One week. That’s it. I have one week left. How surreal.

We’ve finally been getting really hot summer days, so the boys and I have been having almost daily water fights with some of the neighbors. It’s a little bit complicated since we didn’t have water guns at first, so we made do with buckets, but now we’ve got some pretty serious firepower and I’m looking forward to a rematch! One neighbor boy, Kevin, wouldn’t stop shooting me in the face as I was trying to put sunscreen on Jakob, so I warned him to stop. He didn’t. I warned him again, he kept shooting. I told him the next time it happened I was going to take his gun away. He shot me again. I ran him down, tackled him, stole his gun, and sprayed him for a good long time. Then I realized I was shooting a ten-year-old who was curled up in the fetal position to protect himself, so I gave the gun to his little sister. She continued shooting him. I felt less bad.

Elfa, my Icelandic friend who used to work here as an au pair, and her friend Fanney came to visit in May. They were doing a grand tour of Europe—Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, London—and took a couple days to come visit tiny little Rheinzabern to see me! It was wonderful to see Elfa again, I’ve really missed her. We didn’t really do anything exciting, lots of talking and catching up, going out to eat/drink/get ice cream at all the places we used to go to, etc. but it was a ton of fun. Their last night here we went to Stoevchen, our favorite bar in Karlsruhe, with Alex and Bianka, and Elfa and Fanney tried to teach us Icelandic, while we tried to teach Fanney German. It was…hard. But hilarious. Fanney kept trying to practice her new German on our waitress and they ended up having this exchange at the end of the night:

Fanney: Ich moechte bitte bezahlen. (I would like to pay, please.)

Waitress: Moechtest nur du bezahlen oder alles? (Would only you like to pay, or everyone?)

Fanney: Um….Oh! Ja! Ja! Du moechte bezahlen! (Yes! You want to pay!)

Sadly, despite Fanney’s persuasive skills, the waitress did not pay our tab. The next day I drove them to the train station to send them on their way to Paris, and that was really sad because last time Elfa and I said goodbye it was like “Hey, see you in a couple months.” And this time it was like “Hey, see you….sometime. Eventually. I hope.” And that sucks. But it’s okay, it just means I have to save up enough money to go to Iceland after I’ve saved up enough money to go to Chile and before I save up enough money to come back and visit Germany. Or something.

I just got back yesterday from a four day trip to Budapest, and an overnight in Munich. Kirilee found super cheap Ryanair tickets to Budapest, so while her husband was in Spain and Rob was busy we decided to go on a girl’s trip to Hungary. It was fantastic. Our first night was funny. It was very relaxed, we flew in, found our hostel (eventually. Our vague directions turned a 3 minute walk into a half hour walk, but the people at McDonald’s were very helpful, which is probably the first and last time I will praise McDonald’s), and went out for dinner at a delicious vegetarian/vegan restaurant called…I can’t remember. Something starting with “M” that means “cat” in Magyar (Hungarian). But when we finally found the street our hostel was on, we turned the corner, and there was a man injecting something into his stomach with a huge needle. Kirilee made teased me about being a “naïve Nellie” the rest of the trip because I mentioned that he was probably diabetic and injecting insulin. Insulin or something more sinister, it was quite the “Welcome to Budapest!”

Budapest is a gorgeous old city straddling the Danube River. It’s actually two cities, Buda and Pest, one on each bank of the river, that have grown into one, so, while they are similar, there are some definite differences in ambiance between the two. We were staying in the younger, grungier Pest side, on the eastern shore, and our first day we hiked to almost all the major monuments in Pest. We saw the enormous synagogue, St. Stephen Basilica, Parliament, the Danube, Margret Island, Heroes Square, City Park, Andrassy Avenue, and the Szechenyi Baths, one of the Roman-style bath houses Budapest is famous for. By the time we reached the baths we’d been walking for something like ten hours, and a nice long soak was exactly what we needed. I’ve never been to a more beautiful swimming pool. Really, all of the monuments/places I just listed are breathtaking. I’d elaborate, but I think it would be easier with pictures, so I’ll post those soon! First I want to steal Kirilee’s, too, though, because she’s a rather more prolific photographer than I am… We went for dinner that night at a fancy vegan restaurant, and finally arrived back at the hostel after a 14 hour day. On the way back we passed a sketchy exchange of money/paper bags in a car on a small side street and Kirilee quipped “Look, Domino, an insulin deal!” Smart ass. 

