Notes from Germany, Vol.14, 19 December 2006

This past summer, in July I believe, my family and I took the short trip over to Schwetzingen to see the famous castle and gardens there. It was bright, sunny, and downright hot, but it was a fabulous day none the less!

We began with a tour of the castle itself. The castle in Schwetzingen was the summer residence of the prince-elector. The Holy Roman Emperor was “elected” by the prince-electors, who essentially served as lesser kings. I’m afraid I don’t have any pictures of the inside because photographs were forbidden. We had quite a stroke of fortune, though. The tour guide indicated that there was no scheduled English language tour that afternoon, but after conferring with the only other guest there besides us she decided that she would do the tour in English anyway.

The tour was fascinating! We learned all kinds of interesting stuff about what it was like to be nobility during the 18th century. The castle at Schwetzingen is done in the Rococo style, heavily influenced by Lois XIV. The kitchen, though, was actually some distance from the castle itself because of the fear of fire. Being a female noble was no fun. The standard waist for dresses was 50 centimeters or less than 18 inches. Achieving such a waist size was assisted through the wearing of whale bone corsets. These were worn so tightly that it was not uncommon for a woman to faint from lack of air. The make-up worn by both men and women included numerous hazardous materials such as arsenic, mercury, and lead. Their teeth were lousy and their health was generally poor.

It didn’t sound to me like being a noble was much fun back then, but according to the tour it was even worse being a serf. Folks at the time often lived together in a one room house which might also be shared with the family cow. Most of the poorer folk slept right on the floor on a bed of insect infested straw. Hunger and disease were a part of daily life and life itself was usually rather short.

It was also disturbing to learn that it was considered acceptable that the nobility lived in such opulence while the serfs in the nearby village lived in squalor. Each winter the prince-elector would have ice gathered in blocks which would be stored in deep cellars and covered in straw so that in the summer he was able to drink his wine in chilled glasses. During the summer, the prince-elector and his court would often entertain themselves with child-like games such as Blind Man’s Bluff. What a contrast to think of the nobility out in the gardens playing Blind Man’s Bluff while the serfs in the village could barely scratch out an existence!

After our tour of the castle we wandered about the gardens on the grounds of the castle. To be honest, the gardens are what the castle at Schwetzingen is famous for. And there is no doubt as to why that is the case as they were absolutely fabulous! The only place we have seen that exceeds the beauty, variety, and scope of the gardens at Schwetzingen are the gardens at Powerscourt in Ireland. There were fountains, sculptures, outlying buildings, wandering paths, and trees pruned to look like archways. Amazing!

If you would like to look at any of our pictures from our trip to Schloss Schwetzingen, please click on the link below.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rtillett247/album?.dir=/51b4re2&.src=ph&.tok=phIDvqFBF1MmUDSN

This entry was originally sent to friends and family by email on 3 May 2005 as Notes from Germany, Vol.2

While things have not been as exciting lately as they were during the first two weeks, I suppose there have been enough events of note to make it worthwhile to send an update. The big news, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that I have found a house for us to live it while we are here. It may sound like a simple thing, but I certainly found lots of ways of making it complicated. The Heidelberg area is not a sprawling metropolis like northern Virginia. Instead it is a whole series of villages, hamlets, boroughs, and small towns. Each little town is geographically independent of its closest neighbors and each town has its own personality and unique advantages and disadvantages to living there. My preference was to live in a little town called Eppelheim. Eppelheim is a close neighbor of Heidelberg proper, and it is a well ordered, quite, and safe community. It’s close to all of the places that we will need to go to frequently such as church, school, American facilities, and etc. Better yet, Eppelheim is home to my friends Doreen and Dorothea, which would have made Eppelheim immediately feel like home. On the downside, Eppelheim is mostly row houses which are small and very close together, and those little houses in Eppelheim seem very hard to come by. I looked at a couple of places there. One is actually owned by Dorothea, which would have made it ideal, but it was not going to be available until the 1^st of July and I was hoping to have a place to live BEFORE my family arrived. The other place I looked at was a middle unit and the neighborhood just didn’t feel right.

