What Is Carole Up To Now?

Carole is wandering the world. Having had a couple successful careers, as a software engineer then a technical marketer, it's time to take a sabbatical and plan for the next big thing. New philosphy: "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death."

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Ausgang, ausgang

Tuesday June 28. Hot again today: 30 Celsius by 9 a.m. Today I'm going to be a ‘lady who lunches’. The Ladies International Association had its annual new members lunch today. I took the S-Bahn to a transfer point, then took the tram to get to my destination. The trams are big, 2-car affairs, they run on a track and have doors in the side of each car that automatically opens at every stop. (Unlike the S- and U-bahns, where you have to activate a button or push a handle to open the doors.)

A couple stops after I got on, two young women shepherded a group of 15 or so 4 year-olds onto the tram. They couldn’t all find seats together, so one woman & 5 of the kids walked to the back & ended up in front of me. All was well for a couple stops, but the tram was hot, the kids got bored. The two across the aisle decided to have a ‘bite the handhold on the back of the seat’ contest. This didn’t phase their minder. Then, one started a shrieking contest and of course a couple more joined in. (Not the girl across from me, she was holding her ears. I wanted to do the same.) It wasn’t until everyone else in the tram was glaring that their minder noticed. First she talked with one, then another and they sort of settled down.

A few minutes later, for some reason their minder grabbed her bag & walked up front to talk with the other woman. They’re chatting up at the front, when the tram comes to a stop and the doors open. The kids near me look around, don’t see her and so they stand up, start singing ‘Ausgang, ausgang’ (exit, exit) take hands and walk off the tram! I could see the alarm sweep up the car before I could say anything, one teenager vaulted off the tram & talked to the kids, someone else told the driver to stop. And it’s not until now that the women in charge have noticed that anything’s wrong. Everyone was herded back on the tram and we proceeded. Until 15 minutes later, we stopped and never got going again. We sat for 5 minutes, very unusual, and the driver made an announcement. We all got off the tram. It sat there for a couple minutes then pulled away, just as the next tram was coming. So we piled onto that one and continued.

I finally got to the lunch destination, at a member’s house. It was a very enjoyable time, I had already met several of the women. Met a few new ones too, a couple who had lived in the area I’m in and offered help with anything if I needed it.

Getting back was also a bit of an adventure. Eva kindly gave me a ride to the tram stop, where there already were a couple of the women I had met. Good thing, too, as we waited & waited, there came an announcement from the kiosk would we please wait; and then a bus pulled up. We all piled on to it, and it traced the tram route. The other women, Ewa and Alex, told me this rarely happens, but they always make it right & get you to where you need to go. So now I know, in case it happens again and I still don’t understand what they were saying.

Got home at about 4, exhausted and hot. Didn’t do much else. Forgot how much humid heat tires me out.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Tollwood Festival

Logan thought he was going to drive to Ulm this afternoon, for a 1/2 day meeting Tuesday morning. He was about 10 minutes from being out the door, when the boss called to tell him the meeting was canceled. So, after dinner we rode into town to get to the OlympiaPark, where the annual Tollwood festival is going on. They have bands playing there for fee, local bands playing for free, “street theater” entertainment and the usual assortment of food, drink, clothing, jewelry, etc. vendors. Like a gigantic art & wine festival. BUT – key difference – you buy your drink & sit in the beer gardens. No wandering around with drinks, that we saw. This may be due to the fact that, like at the street festival in Schwabing, you pay ‘Ruckgeld’ (a deposit, ruck = back) for every container, even a plastic bottle. It’s marked on the receipt, and you return it to that vendor with the empty to get the deposit back.

The festival was moderately interesting, if we’d been with a crowd of friends it would have been more fun. OlympiaPark is just gorgeous, and I will pay attention to the events they hold there. Ann M, they just performed Turandot. It sold out pretty quickly but maybe I can catch the next opera that they perform.

Beer Garden Life

Sunday June 26. Still hot, although there are some interesting clouds in the sky. We left the house around 1:30 to meet up with Bruce & Barbara at the Kugler Alm, a beer garden near where we live. Logan & I got there first, and we snagged a spot at a mostly shaded table. Logan had gone off to get beer when I spotted Bruce. He & Barbara had just gotten there along with Elaine. They rode their bikes through the Forst to the beer garden. Great way to get there, and back, especially if you have a couple beers.

A festival was going on at the Kugler Alm, there was a band in lederhosen playing traditional dance music, and a troupe of dancers also in traditional dress. They would process to the stage, and do a couple dances, then recess for a couple songs, then a different set of dancers would go up & do a couple more. The dancing was very slow & stately, more like walking in time with the music. Lots of changing partners, and different hand holds. It was reminiscent of square dancing, but a very slower pace. The dancers ranged from a tiny girl about 3 feet tall, through teenagers, to middle-aged adults. And we didn’t even think about bringing the camera. Oh well, we’ll have to go to another one.