Friday, still footsore, we decided to rent bikes. We cycled to the Central Market Hall (in Pest) to do a little shopping, and I got the most delicious/disgusting pastry I’ve ever eaten. It was a thin layer of eggy crust, an enormous slab of custard topped by an even more enormous slathering of whipped cream covered by a layer of caramel-y butterscotch-y candied sugar. YUM! It was so thick I literally never tasted all of the layers at once. Delicious. Then we biked across the Danube to Buda and cycled up Castle Hill, which is quite the climb but totally worth it. The views of the city from the top are beautiful, plus the Royal Palace, Matthias Church, and Fisherman’s Bastion are all perched there. Again, I’ll elaborate more with pictures later.

Friday night we went to the Hungarian National Opera, which was amazingly cheap, and really, really good. We saw Verdi’s “Macbeth,” which I was unfamiliar with, and I can’t say it’s my favorite opera—the witches have a much more influential role in convincing Macbeth to kill King Duncan than Lady Macbeth does, which robs her character of a lot of depth and psychological layers, I think—but the music was phenomenal and the cast wonderful. Kirilee was a good sport about it. It was her first opera, and not exactly her thing, but she stayed without complaint until intermission, when we decided it was time to go out and experience some of Budapest’s famed nightlife (it’s considered one of the best party cities in Europe). We headed back to the hostel to pick up jackets and have a quick drink at the bar, and ended up meeting some of the hostel staff who invited us to go out with them. What better way to experience the authentic Budapest scene than with two Hungarians and a Frenchman who’s been living in Budapest for the past year? It started with Susie (nicknamed Sushi) the bartender at the hostel bar giving us complimentary shots of Palinka, Hungary’s national drink. Then Peter, her boss and the other Hungarian, springing for shots of higher quality poppy-flavored Palinka for all of us, then they took us out to two (three?) underground Budapest bars. Try as we might, they refused to let us buy any drinks, and were really interesting and excited to show us around the city. At the last bar Achoo (the Frenchman. I think his name was actually Artieu, but when he introduced himself all I heard was Achoo, so that’s what I called him all night. He didn’t seem to mind.) bought us shots of Absinthe, which is something I’ve been curious about since Ukraine when all of my friends drank it, and I did not, which was absolutely the right decision then, but since it’s illegal in the States and I’m obsessed with “Moulin Rouge!” it’s something that I felt like I had to try now that the opportunity had once again presented itself. It was awful. And I didn’t hallucinate a single green fairy. But now I can say I’ve tried it, and that was the point. We danced awhile, and then struck out in search of food. Ended up getting delicious falafel wraps at a kebab place where we met three really funny guys from Trinidad who were trying to find their hostel but didn’t know the address. After I proved that I knew where Trinidad was (in the Caribbean), and knew the capital (Port-of-Spain), they told me I was very smart for an American. Easily one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received. By then it was quite late (or early, depending on your point of view), so Achoo showed us back to the hostel, which was very nice considering we had no idea where in the city we were.     

Saturday we caught our return flight to Munich, and I got to visit Tatiana in her new apartment finally! We had a quiet night in catching up, drinking sangria, and watching the second half of “The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns,” a hilarious “Romeo and Juliet”-esque TV movie from the 90’s that I think I wrote about before because we started it waaay back in like October or November and just now finished it. But if I haven’t mentioned it before, go find it on Netflix and watch it now. It’s so bad it’s amazing.

Sunday Tatiana showed me around some of the sights of Munich that I missed last time I was there. She took me to the University, the English Garden, another park I’ve forgotten the name of, and then we got incredible frozen yogurt. Then I had to leave, but it wasn’t goodbye because she’s moving back to Karlsruhe on the 6^th! YAY!

Now I’m back in Rheinzabern and have spent most of the day catching up on sleep. The boys come home in a couple hours, though, so I should probably unpack so I can do laundry so I can start packing again in the next couple days… Eek! But I’m also starting to get really excited about seeing all my friends in NYC and then back in the Midwest. I’ve been away a long time.  