South of Heidelberg about 20 minutes or so is a little down called St. Leon. St. Leon is known for having larger American style single family homes. Lots of folks have built homes in St. Leon with the intent of renting them to Americans just like me. The folks in the housing office tell me that there are about 5000 American’s in the St. Leon area, which I suppose would qualify it as an enclave. The primary downside to living in St. Leon is that it’s a long ways to get anywhere from there. I know what all you folks in Northern Virginia are thinking; “Please tell me he is not about to whine about a 30 minute commute!?!” I know, but closer is always better. I looked a several places in St. Leon in my search and I finally came across one that felt right. It’s not a huge place, only about 1800 sqft, but it is a single family home and it’s brand new. The Landlord and his wife seem very kind and friendly. I hope that remains the case because they live right next door. It’s a four level house. There is a large room in the basement, as well as some storage space and a utility/laundry room. On the main level is a full bath, the kitchen, and the living room/dining room. The 2^nd floor is another full bath and 3 bedrooms. The top floor they call a studio. It is a single room accessed by an extremely vertical spiral staircase. It would make a very nice bedroom in my opinion except for the fact that German houses very seldom have air conditioning and that top room probably gets a bit warm during the summer. There is no carpet in the house and there is an awful lot of glass. The glass doors on the bathrooms did put me off a bit, but I guess I’ll learn to live with them. As a side note, the reason that there is so much glass in the house is because the Landlord is a glass man just like my dad. I suppose that might be another reason why I liked the place. I move in officially on 1 June.

This past Saturday was an awful lot of fun! There was a City Fest (Stadtfest) in Mannheim and I went to check it out. The vendors all sold one of 3 things; crafts/gifts, grilled food, or beer. I’m afraid I can’t tell you how the beer was, but the food was excellent and the gift booths were lots of fun. There was a puppeteer at one booth that was very effectively using a puppet to sell his puppets. I watched him for about 15 minutes and I don’t think there was a single child who walked by that booth without stopping to talk to the puppet. The amazing thing to me was that you could clearly see that guy with his hands in the puppets and you could see him speaking, but the kids all interacted directly with the puppet as if the puppeteer was not there. Amazing! Oh, and I also have discovered that they have dollar stores in Germany, but since everything there is one Euro, each thing actually costs about $1.30.

I have had a couple of opportunities in the last few weeks to see German castles up close. It is truly an amazing thing to think that many of these were built hundreds of years ago. I saw a tower in Neckarsteinach that had a stone engraved with the date 1100. There was a social event for work held at a castle near Schriesheim this last Thursday and the restaurant was AT the castle. That was cool, plus the food was really good.

Several people have asked how I like Germany. The fact is that I like it a lot. I still wish I spoke more German, but that will come with time. As it does my comfort level with normally routine tasks like shopping will increase. There are still lots of challenges ahead I am sure, but I am certainly glad that I am here.

An interesting note about driving in Germany: stoplights here go – green, yellow, red, yellow, green. When I first arrived I was baffled by the idea of having a yellow light before the green and not just before the red. Now that I have a Mini with a manual transmission, it is all starting to make sense. The light turns yellow before green so that you have enough time to clutch, put the car into gear, and be ready to go when the light actually turns green. Ingenious! Chalk up another one to the Germans…

For those of you who are hearing from me for the first time since I have been here, I apologize. I sent out a global email about a month ago, but I did not have access to all of my email addresses. If you would like to have a copy of volume 1, please let me know and I’ll send it along. Also, below is a link to my most recent batch of pictures. If you would like an explanation of any of them, just send me a note and I’ll give you the lowdown. If the link doesn’t work for you, try copying the entire link and pasting it into the address bar of your browser. May you all be as content in your circumstances as I am in mine!

