Spring Break Part 3: Wroclaw

The third and final stop on our Spring Break extravaganza was the Polish city of Wroclaw.  Prior to the redrawing of Europe’s borders post-WWII, it was the German town of Breslau.  It was both a Hitler stronghold and center of Jewish intelligentsia and, pre-dating the war, has a fascinating history.  Tony and I have both been interested in it since reading Fritz Stern’s “Five Germany’s I Have Known” and getting there was a priority for us.   We are actually lucky we made it – after a morning of pottery shopping in Boleslawiec, dreary rain, and fried little boys, I think we would have driven right on home if we hadn’t already paid for a hotel room.  Once we arrived, though, we were so glad we put the extra effort in.  It was much like a Prauge or Krakow, but without the tourists.  And the boys loved it because the city has hidden little bronze gnomes all over the place.  Ali, in particular, had a blast looking for them and getting his picture taken

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Spring Break Part 2: Krakow

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On Monday morning, we hit the road again and headed even further east to Krakow, Poland.  Jenny’s friends Ben and Angel, who went through A-100 (Foreign Service orientation) with her hosted us for an amazing 4 days.  They even watched the boys for the day on Wednesday so we could go to Auschwitz.  It was a sobering visit, although the crowds of people took away from the experience a bit.  We were really impressed, though, by the relatively new Schindler Museum located inside Krakow.  It’s development was supported by the State Department and it did an incredible job of documenting through multi-media Krakow/Poland under the Nazis.  We highly recommend it to anyone headed that way.  Beyond that, we had a great time being shown around Krakow by Ben, Angel, and their 4 kids (whom the boys quickly latched on to ).  Krakow’s town square is considered one of the most beautiful in the world and it lives up to its reputation.  We took a carriage ride one morning that the boys loved.  We also tried out all of the great foods sold by stalls in the square (candied nuts, fried breads dipped in chocolate, mountain cheese, etc.).  Most of all, though, the boys continued their love affair with chasing pigeons.  It was truly a fantastic visit, in large part because we couldn’t have had better hosts!

 

Spring Break Part 1: Prague

It seems like not so long ago, Spring Break had a much different connotation that it does these days.  We figured out when we went to France during the winter, though, that the boys’ German progress really suffers when they are out of school.  As a result, we decided to take advantage of the Easter break they had in March and hit the road.  We headed first to Prague, where we had rented an apartment with our friends Elizabeth and Ryan and their son Graham.  We headed out on Thursday afternoon after the boys got out of school.  We knew it would be a late night, but figured we’d then be settled and able to take on Prague as soon as we woke up on Friday.  Unfortunately – and for the third time in Europe – we forgot to take our passports with us.  So, about halfway into the 6 hour drive, we turned around and headed back to Weil.  It was already the boys’ bedtime when we arrived, so we decided to let everyone get a good night of sleep and leave at 5am the next morning.  We arrived in Prague without further incident and went on to have a fantastic 3 days exploring the beautiful Old Town and Prague Castle.

Loss Far From Home

Tony’s Pa passed away today. I am in Washingtonn for work, while Tony and the boys are back in Germany. It feels sometimes like we are Congress’ and even the American people’s favorite punching bag – an exotic and luxurious life in the far reaches of the globe. What’s not to love? Moments like this, however, far from family, reiterate that the Foreign Service life is also about sacrifice. Tony spent most very weekend growing up with his Pa, while my Mama was my escape whenever I needed one. It weighs on us, at these moments especially, that our own children are deprived of that sense of security that we enjoyed. I wouldn’t trade this life, but I do wish sometimes that my colleagues and I received a bit more understanding of what we have given up.

JERUSALEM!

Things change quickly in the Foreign Service – and never as much as they did this week.

My tour at AFRICOM was intended to keep us in Germany for three years.  While the work isn’t the most challenging I’ve ever done, it is interesting and, more importantly, we really love living here.  So when the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs emailed (repeatedlyt) last week to ask me to consider taking the Political Counselor position in Jerusalem, we really agonized over the decision.  As you’ll have read in an earlier post, the boys are thriving in their German school, they and Ma’issa have a giant yard and beautiful house to play in, and we generally have fallen in love with our healthy, stress free village lifestyle.  On the other hand, Jerusalem has been a dream post of mine and Tony’s and the work there on the Peace Process is central to US foreign policy.  As an added bonus, it is supposed to be one of the most kid/family-friendly posts in the Middle East.  In the end, we decided it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.

