It's a higgily-piggily sort of place, with crooked lanes and a quiet air. Our main requisite was that we be near the forest, and we were not disappointed. I'll let the pictures do the talking now.
After the debacle that happened on Sunday, we decided that we would stay low key and use the car to travel nearby. After a quick call to Anna & Wilhelm's for suggestions, we decided that we would go to Tecklenburg, a village about 30 minutes away.
It's a higgily-piggily sort of place, with crooked lanes and a quiet air. Our main requisite was that we be near the forest, and we were not disappointed. I'll let the pictures do the talking now.
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I'm not good with crafts and kids. The children are, for the most part, deprived. They have lovely Grandmas that are willing and even eager to clean up after them, so that's where the painting and glitter and glue generally take place. I have two friends in Germany. One of which is my husband. He's away talking to other people about math in California. My other friend, well, I would like to keep her that way, so I'm not hounding her saying "let us in, let us in!" I've only showed up unannounced on her doorstep once, actually. Disclaimer #2: I'm not a fan of taking them out in public either. They scream, people look, it's not fun. Maybe that's why I only have two friends?? When pitted against each other, crafting seemed like the lesser evil compared to public shrieking. I have delved deep into scrapbook mommy territory searching and have come up with a few good ones. My favourite was this owl print. Simple, not too messy and pretty enough to hang on the wall. Claudia told Aaron last night that "she didn't miss him that much", so yeah, I'm going to take that as a compliment. Check out Pinterest for similar crafts or to fast forward time. You may get lost in there. Happy crafting!
Germany has strict laws in place prohibiting retail stores from operating on Sunday. It's an effort to "synchronize society" and keep the traditional day of rest in place. I love the values behind it, and see no fault in limiting consumerism to 6 days a week. It helps protect families by ensuring that they are, by law, given at least one day to spend with each other. But heaven help you if you run out of milk. Gas Station Milk does nothing for the soul.
In Münster, Saturday is market day, and all good wives and mothers are out buying goods for the next day's hot meal. There is also a drop in centre right outside the market for children so the parents can shop in peace for up to three hours. It really is peaceful. I had some German recipes translated and hit the market with my list. On that list was savoy cabbage. Soon after coming home, the girls decided that we should take some cabbage and carrots to the bunny patch the next day and give those little guys a treat. So today, Sunday, with nothing else to do but go out in the pouring rain (have I mentioned how much it rains in Münster before?) we went and fed the bunnies. We crawled through the low shrubbery that the bunnies hide out in and scattered the leaves and carrots and we waited. And waited. No bunnies came but it was so nice to just have the girls sit still under the canopy of a shrub and listen to the rain all around us. On our way home we stopped in at the chocolate cafe to warm up with hot chocolate and croissants. It was nice. Perhaps I've been too hard on German Sundays? With a little bit of imagination, we had a perfect day of rest. All along the river my Dzia Dzia worked, repairing old bridges, river walls, etc. He was a bricklayer. One summer he found himself near Marksteft, near the farm my Babcia was living on.