This entry was originally sent to friends and family by email on 3 May 2005 as Notes from Germany, Vol.1

Well if nothing else, I thought I should at least send out a note and tell everyone that I have arrived safely in Germany. There is quite a bit that has happened in just the two short weeks since I left the states, but I have resigned myself to the fact that I won't be able to relate every little experience I have had. Instead, I'm going to try to give you the highlights and that will simply have to be sufficient.

I confess, I am one heck of a lousy packer. I know this for sure because as we were coming in for a landing in Frankfurt I looked out the window and noticed that it was gray and rainy. It was only at that moment that I recalled that I did not pack a rain coat or an umbrella. D'oh! Later I found out that I neglected to pack a razor or shaving cream. I suppose it's good that my ears are attached, or I might have left them behind also.

It has been two weeks since I arrived in Germany, and so I am ready to declare myself an expert on all things German. I know what you're thinking...how can a guy who can't remember to pack a jacket and an umbrella be considered an expert on anything? OK, I'm no expert, but don't think that will stop me from making some observations.

Stuff (both good and bad) I have observed about Germany:

Everyone smokes in Germany. Except me. But sometimes there are so many people smoking that it's hard to tell that I'm not. Restaurants are the worst! They don't have non-smoking sections so you have the pleasure of sucking carbon monoxide with every meal regardless of where you sit.

Germans drive very fast. Oh, and so do the American's who have lived her for a week or two. Not all autobahn's are speed limit free, however. And the German police love to catch speeders with their speed camera's. I have found that when ever I am in a car with anyone, the primary topic of conversation seems to be the location of speed and red-light cameras. I don't even have a car yet and I can tell you the location of at least one red-light and one speed camera.

Germany has great Italian restaurants. Don't get me wrong, their German food is pretty good too, but their Italian food is top notch. I had Lasagna Bolognese the other night and it was DEVINE! I especially liked that it had ham in it. Plus they served us Bruchetta (OK, I don't speak or write Italian) free, kind of like the chips and salsa that you get at some Mexican restaurants. It makes me wonder if the good German restaurants are in Italy.

Rain is the rule; sunshine is the exception. Honestly, most days I have seen here have had at least clouds and very often rain. I would like to say, though, that when the days are sunny they are amazingly beautiful. Many people here have beautiful gardens and there is lot's of green space. Sunny days are a delight to be enjoyed

Some news about me:

I found my new ward the first week I was here. They made me a bit nervous, though, when they told me their bishop was moving. I had good news on Sunday, however, when a new bishopric was called. I guess it's true what they say about timing. Our ward is breaking ground on a new building this Wednesday and they are having a farewell fiesta on May 14 for the 10 families about to move. Sounds like an exciting place, eh?

I walk to and from work everyday and I've become quite good at riding the streetcars or trains or whatever they are called. I still have to ask for transportation help every once in a while. There is no doubt about it, having a car is as important to one's independence in Germany as it is in the states. And that, my friends, is why I went out and bought a brand new, Hot Orange Mini Convertible!!!! Happy Birthday to me! Everyone at work has told me to enjoy the next few months with my Mini, because the predict that when my family arrives I’ll be the one driving the minivan.

I still haven't found a place for us to live, but I'm learning a lot about networking. It seems that there are three ways that people find a place to live in Germany. First, there are immobiliens. They are kind of like real estate agents, but they can charge as much as 3 months rent as a finder's fee. And that's on top of the deposit and the rent that you have to pay your new landlord. The government has a housing office here, but I remain unconvinced that they have much to offer. The way I think most people find a good house is by networking. So that's the angle I'm working. I'll let you know how it works out.

I went to Bonn yesterday and it was lovely. I got to see an exhibit of Egyptian artifacts including some taking from King Tut's tomb. It was amazing to see, but even more amazing to me was the availability of materials in English. There were English placards on the exhibits and English audio tours. There were English pamphlets and even the ticket lady spoke a bit of English. We also took a bus tour around Bonn, but there the English was not so good. Our guide kept referring to how things were builded. The Munster church was impressive, but the Beethoven house was not. Perhaps the best part was the ice cream that we bought at the end of it all. Yum!!

