The week after Garmisch was fasching, Germany's version of carnival. Whitney's school had tons of parties along with a party at the Burgerhaus, the town hall type place. This is basically an album of Whitney...
Day 1: Princess
Whitney with some little girls at her school found the popcorn bowl.
Day 2: Cowgirl
Play on her school playground before she saw me
Fasching party at the Burgerhaus- tasting game
Day 3: Ballerina
I walked in and she had this on her head :)
Excited about her nails
Flowers!
New playground we found
My bright idea to put Kayla in the wagon with Whitney
On Saturday I had my first go at the public bus system and took it to the mall, of course. Probably not the best place to be able to get to since after 2 months of no shopping I went nuts.
Aiden wanted to go to the mall the next day so we took the bus together for our big afternoon out.
The next week was great weather all week and we took full advantage of that.
Packed a lunch and rode the bike to the lake in Hemsbach
Most German parks have some workout machines...I sat at this one and Whitney said "Yeah, you need this one" kids say the darnedest things
Trying to get into a workout routine, not working out too well but found a nice running path through here.
Living the life on our way back to Huttenfeld
It was really the perfect weather so we had to make a pit stop for some ice cream
Making a mess!
The boys got back from school and we went to the field to play soccer before dinner
Friday morning I took the train to Mainz to meet up with Jami, another au pair from Pittsburgh. Mainz is a really cool city just outside of Frankfurt full of ancient Roman ruins, churches and lots of shopping. I finally got a pair of european kicks :)
The carnival fountain
Gutenberg was born in Mainz and this is a statue of him near the Gutenberg museum.
During the building of a mall in Mainz they came across these Roman ruins and turned it into a free museum under the mall.
We met up with another au pair, Mya, a Canadian living in a town outside of Mainz and took the train to Koln (Cologne). We got into the city around 7pm, checking into the hostel and went on the hunt for a restaurant. The city itself is kind of different, not really a lot of stuff around or very "city like." But we managed to luck out with food all weekend, so good everywhere we went. The first night we found this little italian place just down the street from our hostel. It was the only restaurant we saw that had people in it so we thought we'd give it a try.
My pasta carbonara was delicious and tuscan wine to go with it.
After dinner we found an Irish pub, celebrating St. Patrick's Day a little late. The next morning we got a suggestion from the hostel staff to go have breakfast/lunch at Alex. It was great weather so we walked and got to see a little bit more of Cologne.
Breakfast buffet- it was seriously one of the best I've ever been to! Among the many delicious items to choose from were my two favorites: Mango and tartare!
We had nothing planned for the trip except see the dom(cathedral) and cross the bridge over the river so we had plenty of time just relaxing and exploring.
The famous cologne
The dom
Crossing the bridge full of padlocks. Some love tradition for couples, but it was really cool and as you can see the bridge was full of them.
Enjoying the view
The "au pair bond"
Sitting by the river watching the sun go down, just livin the life, can't complain.
We went to Bar Cologne for dinner and sat outside under the heat lamps (hence the red)
Much needed chocolate espresso
That night we went out in search of something fun and it was a lot harder than we thought. We found a bar that was alright, only stayed for a drink...which Germans do not do vodka soda and it took two bartenders to even understand what I meant. I thought I would pick that to be easy but apparently you do shots or beer (not to mention it was crazy expensive). We were out with a German girl staying in our room with us so she took us to a club that was really fun! They played tons of American songs and really cool remixes I'd never heard and are impossible to find to download. We ended up just dancing all night, finally experienced the German nightlife :)
Everything is closed on Sundays in Germany so we got up, went to the breakfast buffet again (just as good the second time around) and went down by the river. It was clearly the Sunday hangout for all Colognians.
Beautiful weather, beautiful people
It reminded me of the movie/book Eat, Pray, Love:
"This is a sweet expression. Il bel far niente. Meaning "the beauty of doing nothing.""
This is something I've come to appreciate here in Germany and Europe in general since Europeans do it best.
We sat on this ledge just people watching, it was the best way to end the weekend. See us in the shadows? ha
Long line for ice cream
Strawberry and lemon sorbet always hits the spot.
We caught a train at 5:20pm back to Mainz and I kept going to Mannheim where I had an hour in between trains, finally getting into Lampertheim around 9:15pm and having the weirdest taxi experience of my life. I'm not gonna lie I really feared for my life and if I knew my mother wasn't going to be reading this I would post details but to spare her the stress...I made it home! 10:30pm I was in bed and exhausted.
*I know it's a long post and I will try to keep up better in the coming weeks!*