My Babcia was good friends with another Polish girl named Sophie. Sophie was the opposite of my Babcia. Where Babcia was dark and buxom, Sophie was blond and petite. They each had Sunday off work and would often go for walks along the riverbank. And that's how they came upon a boat full of eager young gentlemen. Babcia remembers having to walk a plank to get on the boat and that the men on the boat refused to put the plank back until early in the morning. They drank and laughed all night, feeling their youth. They then said their good-byes and went on their separate ways. Babcia had to walk 7 km at sunrise to deliver sugar beets to town. Babcia has always supposed that Dzia Dzia had girlfriends all along the river. She's probably right. His parents never accepted her because he left a fiancé back in Poland that he was expected to return to. What ended up happening was that the war ended. And a lot of people did not know where to go. Poland was destroyed. So my Dzia Dzia returned to Marksteft, to the not so little "schwarz" haired girl that must have made quite the impression that night on his little boat. Sophie also married a man that she met that night, the love of her life, named Henry. So even though the war had ended, my Grandparents stayed in Germany. They worked on the farm, and earned a fair living. To this day she collects a German pension. She says that Germany remains beautiful in her memory and the people she knew were very kind to her. When it was time for all displaced persons to find a more permanent residence, my Grandparents moved to a refugee camp in Karlsruhe. They married. They lived here for a few years yet. In a room with three other couples, including her friend Sophie. Eventually those couples had children, including my Uncle Zbigniew, aka Ben. And then their time in Germany came to an end. Babcia recalls a loud announcement being made for all bricklayers to come to the office. They were leaving for Canada the next morning. Just the bricklayers. It would be another year before Sophie, my Babcia and their children would be able to make it over. Meanwhile, in a little house in Hamilton, my Dzia Dzia bought a table for his family to use. An old, beat up canning table was there to welcome his family home. They didn't have much, but they had a place to gather and be together. That was all they needed. I'm going to give Mary credit where credit is due. She birthed Jesus. But, she didn't take the time to put up a pine tree in the little manger, even though guests were arriving imminently. No, society had to wait until the Germans came up with the idea to do so. At first they thought to decorate an oak tree, but then decided that pine was perfection as it pointed towards heaven. Anyway, give it a few hundred years and this country is full fledged, teenage boy, eager beaver about Christmas.
We really noticed, a few weeks before our vacation in Canada, that people window shop here. It's not a saying folks, it's the real deal. Throngs of people, out on a Sunday, just shopping in windows, not spending a cent. The windows, as such, are decorated to the nines. It's really pretty. Then there are the Christmas markets. These guys are a hit. So many friggen people just milling about, sipping mulled wine, or hot chocolate as the case may be. I had a bad reaction to the mulled wine in Denmark and dare not venture down that path again. Claudia thinks it's the best hot chocolate ever, and she would be right. It's the best hot chocolate ever. Everything adds up to a genuine holiday spirit. Everyone wishes one another a Merry Christmas, and they're happy to say it. We're happy to be here, revelling in it all. I'm grateful that I was able to see family and friends so close to Christmas, as the distance between us would surely have felt much wider had I not. Frohe Weihnachten and Merry Christmas! New Mothers, hold your babies tight. One day, before you know it, they will be four going on snarky and jaded.
Let's set up this scene, shall we? Driving away from the terminal after dropping Aaron off to leave for Scotland. Me: I miss him already! Claudia: Why? Me: I don't know, I just do. Claudia: Uh, we're still in the airport Mommy. There are planes ALL AROUND YOU. Me: True, but . . . Claudia: I think Daddy's going to get trapped, like, in a jail. Dear Daughter, Your mother is a highly impressionable and superstitious woman. Please keep your insights to yourself from now on. And no, you can't have ice cream because you finished all your french fries. It doesn't matter how loud you yell "BUT POTATOES ARE HEALTHY!" That only works on Grandma. It's been brought to my attention that my language is offending some people. I don't want to draw too much attention to who it is, so I chose to call this weekly post "Modest Mondays" as opposed to "M.I.L Mondays" because that would be too obvious. Possibly.