We do hate to leave Germany and we feel like there is so much left of Europe to see.  We are likely to be here until late September, though, so we’ll pack in as many trips (and as many visitors – hint!) as we can before we go.  If a trip to Europe doesn’t inspire you, though, we hope you’ll consider coming to see us in the Holy Land!

Maulbronn Easter Market

Last weekend we went with some friends to an old monastery (Kloster) in Maulbronn, Germany that has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The draw was their annual Easter egg market. If you are thinking elaborately decorated eggshells, costing significant sums of money is a strange place to take 3 toddlers, you’d be right.  We made a quick spin through the market itself and then headed outside where the boys explored the monastery grounds with their friend Graham.  It was only about 30 minutes from Weil and a great reminder of all the wonderful things to see in our backyard.

Vienna, Budapest, and Bratislava

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Over President’s Day weekend, we headed east.  Good friends of ours, Rick and Sarah, who are posted in Jerusalem, were visiting mutual friends in Vienna for the weekend and we decided to join them for a day.  We headed out after the boys finished school on Friday. With infamous German “stau” (traffic jams), the 7 hour drive was more like 10.  That the drive took us through the Alps, though, with a dinner stop in an Austrian village, made it bearable.  Saturday morning the boys were up early, so we headed into the heart of Vienna and walked around for a couple of hours. Turns out Gluhwein is not just for Christmas in Austria, so Tony and I warmed ourselves up with a cup, while the boys snacked on fresh waffes.  We headed back to the hotel for a bit and then took the boys to our friends Jennifer and John’s, where they spent the rest of the day playing with their boys while we took off to meet our visiting friends downtown.  We spent the afternoon catching up with Rick and Sarah, poking in local stores, and stopping repeatedly along the way for a glass (or two) of wine.

The next morning we got back in the car and headed to Budapest. It was my favorite city as a student in Europe in 1995 and it is a favorite now. The city was surprising kid-friendly, which meant we were able to eat lots of good food and taste lots of the fabulous Hungarian wines, even with Ali and Dominic in tow.  We did a lot of sightseeing on foot the first day and took a bus tour of the city the second.  Highlights included seeing the largest synagogue in Europe, which survived WWII and now serves as a memorial, and having lunch high above the city overlooking the Danube.  On our way home on Tuesday, we made a quick detour to Bratislava, home of one of our favorite scenes in one of our favorite movies, Eurotrip.  The outskirts of the city seemed firmly rooted in their Soviet past, while the old city was quite charming.  All in all, a wonderful weekend with great friends, great food, and great wine!

At Home in Weil

So, despite my best intentions, we have been lazy in keeping this blog updated.   I am slowly trying to work through the backlog of travel and activities since we arrived here.  Some of this will be out of order and some of it may not includes pictures for a while – just bear with us!  Since we haven’t really talked about life in Stuttgart at all, I thought I’d do a quick post on our lives here.

One of the great things about living here has been the rare Foreign Service Opportunity to choose where we live.  As a result, we ended up with a beautiful 4-story house in the small village of Weil im Schoenbuch.  We have a huge yard and a koi pond, so look forward to spending even more time outside as the weather warms up a bit.   In the meantime, we have a beautiful “Wintergarten” or sunroom with vaulted ceilings to watch the rain and snow we missed so much in Dubai.  Weil has all of the typical offerings of a German town – two great butchers, three tasty bakeries, more than a handful of Italian restaurants, and a Saturday farmer’s market in the town square.  In addition, it apparently is home to most all of the fun Americans in region.  In the beginning, every time we met someone we really liked, they coincidentally lived in Weil.  As a result, we have a great little community of friends with lots of similarly aged kids for the boys to play with.