All the links from the concert: 

http://youtu.be/QdI3B9x9QKQ 

 http://youtu.be/Fhtl2xo9pPk

http://youtu.be/vrS7RzR63Ds

 http://youtu.be/ZbwtRbbFUGg

http://youtu.be/6cOGatxmZdI

http://youtu.be/axAjoRlGr8E

http://youtu.be/GVNL-Wa7h8s

http://youtu.be/6Y6TavCvOnk

http://youtu.be/7c6YNRto8go

http://youtu.be/3d2w8tZcjWk

http://youtu.be/1ChtEF2NNEQ

http://youtu.be/7iSkJaiexwM

http://youtu.be/rIoUvfGsZtw

And a bonus link of my friend Kirilee and I on the German news (we’re in the “Fleischfreies Straßenfest in Stuttgart” video): 

http://www.swr.de/landesschau-aktuell-bw/video-uebersicht/-/id=4836448/1s0c8jr/index.html

Y’all, the goodbyes have started and I do not like it one little bit.

A couple weeks ago Susi’s mom and niece (Lena, the one whose house we stayed at on the Berlin trip who wrote signs labeling every room and light switch for our convenience) came to visit. The kids were all on vacation, so one day I took Lena and Benni to the Natural History Museum in Karlsruhe. Lena is a couple years older than Benni, and rather more academically inclined, so watching their different approaches to the museum was highly entertaining for me. Lena took her time in every room, reading plaques, pointing out and clarifying (in Deutschlish) particularly interesting factoids for my benefit, and trying to get Benni interested in learning things, too. Benni dashed from place to place, read none of the plaques but played all the games, and was always the first done with a room and eager to move on. The only exception was the insect room. Lena, based on the decibel of her scream and the speed with which she evacuated the room upon discovering she was standing directly under a see-through anthill, is not a big bug person. Benni and I, on the other hand, thought the bugs were pretty cool. Also, I desperately want a pet walrus. Natural History Museums always remind me of that fact. After the museum we got ice cream and walked around Karlsruhe for a little until it was time to get Lena back home. She was miserable about leaving, and when Susi tried to console her by saying she could visit longer over summer vacation she said, practically in tears, “But Domino won’t be here!” It was really touching. And then we had to say goodbye. This is a girl I’ve spent less than a week with, and I was having a hard time keeping it together.

We finally had another book club meeting last week. It was a pretty small group, but I brought Kirilee along and it was a ton of fun. As usual, it was less about books and more about just being social, but I love that. My favorite story from this book club is how, while backpacking around Australia, one of the girls, Candace, was looking for a flat in Sydney. She said she looked forever and finally found the perfect flat. Perfect place, perfect size, perfect price. She emailed the landlord back and forth, put down a huge deposit, and promptly stopped hearing from the landlord. Getting increasingly worried, she went back to more thoroughly read the advertisement and discovered that, in what perhaps should have been a HUGE red flag, the ad claimed the flat was conveniently located next to the nearby “teleportation stations.” Which, to be fair, would make it a PERFECT apartment. I probably would have been scammed in the attempt to live near teleportation pads, too. It’s now become a running joke. Hopefully there will be another book club or two before I leave, but they’ve been so sporadic there’s really no way of knowing.

Of course in between all of this the kids have been wonderful and adorable, which is wonderful and adorable, but going to make it a zillion times harder to leave. When I picked up Jakob from Kindergarten the other day we had this conversation (translated for your convenience):

Jakob: I had a dream about you at nap time.
Me: Awwww, really? Was it a good dream?
Jakob: Uh-huh!
Me: What happened?
Jakob: Well, you were a witch…
Me:…A good witch, right?
Jakob: No. A mean witch. And then a tiger came and bit you. And I was the tiger.
Me: I thought you said this was a good dream?!
Jakob: It was!  

Then, three days ago while we were playing house, he started “reading” a book to me in English. Still not full sentences, but he was telling me the colors of all the things in the pictures. And later, while playing tag, (which is Germany is “Du Musst!”), instead of saying “Du musst!” I said “No, you have to!” and Jakob came back with “No! Du…Ju..have toooo!”  And the next day we were playing Memory and Jakob was cheating like nobody’s business, so I repeatedly called him a little Cheaterpants, until he burst out with “NEIN! Du bist ein….Cheaterpants!” I am teaching him all the most important English, clearly.

Now that we’ve pretty much conquered potty training, we’re moving on to learning how to ride a bike. This morning he rode to Kindergarten on his little bike, and I walked alongside and held the back to keep him from tipping over, but we made it all the way there without incident, though he hasn’t quite mastered steering yet and veered into a wall because he was distracted by a puppy. Baby steps.