Here it goes - a wholesome post. The family and I had a lovely weekend, filled with sunshine and giggles and cultural experiences. Namely, we went to a sand museum in a nearby village and I laughed my heiney off at the absurdity of it all. Eloise likes to pick "poisonous berries" and squash them. We've tried telling her - THEY'RE POISONOUS, which of course means nothing, except that to her they now have a name. I decided I would take pictures of all the different poisonous berries that were around town yesterday. My day consisted of yelling out poisonous berries at every turn. Poisonous berries, poisonous berries, poisonous berries! Have you ever been lost in the woods in rural Germany? Let me tell you, it's fucking terrifying. Those Grimm Brothers weren't stretching any imagination when they talked about Witch's houses, except that there isn't any candy, only murderers. Between the dilapidated structures and the corn fields, we walked for 7 kilometres in the pitch dark. A moonless night, with only the crow's caw to keep us company. (How's that for imagery??) After dinner we decided to take a "popular" trail in the village of Handorf back to our bus stop. This is where my love of guide books ended in heartbreak. "Popular" could mean so many things, including "deserted in October, you stupid twat." Trying to reassure two children that we were safe was difficult as we didn't feel it. You really have to feel something to be enthusiastic about it, and that we weren't. So we just kept on trucking, while in my head I knew I could blame Claudia for our murder because the trail was all her idea. Except that I would be murdered, so I couldn't blame ANYBODY. Does the word murder bother anyone? Cause I'm done now. Finally, we saw a Crucifix in the cornfield so we knew we would be safe. Christ is reassuring. Except when Christ is just a big advertisement for the graveyard that we're suddenly standing beside. I want you to visualize a pretty touristy looking family suddenly start running away with a buggy and attached "Buggy Board". It wasn't pretty. Eventually we did make it back to our bus stop, Eloise asleep in her buggy, dreaming of candy houses. Zoo! (Zoo, zoo.) I've decided to write a post in honour of Raffi, musical genius and all around good guy. He sings this song called "We're going to the Zoo" and if you have children, you've no doubt heard it at least once. Or in our case, a thousand times in rapid succession, the morning we told the girls that we were, indeed, going to the Zoo. The Zoo here was pretty excellent. It was very shady (because of trees, not mooks) and there were 7 playgrounds where the parents could rest - and have booze! - while the kids did their thing. I am notorious for hating parks, but this - lack of responsibility combined with drinking - is something I could definitely get behind. It was a much quieter Zoo than our tried and true Toronto Zoo, which was nice for rambling and spending actual time with the animals. BECAUSE, unless the animal had the potential to rip your face to shreds, you could actually spend time with them. Like the Meerkats and the Cheetahs. Eloise had to be physically held back from taking the baby cheetah who was hiding in the corner, away from its Mom. In Eloise's defence, she comes from Crazy Cat Lady stock (not me, it skips a generation) and this one was pretty freaking cute. Ha! Tricked you! You stuck around to hear about my Ode to Raffi, and all you got was a lousy slideshow of my kids at the Zoo. I'm sneaky like that.
Do stress hives really exist? I'm afraid of Google, so I'm not looking it up. No way, no how. I can't sleep and I'm covered in them, so let's assume that they do, and let's assume that they suck. I have calamine lotion on my back, the first time since Kindergarten when I had 262 chicken pox. I know this because my Mom scrounged up my journal from Kindergarten and I was apparently very proud of this fact. 262! Minor blip. So many great things have been happening in our life for the past few weeks, as we prepare for our move to Germany. Aaron finished his thesis, and I am now a PhD by association. Frau Doctor Aaron Tikuisis. Who cares that my name doesn't actually appear anywhere in there, I know I'm the Frau so all is good. And because we're moving, I have never felt so popular in my life. So much so that I feel like I can finally forgive high school for ever happening. I have had the chance to spend some real quality time with my nearest and dearest, and honestly have had the best time of my life compressed into such a few short weeks. Thank you to everyone who has supported us through the summer and showed us what we'll be missing without you. It's bittersweet, with tears being shed between the laughter. But back to the hives. Do you know how hard it is to say goodbye? Do you know how incredibly difficult it is to watch your Grandmother hold her head in her hands while she cries, knowing that you have to drive away? This is my confession, I am so scared that once I say good bye to her, that will be it. So instead I avoid her, thinking that no matter what, I cannot say those words to her. I think the day before we leave I will take her for a drive, down Highway 8 , stopping on the side of the road for peaches and corn, all the time remembering as much as I can. And then I will bring her home, kiss her and tell her I love her, because I know that much is true. Then it's my turn to cry. Auf Wiedersehen, until we meet again. p.s. I like to think there is a soundtrack to our lives, and tonight this is it. |
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