We got the boys enrolled in German kindergarten (pre-school) just after we arrived and they are really enjoying it.  Focus is almost entirely on creative play with an hour of circle time worked in each morning.  The German is coming along slowly since they spend much of their days together.  Words have been popping out with increasing frequence, though, and they love showing off their German counting.

We really love it here and can’t wait to share it with you - come visit!!

A Week in the Riviera and Provence

Living in Europe, it turns out, is pretty awesome. The best part about it, though, has to be the great travel destinations just a few hours away. We took our first big trip just after Thanksgiving. Jen’s dad, stepmom Joyce, sister Tess, and brother-in-law Mike loaded up our two cars and headed south. Thanks to Phil and Joyce’s timeshare, we had two great apartments in the charming hilltop village of Mougins, just north of Cannes.

For the next week, we explored the Riviera and Provence. We spent days in Nice, Monte Carlo, Antibes, Avignon (without the kids!), and Aix-en-Provence. We especially loved all of the markets with fresh produce, lavendar soaps, and local textiles. The wine tasting at the Palace of the Popes in Avignon (again – no kids ) was definitely one of the coolest things we did and contributed to the 3 cases of wine we came home with (more on our stop in Barolo, Italy later).

The boys had a blast stuffing themselves on chocolate croisssants (it’s vacation – why limit them to just one a day!), playing with family, and, for Dominic, celebrating his 4th birthday. We’re pretty sure the trip was a success as everytime we ask the boys what they want to do for the weekend, they say they want to go back to France!

What I did on my summer vacation…

Congress, in its great wisdom (insert personal comments here), mandates that Foreign Service Officers spend two months or so every couple of years relearning what it is to be an American so we can best represent the U.S. as “authentic Americans” overseas.   We decided to embrace the opportunity “home leave” this year and wound our way back and forth across America, seeing spectacular scenery and spending lots and lots of time with family.

Part 1 of the adventure was Kansas City.  For two weeks the boys recovered from jet lag and were helped through their initial feelings of displacement through constant attention from Jen’s family.  Dominic went to his first baseball game (embarrassingly for him it was the Royals), Alexander and Mom went to a jazz festival in the park, and both boys did lots of exploring outside with Pappy.  The zoo, the rainforest exhibit, the frontier village park, and lots (and lots and lots) of eating made for a busy couple of weeks.

From there, we headed north to the corn fields of Iowa.  Fourth of July was spent on the farm – Aunt Katie’s in-laws’ farm, that is.  The boys fed cows, ran through sprinklers and had their first ice cream cones with their cousins.  The real adventure began for them when, after a couple of days at home with their Aunts and Cousins, they all boarded a train with Tata (Jen’s mom) and headed to California via a couple of days in Santa Fe.

Meanwhile, we (Jen and Tony) had our longest stretch ever away from the boys.  We went white water rafting in the Grand Tetons, biking in Lake Tahoe, wine tasting in Sonoma (Healdsburg), and finally wandered our way down the Pacific Coast Highway to LA.  The trip was amazing and we are so grateful to the Macke/Jones clan for making it possible!  We were thrilled to get back to the boys, though, and had a great week in LA (really, at Disneyland) with the Weaver side of Jen’s family.  (Great) Granny was able to take all 7 of her great grandkids on Its a Small World (twice) and  Jenny was there to baptize her Godson Dylan and spend some quality time with her best friend, September, in the process.

We loaded up the car again and headed to Colorado via Zion National Park.  The next two weeks were a whirlwind of activity catching up with Tony’s extended family.  The boys went to the zoo with Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Amanda.  They finally got to see a winning baseball team with the Rockies and spent lots of time playing and swimming with DJ and Hannah, whom they adore.  Pa gave them their first crack at slot machines and we all revisited a couple of our favorite places in Breckenridge.

After a brief stop in KC to pack up, we all headed to DC for a week so Jen could “consult” for work and everyone else could focus on catching up with friends.  It was an amazing summer.  We figured out the boys slept in 17 different beds, frequently were confused by their lack of “home,” but ultimately thrived under the constant attention of beloved family members.  It was a summer to remember and we are so appreciative of the time everyone took for us!