                 He is going through a little bit of a “terrible threes” phase, which manifests itself in temper tantrums over the smallest things, but it’s hard to be upset about them since they’re usually hilarious. For example, the other day he came to me inconsolable because his ice cream was too cold and demanded I warm it up. When I explained that that wasn’t really possible, he burst into tears and ran into the house where he tried to put his bowl of ice cream in the microwave. And I’ve started insisting that if he needs help he ask for it in a full sentence and refuse to help him before he’s told me what he wants, because otherwise if I don’t read his mind he cries and that’s silly and not helpful for anyone. Often he’ll ask for help, but if he’s in a particularly bad mood he will either decide he doesn’t want what he’d have to ask for help for, or that he can do it himself, which has led to him accomplishing several tasks I was previously unaware he was capable of, so I think it’s a good system.

                Benni is making leaps and bounds in math, which is wonderful to see. We do flash cards every night, and while it used to take him forever to do even the simplest addition ones, he’s now doing subtraction and harder addtion very quickly and with almost no mistakes. What’s heartbreaking, though, is that he’s been conditioned so long to think of himself as “bad” at math, since he’s slower at it than the other kids, that the other day when he was having trouble with a problem he broke down and started yelling that he’s bad at math. I tried to comfort him and told him that he’s actually very good at math, and it’s okay to go slowly, but he didn’t believe me and ended up shouting “NO! I AM DUMB AT MATH! I AM DUMB!” Which made me want to die. NO ONE, especially not a 9-year-old kid, should think they’re dumb. I have more than a couple issues with his teacher, and this incident makes me want to homeschool him…then I remember he’s not actually my kid. But I know Susi feels the same.

                Benni’s new favorite game is “Vampires,” which is weirdly similar to the old police game, except now I fall asleep on a bench, get bit by a vampire, and then run away from them in the morning until they catch me, bring me back to the bench, and make me fall asleep when it all starts over again. I’m not sure where he got this new game, but it’s funny and sometimes I actually get to be a vampire, so that’s cool.

                We’ve also established a routine in which every single time I go somewhere after work, Benni asks “Landstuhl?” since I spend so much time there. When the answer is “No,” he gets really excited because he knows it means I won’t be gone for more than a couple hours. If the answer is “Yes,” he rolls his eyes in disgust. It’s pretty cute.

                But, that brings me to the next goodbye. Rob has been given new orders and is moving in the very new future. He cannot tell me exactly when or where he’s going. I’m really getting the whole “military girlfriend” experience, I guess. Actually at this point I feel like I could write a pretty damn good Nicholas Sparks book. So this past weekend I went up to Landstuhl for the last time to say goodbye. Have I mentioned how much I hate goodbyes? I had to say goodbye to all of his friends, who are a great group of guys, and then we did a movie goodbye at the train station, where I left for the last time. It’s not like I didn’t know this was going to happen, but we were supposed to have another month and he was supposed to drive me to the airport and we were supposed to have our movie goodbye at airport security. Not that I’m sure crying through security would have been any better than crying on a train, but it’s farther in the future and I like that prospect. Though, in all honesty, it wasn’t really a goodbye. He travels a lot, he’s in the States fairly often, I’m sure I’ll see him again, and we’ve promised to stay friends and we still talk all the time, so as far as breakups go I’d say it’s been a good one. If that’s a thing? A good breakup? Sure. I’m making it a thing. And for a while it was looking like he was going to disappear without us getting any kind of goodbye, so I’m beyond grateful we got a last couple days.

                Then I came back to Rheinzabern and had my last choir concert in Germany that same day. It went really wonderfully. I sang four solo songs, and they went great, and I only messed up the last song a teeny tiny little bit, which I’m not even worrying about. That is a lie. It’s driving me crazy that I messed up that last song. Here’s the thing, though, I picked out all these songs months ago, and the last song was “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” which, if you’re unfamiliar, is about a romance that’s over, but goes on to list all of the sweet, happy, little memories that the singer will take with her. It was supposed to be my farewell/thank you to everyone in Germany who’s made my time here so unforgettable and wonderful, so it was already very personal, and then by a freaky fluke I had to perform it on the DAY I BROKE UP WITH MY BOYFRIEND. It was…rough. Did I mention the song before it was also about a breakup? Yeah. Life was having a nice little chuckle at my expense. But  it was also kind of amazing and freeing to get up on a stage in front of almost 400 people and get to vent my feelings in a song. Basically, if I ever turn the story of this trip/relationship into a movie, which I think I could, it would be a freaking awesome climax. And I’ll play myself and I won’t mess up the song in the movie, so it will all be fine.