The beer garden was very big. Bandstand in the center, 20 rows of picnic tables on all sides and lots of trees for shade. There was a separated playground for kids, and a couple other areas with tables farther away from the bandstand.

The beer gardens started when it was against the law to brew beer in the summer months. They brewed in spring, and used the trees as shade to keep the beer cool so it would last through the summer. I’m pretty sure they cellared the beer, and the trees provided extra coolness. People liked sitting under the trees & drinking, and this was permitted as long as people were allowed to bring in their own food. That continues to this day. We saw plenty of people with their picnic baskets or soft sided coolers setting up at their table. People also bring their own tablecloths to the beer gardens. But you have to buy their beer.

Barbara told us that some beer gardens do provide table service. These areas are marked by tables, with tablecloths already on them. If you see a spot like that, you can sit but expect to order food from the waitress.

Spending a hot afternoon at a beer garden is just great. I hope to do it more often.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Ikea, and Festival in Schwabing

Friday June 24. After Logan got home from work, we went to the nearby Ikea. Spent a couple hours in the cool, wandering through the displays. We were looking for just a few items, that would help organize things. We looked at all their furniture, this was the first time Logan had been in an Ikea. We had dinner in their cafeteria, and then down to the “Costco” area and bought a magazine rack, a knife, a free standing-towel rack (hanging on the door they don’t dry), a chair that fits me, and a small shelving unit. We got them back to the apartment and started assembling. The only tool we lacked was a hammer. Logan made do with the doorstop rock.


Saturday, June 25. Today dawned hot. We went for a bike ride in the morning, looked at the nearby town of Taufkirchen. There’s a good-looking apt. there coming up for rent.

We went grocery shopping, took the car so we could replenish the wine & juice supplies. Just too heavy for me to carry much home.

Then, as the evening started to cool, we hopped on the S-bahn and connected with the U-bahn to take us into the Munich neighborhood of Schwabing. I had read on the ToyTown site that there was a festival there, HerzogStrasseFest. We finally found it. Food & drink booths, and several bands. One interesting difference from California street festivals – all food and drink is served on and in real plates and glasses. You pay a 2 Euro deposit when you buy the food and you get a token from that vendor. When you return items and token to the vendor, you get your 2 Euro back. Really keeps down on the litter.

There was one band that really had the crowd lit up. We stopped to listen as they started “You can keep your hat on”. The crowd knew all the words. They played songs like “Summer of ‘69”, “All right now”, "long Train Running" and were starting a ballad by Whitesnake as we headed out. Everyone knew the words to all the songs. The crowd was truly all ages, we saw people who had to have been in their 70s dancing in front of the band, along with the young mother & her 3-year old. What fun!

Back to St. Anne's

Monday June 21. We headed out after breakfast and worked our way down towards Blackpool and St. Anne’s. Logan had another week of work planned at the BEA site in Warton, so we were going back to the Glendower. On the way, we tried to tour Sizeargh Castle, an Elizabethan building in which the Strickland family has lived for over 760 years. They must be very well preserved. We got there around 10:30 and it wasn’t yet open. We looked around a bit, took the road back to the Sizergh farm nearby. This is an organic dairy farm. There was a walk posted, but we didn’t feel like taking it. So we got back in the car and navigated the coastal route back to Blackpool.

Along the way, we stopped at a Public House for lunch. There were a few listed on the map, we pulled in to two along the way before we found one that was open. Here we had an excellent pub lunch. It seems that the local food is better if the place is not frequented by tourists.

Back on the road after lunch, and within 20 minutes, we hit Blackpool. O my god, what a place. It’s a resort area of sorts, we entered town from the north and drove down the coast road. For a couple miles, the ocean and a tram line is on the right, and to the left are hotels – 4 story building after brick building, most touching with restaurants and parking lots out front. Then, the overhead lights start and line the street. There are plastic light-up figures along the lightpoles flanking the street and most look like bad 1950’s cartoons (especially the flying saucers, complete with aliens inside.) On the road to the left is now arcades, tourist traps, and you just know bad restaurants. This goes on for a couple more miles, and then you exit out from under the lights and back into a couple miles of hotels. A couple more miles and we’re back in St. Anne’s, where I will stay one night before heading to Munich on Tuesday.

At the Glendower, where we stayed, there was a brochure for one of the big attractions in Blackpool. It looks like a Vegas-style showgirl production, plus a Cirque-du-Soliel performer (not the whole show, just the flying guy). The brochure stated that they had great restaurants within, and at one, you could “tempt your tastebuds at Burger King.” So, I’ve got their idea of ‘great’ pretty well calibrated. Bleah!

My opinion on Vegas is that it looks like someone gave the prom committee 2 Billion & said, “decorate it”. Blackpool is much the same, only it was $2 million and they gave it to the 5th graders.