Finally, a trip to Paris!

Some time ago, when my wife and I were courting, I told her that one day I would take her to Paris. At the time she probably thought I was just trying to impress her (I was), but it really was something that we both have always wanted to do. Well on the weekend before the forth of July, that dream finally came true. A friend from church graciously volunteered to watch the kids so that we could do our Paris Trip as a couple.

We made reservations for a hotel on the outskirts of Paris. Our plan was to stay on the outskirts of town so that we could have the experience of riding mass transit with the ever friendly and helpful Parisians. Oh, and it was cheaper outside the city than right downtown. We arrived on the evening of 30 June, checked into the hotel, and went out to try to find the local train station.

I don't know the name of the village we stayed in, but it was very nice. We knew for sure we were in France, though, when we noticed a nearby building with a statue of a partially undraped woman over the front entrance. The train station was easy to find and it was simple enough buying our 3 day rail pass. They even gave us a map of the city, which proved to be a very useful tool.

To be honest, I don't remember what we had for supper that night, although I'm sure it wasn't snails or raw beef. After walking around the village a bit, we went back to the hotel room and watched a bit of the World Cup.

1 July was our first full day in Paris. We rose early, had breakfast in the hotel, and hopped on the train for downtown Paris. Our plan for this first day was to visit the Musee d'Orsay, which is across the river from the Louvre, and to see the Eiffel Tower. The Orsay was at the top of Mindy's list of things that she must see, primarily because the Orsay has an extensive collection of Impressionist works. Mindy and I have always loved the Impressionists, so it just made sense to go there first.

The Orsay was magical! There were so many marvelous things to see that the experience bordered on overwhelming. There were lots and lots of pieces that were familiar to us and it was absolutely wonderful to see them. I discovered that I have twofavoritet artists among the Impressionists. I believe that I have seen both of their works before, but I had never associated individual paintings with these specific artists.

The first is Berthe Morisot. She is one of only a handful of female impressionist, and like the others she tends to favor painting women and children in familiar settings. Of special interest to me was a painting by Morisot depicting a woman looking down on a sleeping baby. When my oldest child was born, Mindy's grandmother sent us a card with this picture on the front. I loved the picture back then, but seeing it in person was even better. Perhaps I was influenced by the emotions I recalled of my son's birth, but I don't believe that would be a bad thing.

Another artist that I "discovered" at the Orsay was Alfred Sisley. To be honest, I had never heard his name before this trip. What I saw of his work was primarily landscapes, houses, roads, and such, but it was all stunningly beautiful! Every picture seemed to capture some magical moment in what could have been a mundane location. What a talent!

In addition to those new favorites of mine, we saw works by Monet, Manet, Cassat, Renoir, andCezannee. We walked and walked and looked and looked until about lunchtime. Lunch on this day was on the balcony of the Orsay looking across the river toward the Louvre. There was a vendor there selling bagettes that were tasty and relativelyinexpensivee. Once we had finished lunch and rested up a bit, we spent a bit more time enjoying the Orsay before heading out toward the Eiffel Tower.

By this point we had already done quite a bit of walking, so I'm not sure why we decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower instead of taking the train. My recollection is that we were starting to feel quite tired and sore by the time we arrived. It was quite the thing, though, the first time you see that tower rising above the city. To be honest, I expected to be disappointed in the Eiffel Tower. I supposed that it would be smaller and less grand than the images we are familiar with. I could not have been more wrong.

The Eiffel Tower was nothing short of stunning! It was far larger than I expected and far grander than I expected, and that was only from the ground looking up. After talking it over, we decided that our best approach would be to ride the elevator to the top and then walk down. There are actually different levels you can go to, but we opted to go all the way to the top.

There was quite a queue for tickets for the elevator, although there wasn't a line at all if you wanted to climb the stairs. Waiting in line for 1.5 hours seemed a small price to pay in order to avoid the pain of climbing even part way up the tower. Once we had our tickets, there was another queue to wait for the elevator. Of special interest to me was the sign in the elevator warning people to beware of pickpockets!