                I’ll try to put up pictures/video of the concert soon.

                I come home in less than a month. I cannot believe it. I promise I’ll try to make the next installment less of a downer, but since it’s going to contain a whole load more goodbyes, I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep that promise. 

So. Berlin. Family. There’s so much to tell I don’t even know where to start. Mostly it’s all Capri and I being completely ridiculous, though. Hopefully you’ve seen the pictures so you understand what I mean.

I took an overnight train to Berlin to meet Dad, Monica, and Capri at the airport. From there we picked up our rental car and drove to our hotel, which was THE. MOST. HIPSTER. PLACE. EVER. It was very cool, and I’m not complaining, it reminded me of Vassar, so I felt right at home. But it was very funny. Of course, Capri was there, so our hotel could have been a rat-infested dump and we would have found the whole thing hilarious. That first half-day was impressively disastrous, considering we hardly did anything. Dad and Monica took a nap—an amazing feat considering they were sharing a room with Capri and I and we spent the entire time alternating between loudly complaining about how hungry we were and in tears we were laughing so hard about I-don’t-even-know-what. We got a late lunch at a little burger place, and then attempted to take the tram to the Flea Market. However, after a long and fruitless struggle with the ticket machine, we had a rather unfortunate run-in with a crazy, fascist tram cop, and got kicked off the tram before our stop and fined. Welcome to Berlin! But she became a running joke, and now it’s a funny story (but better with accents, so I’ll tell you in person sometime if you want to hear it), so it could have been worse. For example, she could have actually called the police on us as she threatened. Ahhh, Germans and their inflexible rules. But we got kicked off near a park, so we decided to salvage the situation and take a walk. What we didn’t know, but quickly discovered, is that the sanitation workers were on strike and the park was covered in what looked like several years worth of litter. Small children were running around on broken beer bottles, the trash cans were surrounded by mountains of garbage, and there appeared to be vagrants camping (and smoking a lot of weed) in the park-within-a-park on the hill. Charming. It was…not exactly what I was expecting considering almost every German ever says Berlin is their favorite city and raves about its beauty. But first impressions aren’t everything. We headed back to the hotel where everyone (except me) was passed out, utterly jetlagged, by about 7pm. Capri slept for a solid 14 hours that night, something I made fun of her about for the rest of the trip. What a lazy lump.

Monday, after a delicious breakfast, where I introduced Capri to the food of the gods: real Bavarian soft pretzels smothered in nutella, we headed downtown to the boutique shopping district. While Monica did real shopping, and Dad sat on what he’s dubbed the “Angry Boyfriend Chair” aka any chair in a store because 99% of the time they are occupied by annoyed boyfriends/fiancés/husbands who’ve clearly been dragged along shopping with their significant others and are displeased (to clarify, my father is NOT one of those men. In fact, I have never seen a man more content to let his wife shop to her heart’s content. He sits in the Angry Boyfriend Chair and watches real angry boyfriends bemusedly), Capri and I ran around the stores finding the funniest/weirdest/awesomest clothes and hats to try on. Then we took pictures. Or, more accurately, made Dad takes pictures. Some shop owners were amused by us, I’m pretty sure we made one guy’s day, but others were less tolerant of our antics. To be fair, I’m not sure how I’d feel about two girls invading my small store, trying on a thousand things with OBVIOUSLY no intention of buying, and then cackling hysterically about how ridiculous the clothes/hats were. Ironically, we were having such a great time that we often made Dad and Monica stay in a store long after they were done with real shopping. Oops. Sometimes it concerns me that I am legally an adult.

That night, Capri and I took a stroll along what’s left of The Wall, which, conveniently, was just down the street from our hotel. Then we went on an epic quest for ice cream. We walked about a dozen city blocks down a busy, main street without encountering a single ice cream parlor. That’s when we REALLY started losing faith in Berlin. We eventually settled for convenience store ice cream treats and headed back the hotel an hour and a half after we said we’d be back, prompting Dad and Monica to take their own walk along The Wall, allegedly searching for our corpses. Let’s be honest, though, it would be pretty great to see Dad go all Liam Neeson from “Taken,” right? So we were doing him a favor, really.     

