Along the way I realized that this town is covered with graffiti. It is everywhere!!! It is odd because in America when I see graffiti I associate it with gangs, and here perhaps it is the same, but when Pete asked if a certain neighborhood was safe he was basically laughed out of town -of course it is safe.  hmm......... well, safe or not, you can't go whole block without seeing graffiti.

One thing we have seen scattered around our walks- cigarette machines on the sidewalk.

Another interesting thing we saw on our walk was what appeared to be an old military installation with razor wire fencing. This is the building next to the math building.

On Friday we decided to walk to the Castle/Palace. We walked around the Botanical Gardens that is part of the ground. We saw some very beautiful and vibrant flowers. On our way out we saw a sign that said the cafe was serving Eis und Kuchen (ice cream and cake). Since most places were closed due to the holiday we thought this would be fun. Being nervous to try this by ourselves for the first time we hemmed and hawed near the entrance then we went for it seating ourselves outside. We figured we would basically get a menu then point or try to pronounce what we wanted while pointing, but things just didn't go that way from the beginning. Pete said, "speisekarte bitte."(menu please). The waitress proceeded to give us a largish spiel about the food-none of which we understood. She gave us a look like-Please tell me what you want now. Oh my- we just wanted a menu and that apparently wasn't in the cards today. After looking at Pete to see if he knew what was going on I said, "Spreche keine deutsch."(I speak no German). While this statement was enough in my mind it didn't offer the much needed follow up statement because she looked at me and said,"Was sprechen dann?"(What do you speak then). I was quick to say English. A wave of relief spread over her face and she then went on to tell us her spiel again. I guess food wise they were serving pommes frites and some small traditional Munster dish but she couldn't really tell us what was in them, and they were serving drinks. She went ahead and got us a menu even though it was only good for telling us what drinks they had. We had wanted the ice cream and cakes but they weren't in the menu and she hadn't mentioned them so we figured we would go with the pommes frites since it was Friday and she hadn't told us what was in the Munster dish. The kids got Fanta which doesn't taste a thing like American Fanta it tastes more like orangeade. Pete got espresso and I wanted a beer, since we know that back in the States I like to drink Hefeweizen, we ordered that. When our drinks arrived my beer was grapefruit flavored. Haha. It tasted good, but very girly. We were told earlier this week that Hefeweizen is the beer of pregnant ladies-so I guess I picked the girliest beer around. Our pommes frites arrived with a side of mayo-- which is how you eat them here. After we had finished we noticed the waitress bringing a table an ice cream menu. Oh man. Not sure if you had to ask for the ice cream menu specially, but we weren't going to find out because our children became HORRIBLE!!! Some people can take their kids out to eat-- we cannot. Yelling, screaming, throwing shoes, sitting on the table, crying, trying to run away, and loudly saying how cold they were. It was very cold (in the 40s) but still this is not how you act in public. I am not sure we will ever experience a real German restaurant because I doubt our kids can handle it. Not sure if we did this the correct way or not, but we flagged the waitress down to ask for our check. We figured not following the rules would be better than 3 screaming kids ruining everyone else's cake. Once the waitress went to get our total, I rushed our kids out of there, leaving Pete to pay alone. People did stare quite a bit- I don't think German kids act like that in public.

Jack in front of the Castle/Palace

This row of flowers was so bright and colorful

Picture of castle from the garden

Cafe where we tried to order ice cream but got french fries instead

On Sunday we slept through Easter Mass, which was disappointing because that would have been a neat experience, but we have next year too. Once people woke up and got mobilized we decided to walk to the Promenade and around Lake Aa. It was sunny and around 45 outside- we put lots of layers on the kids after what happened Friday. It was so beautiful to see the sailboats, paddle boats, and ferries out on the Lake. The path around the lake was full of bikers and walkers. It made me realize that on a 45-degree day in the States you probably wouldn't see so many people outside walking and enjoying the day. Before now you wouldn't have seen me do it, but once you get out and start moving you just feel so much more energized. I am not sure that you would even see that many people walking around outside in America on a 70 degree day. Pete commented that we hadn't seen any obese people the whole time we have been here. It is true. Perhaps we have seen people who could lose 10lbs, but none have been what I would call fat. Even with all the beer and bread the lifestyle doesn't lend itself to obesity.