The view from the mid-level was very impressive. Plus there was a gift shop there perfect for buying souvenirs. Oh, and there was also another queue to board a second elevator to the very top.

The view from the very top of the Eiffel Tower was spectacular! Paris is a sprawling city, but it's amazing h0w much of it you can see from up there. I thought I would be more bothered by the hight, but it felt very safe and secure up there. We walked around and took it all in and relished in the idea that we had finally made it to Paris.

Once we had seen enough from the top, we rode the elevator back to the mid-level. From there, though, we decided to walk down the stairs to the bottom. Now this may sound kind of silly, since we had been walking all day, but it actually turned out to be a lot of fun. The walk down the stairs is much slower than the elevator ride, but that means you have more time to look around and enjoy the views. You also get to see a bit of how the darn thing was put together, which is actually quite impressive. It was also fun reading about famous events in the life of the tower, which were reported on placards at almost every landing.

So far, our experience with Paris had been top-notch. The Orsay was all we hoped for and more and the Eiffel Tower exceeded our expectations at every step.

Dinner that night was at a small cafe not too far from the Eiffel tower. There were several good reasons for choosing that cafe, none of which had anything to do with food. First of all, we were tired and not in a mood for searching dilligently for world class cuisine. Second of all, we wanted to stay close to the Eiffel Tower since they light it up each night at 10:00p. Third of all, they seemed to speak a bit of English.

The food at the cafe was good, and it was nice also because another American couple came in and dined right next to us. The best part, though, was that the cafe had a TV and when the World Cup game came on we got to watch a bit of it. Better yet, France was playing that night. We didn't watch the entire game, but we later learned that France won! More on that in a while.

After dinner we headed back to the park that lies at the feet of the Eiffel Tower in order to wait for the lighting. Sure enough, at 10:00p exactly the lights on the tower began to flash. I suppose that this is supposed to make it look like the tower is sparkling, and it did to some extent. We took some pictures, but they don't adequately capture what it looked like. The little white dots you see in those pictures are the strobe lights going off.

By the time we got on the train, France had won their World Cup match. It was easy to tell that France had one because it sounded like the entire city was celebrating. It was funny, because every time the train stopped and the doors opened, you could hear the cacaphony of the jubilent French! Then when the doors closed, things got rather quiet again.

Back at the village where we were staying, the celebration continued. People were honking their horns and shouting out their windows. It was a madhouse! We even saw one guy sitting in the passenger side window of a car and banging a pot with a spoon. I wonder if his wife was mad when he came home with her good pan all banged up.

When we got back to the hotel, there were to young kids standing at the entrance. They couldn't have been older than 4 or 5. As we were walking toward the entrance, we watched as they ran toward the street, raised their arms and screamed like miniture banshees. Better yet was the tremendous response given by the passing traffic! People honked and screamed and waved at the little kids. It was an amazing spectacle! And yes, it was also very entertaining.

On our second full day in Paris, 2 July, we planned to visit both the Musee d'Marmotan and Notra Dame Cathederal. An agressive plan, to say the least, especially since we were a bit sore from all of the walking the day before. We started out again with breakfast in the hotel and a train ride into downtown. Finding the Marmotan took a bit of doing. The train got us into the area, but we left the underground rail station so disoriented as to not know which way to turn. In an act of supreme boldness, we finally stopped a fellow pedestrian and asked for guidance. The guidance we got was excellent (and English) and we soon found ourselves at the Marmotan.

The Marmotan is famous, like the Orsay, for it's collection of impressionist paintings. In particular, the Marmotan has a large collection of Monet's works including the famous painting "Impression: Sunrise," which is the Monte painting from which the moniker "Impressionist" is taken. This museum was considerably smaller and more intimate than the Orsay. The Orsay is housed in an old train station. The Marmotan, however, is housed in an old house. It rather felt like we had invaded someone's home in order to enjoy their art collection, which I suppose isn't very far removed from fact. I suppose that's OK, though, since we did pay to get in.