Tuesday was museum day. We started at the Pergamon Museum, where Capri and I ran around taking pictures of ourselves as different sculptures. Because we are just that awesome. It occurs to me now, trying to explain what the Pergamon is, that I have no idea. I don’t think I read a single thing about any of the artifacts we saw. I know they were…Roman? Greek? I think Roman. Maybe. But we were having way too much fun being ridiculous to actually learn things, geez. After that, we walked to the Brandenburg Gate, then the Jewish Memorial, then a Film Museum (cool! Marlene Dietrich is my new hero. But the first several signs were how I’d explain movies to a caveman who’d magically time travelled to today. Or a baby. Or a total ignoramus. What I’m saying is, I do not like being insulted by museum signs), Checkpoint Charlie, and the SS Museum, which was full-on depressing. Thoroughly tuckered out, we headed back to the hotel, only driving in a complete circle on Museum Island once, and ate dinner at a yummy schnitzel place. Cap and I went back to the convenience store for Ben and Jerry’s, because my darling, deprived baby sister had never had Half-Baked before (WHAT?! I have clearly been failing in my sisterly duties).

Wednesday we left Berlin, after replacing our broken GPS with a working GPS that, despite being set to “American English,” was either speaking German with an American accent or the most broken Deutsch-lish I’ve ever heard. It was impossible to tell which. Capri and I ran lines in the back seat for Capri’s upcoming spring play. I gotta say, I’ve made Capri run lines with me a million times, and I’d forgotten how boring it is to be the one not trying to memorize the script. We stopped at the old concentration camp-turned-museum in Nordhausen. It was at this camp that the first ever rockets to enter outer space were built (of course, the rockets then dropped out of outer space and bombed London, but….), so Dad wanted to see it. It was interesting, but again, extraordinarily depressing. Also, my childhood imploded slightly when I discovered Wernher von Braun worked for the Nazis before he worked for NASA. I was OBSESSED with “Rocket Boys” (the book that inspired the movie “October Sky”) when I was little and went through a phase where I really thought I was going to study trigonometry and build rockets for NASA, too. Then I remembered I don’t like math and went back to wanting to be Maria von Trapp, but that dream has always held a special little place in my heart. So yeah, discovering von Braun developed the first rockets to bomb the living hell out of London and realized them at a concentration camp using slave labor was a bit of a blow. We left Nordhausen and drove a little bit further to get to the tiny village where Susi’s sister and mother live. Her sister, Annagret, was putting us up for the night, which was incredibly kind. We were warmly welcomed into the house, met her husband and two of her three kids, fed dinner, and then had a long conversation in Deutsch-lish, which I’m really getting quite fluent in. It helped that the alcohol (some of it homemade, yum!) was flowing freely. At bedtime, we discovered their daughter had written out signs in English, labeling each light switch and room, and pointing the way to certain rooms at the top/bottom of the stairs. Adorable.

Thursday, after a delicious home breakfast, Annagret showed us their family farm, and then served as our tour guide of nearby Eisenach. Eisenach is the birthplace of Bach, and where Martin Luther lived as a child. We saw the church/organ Bach played on, and then went to the Bach Haus, a museum housed partly in his birth home. Unsurprisingly, Capri and I spent far more time posing as Bach than learning anything. After Bach Haus we toured Wartburg Castle (an ugly name for a GORGEOUS castle). Wartburg is where Martin Luther translated the Bible into German. It is also where Susi and Tilo got married. I want to LIVE in this castle. It was amazing. And we had a fantastic tour guide who, even though she was giving the tour in German, once she found out we spoke English, made sure to tell us some of the juicier stories in English, even though it made her tour run long by about half an hour. There were a lot of juicy stories, and she really liked telling them. After that, Annagret sent us on our way with about 50lbs of food and alcohol, most of it homemade, and we made the last leg of the journey to Rheinzabern, where my families finally met. Capri keeps giving me a hard time, because for the final hour of the trip I just kept talking about how I couldn’t wait to see Jakob. She’s convinced I’m going to die when I have to leave permanently. Which is probably true. And all the more reason to just kidnap Jakob and bring him with me to the States.  Susi and Tilo had to go to Baden-Baden that night, so we took the boys out for pizza. We couldn’t have picked a faster way for the boys to bond with Dad, Monica, and Capri. Buy them pizza and they will love you forever.

Friday we went into the Black Forest to hike/eat cake. Capri and I hiked through the woods singing “Pocahontas” songs, to our own great amusement, and passersby’s befuddlement. Then we ate a delicious lunch and ate even more delicious-er cake. I know it’s been like three blogs since I last mentioned how much I LOOOOVE Black Forest Cake, so I thought you all needed a reminder. On our way back we picked Katrin up from school, so she and Cap got to bond in the car for a little as we drove through France. We came home to a yard full of kids, who immediately asked if Capri and I were twins. To be fair, we WERE dressed identically. Jakob grabbed Capri’s hand by mistake once, and then promptly ran away when he realized she wasn’t me. Capri and I were the thieves, and all the kids were the police. It was a nice change to have an ally.

Saturday we all went to the Technik Museum in Sinsheim, sister museum to the one in Speyer that the family took me to waaaay back in July or August. It was full of cool cars and airplanes. Dad was in heaven. Capri, Katrin, and I were far more interested in the mannequins dressed in vintage clothes, including an entire section of incredible ooooooold school wedding dresses. I don’t know what they had to do with the cars, and indeed were from a completely different era than the cars they were displayed near, but they were beautiful. That night we went out to a fantastic German restaurant and drank homebrewed beer. Lecker! And Monica completely won the boys over by letting them play with the t-rex app on her phone. Seriously, they are in love with her.

Sunday Capri and I went to Mary Poppins, which she agrees is the greatest café/bakery the world has ever known. Not that there was ever any doubt. Then I showed her the palace lawn, and we explored the palace museum. And by that I mean we walked in, did a quick circuit of two floors, realized we were completely museum-ed out, and ran away. Met up with Dad outside, who informed us Monica was still entranced by the Sound in Art exhibit at a museum across town, so we bought ice cream and walked there. Then we sat in the café until she was done because we still didn’t want to go into another museum. But we did have to use the restroom, so we walked to it and discovered a TV monitor outside the door, showing what appeared to be a live feed of the sinks and the interior of a stall. Odd. And disturbing. I went in to investigate and discovered that there was a miniature of a stall within one of the stalls being filmed, giving the illusion of a real stall being broadcast to the lobby. Dad reported the miniature of the sinks was in the men’s room. You guys, modern art is just…bizarre. Also, I’ll be honest, a film of a mini toilet…isn’t exactly my definition of art. But to each his own, I guess. We drove back to Rheinzabern where I quickly packed an alarmingly large suitcase with an alarmingly small amount of my belongings for them to haul back to the States. As they were trying to get in the car, Benni announced they weren’t allowed to leave and that my dad should stay and be his dad. Then he and Jakob clung to my dad’s legs and wouldn’t let go. After they finally managed to leave, Benni sat on the front steps and announced, glumly, “Domino, your family needs to come again and stay longer. Next time they come I want them to stay for 2 years, ok?”

The time since then has been a blur. I can’t believe we’re halfway through April already. The kids have been on break since the beginning of April, so I had a super busy week with them before being on vacation again this week. Benni and Kati are taking a swimming class, which is super cute to watch. Benni is/was afraid of the water, but really seems to be making great strides in getting over it, though he’s afraid to jump off the diving board. To be fair, so was I at his age. I hardboiled a ton of eggs and dyed them with the kids the Thursday before Easter. Mom sent an egg decorating kit with Capri and the kids were ecstatic about dying “Amerikanisches Eier!” because egg dying in Germany tends to actually be egg painting. We had a really fun Easter egg and basket hunt in the backyard. The kids found my basket before I did and helped me find it. And by that I mean they stood over it and shouted for me to come look. Adorable. On Easter we went to a petting zoo/wildlife preserve/I’m not really sure what to call it, because it’s not really something we have in the States. There are a whole bunch of different kinds of animals in enclosures, most of them different kinds of sheep/llamas/deer, but also some elk, bison, foxes, wildcats, pigs, and a whole section of farm animals. Some of them you’re allowed to feed/pet, others you aren’t. Hence my lack of proper name for it. Anyway, I have a bunch of pictures from there that I’ll post eventually. And Easter night I went to a club with Alex, Bianka, and some of their friends. A strange day to go clubbing, perhaps, but we had a great time!

                Rob and I are still great. Last weekend I was in Landstuhl Rob had to leave for a couple hours, so he left me with his friend Matt, who graciously offered to show me around the city a little. We went to the farmer’s market, the Japanese Botanical Gardens, and drove through a couple gorgeous little villages to look at the windmills (pictures coming). My boyfriend plans good dates even when he’s not there. This weekend I’ve been promised “Titanic” in 3D and a picnic if the weather’s nice. I am the happy.