After spending the morning in the Marmotan, we found a nice sidewalk cafe and had lunch. So far we had enjoyed excellent luck in finding English speakers and in the case of this cafe we even found the menu in English. After lunch we headed toward Notre Dame.

At Notre Dame, we began by standing in the queue to enter the cathederal. This is not the queue to go to the top of the cathederal and see the gargoyles, this one was just to see the inside of this most famous of European churches. The cathederal was amazing, although our pictures don't do it justice. The stained glass work was exquisite and the stone carving was amazing.

Having seen the inside, we then had to decide if we wanted to stand in line to go to the top of the facade (the front part of the cathederal). The line looked long, plus there was a fee. Upon consideration we decided to go for it! We took our place in the queue and commenced the waiting. There were two good things about waiting in that line. It was nice because there was a ledge along the fence where we were lined up that allowed for sitting. It wasn't the most confortable, but it certainly was better than standing. It was also quite a bit of fun looking at the interesting people walking by.

It took us about 2 hours to work our way through the queue, but when we finally got to the top of the facade we decided that the view was well worth the wait. From the top of the facade it is easy to see why Notre Dame is so well known. The craftsmanship is amazing. There were gargoyles of course, but equally impressive was the stone finishing work. The detail was amazing. It's hard to imagine how much effort and money went into building such an edifice.

We were also allowed to go to the top of one of the bell towers at Notre Dame, which sit at the very top of the facade. At the bell tower it was explained to us that the facade and bell tower were built separate from the main cathederal, since it was feared that the ringing of the bells might otherwise cause damage. The bells were large and impressive, but then again everything at Notre Dame was large and impressive. The view from the top of the bell tower was not quite as impressive as from the Eiffel tower, but we enjoyed it regardless.

After walking through Marmotan and climbing up Notre Dame, we were once again tired and sore. We hopped a train back to the village where we were staying and enjoyed a very nice Chinese dinner near our hotel. We retired early that night because we wanted to get an early start the next day.

On our 3rd day in Paris we planned to see the Arc d'Triumph, the Champs Elisse, and our home. Yep, it was almost time to return to reality! We started once again with breakfast in the hotel, although this time when we were done we also checked out. The hotel agreed to allow us to leave our car parked there while we went out and enjoyed one more morning in Paris.

We arrived at the Arc d'Triumph while the sun was still low in the sky. It was an impressive sight, but it would have been more impressive if it wasn't the center of a monstrous traffic circle. I fully expected to watch a life threatening accident while standing there. This experience reinforced for me the value of riding the train into Paris instead of trying to drive around in Paris. I was very happy not to be driving that morning!

The Champs Ellise was a bit of a disapointment. Maybe we would have enjoyed it more if we had planned on spending thousands of dollars on outrageously overpriced merchandise. For windowshopping, I would have been just as happy at any other shopping center in the world. One thing that was impressive, though, were the flowers towards the end of the Champs Ellise. The flowers were BEAUTIFUL!

After checking both the Arc d'Triumph and the Champs Ellise off our "must see" list, we rode the train one last time back to our hotel, jumped in the car, and headed for home. Lunch that day was purchased at a gas station on our way out of Paris. We bought these baguette sandwiches that were really yummy. We also bought some chicken flavored potato chips. So if anyone would like to know what potato chips taste like in France, all I can say is "they taste like chicken!"

If you would like to see all of our pictures (all 209 of them), then please click on the link below (or copy this web address and paste it into your browser address window):

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rtillett247/album?.dir=/45e3re2&.src=ph&.tok=phAYFpFBfckTpTBv

Oh, and in case you are curious why there are no pictures of Mindy and I together, it's because we were told that a favorite method of stealing digital cameras from tourists is to simply ask if the tourist couple of family if they would like a picture together. The would be thief then simply runs off with the camera.