We checked back into the Glendower at about 3:00. I wanted to walk on the dunes that were between the shore road and the beach, so we changed into walking gear. Luckily I put on the dirtiest jeans I had with me, because I got the bright idea, once on the dunes, to go walk the beach. The tide was way out & I wanted to walk to the surf line. It was an unusually non-windy day and the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds now & again. So we started walking. And walking. At least it was flat. We kept crossing small streams on the beach – either from when the tide had been in, of the groundwater running. They got deeper & wider as we got closer to the surf line, so at one point I decided to take off my shoes. Quickly found out that the ridged sand was quite hard to walk on, but had already noticed that the sand had lots of river silt in it and I was positively filthy. Not going to put my socks & shoes back on until we’re near the road again. So we plugged on to the surf line, and when we got there, I stepped in when Logan said “watch out, there’s a jellyfish.” And so there were. Quite a lot of them. So I got out pretty darn quick and we picked our painful way back. There were higher spots where the sand was relatively smooth, but then it would go into hard 3” high ridges again. We finally gave up after coming out the other side of a pool with lots of mud between our toes. Walked back through the pool, sat down and put on the socks over very dirty feet. What a relief it was to have my shoes on again! My feet felt like they had been pummeled. Now I know why the town up the road is called Blackpool.

(In real time, it’s been a week since I’ve walked on the beach. I am still shaking fine sand out of my shoes. )

Tuesday, Logan drove me to the Manchester Airport. The roads seemed much bigger than they did when I first got here! One of Logan’s co-workers said “You think those are small, you ought to see the roads in Cornwall!” So we’ll use public transport and/or walk when we go there.

Last day in the Lake District


Sunday June 20. Woke up a bit tired and knew we didn’t want to do any long hikes today. After breakfast, we decided to drive a bit south, to get to Fell Foot park. This is a park at the very south end of Lake Windermere. Logan felt up to driving again. It’s all very disorienting, but he has stayed in the correct lane and headed into & out of the roundabouts in the correct way.

This drive, however, as soon as we cleared the hills above Bowness, the roads got alarmingly small. Quite often the plants at the side of the road often hitting the back of the side-view mirror on my side. I found myself instinctively leaning into the middle of the car, not that doing so would have helped much if we had hit anything. It wasn’t just that the plants were wapping the car, I could see the rocks & walls that the plants were covering. Fortunately, this drive took only 20 minutes.

We got to the park, didn’t have change for the parking machine so we went down to the gift shop. It was just 11:00 and everything had just opened, so Logan was able to get change.

We walked to the small marina, and there was a tea room next door. Sat at the outside table and had a decent cup of coffee. The marina & buildings were mostly made of stone. There was a beautiful arch between the private dock & the public marina, which got me to wondering how do they build those? This arch comprised 2 rows of stones, side by side. We could see the seam that ran up the inside, in the middle of the arch.

We walked the trails down to the water. There were interesting signs everywhere that said “Toxic algae. Do not enter the water. May cause skin irritation and vomiting. Animals may be affected too.” Yikes! Toxic algae! The signs sure didn’t keep anyone out of the water. There we lots of families who brought blankets, small half-tent looking things as sun shelters, the big picnic basket, kayaks, blow-up rafts. The kids would head right to the water. It looked like a lot of fun. Best of all, no sheep.

Bordering the open grass areas were the biggest rhododendrons I have ever seen in person. They must have been 30 feet tall. We had been seeing big bushes of them throughout the trip, particularly in the woods at the edge of Bowness

After a couple hours at the park, we felt brave enough to head up the other side of Windermere to the town of Hawkshead. The roads were just as narrow, but there was less traffic which made it a bit easier. We got to town, high on a fell and inland enough that you couldn’t see Lake Windermere. We checked out the 3 restaurants and had a pub lunch. Since it was Sunday, they were doing roast beef & Yorkshire pudding so I had to have that. So disappointing. The beef was tough, the gravy not great. The Yorkshire pudding was good, though. I hope to get our household stuff in Germany soon, I have a small roasting pan that should fit in the oven and want to try to make my own.

After lunch we wandered around the buildings, saw the grammar school that Wordsworth attended and a 15th century church. Beautiful stone construction, and perched high over the town. Churches always picked the best spot!

It looked like we could shorten the harrowing trip back to Bowness by taking the car ferry across the lake from just 4 miles south east of Hawkshead. We headed out that way, and the drive wasn’t too scary. We did have to pull way over so a city bus could squeak by in the opposite direction. Fortunately, everyone was driving pretty slowly.

We got into a line for the ferry, waited maybe 20 minutes before we were able to get on. It takes 18 cars at a time, and the trip across the lake is only 5 minutes so the line moves in a big packet, then you wait 10 minutes till you move again. It was a great shortcut. From disembarking, it only took 8 minutes or so to get back to the B&B. We decided we did want to have a walk, and looked at our book of maps. (Logan had bought the Ordinance Survey maps of both Lancaster and Cumbria. Thanks, Ann, for the tip!) In the close-up page of Bowness, it looked like we could walk north from the B&B through neighborhoods, get a footpath into the field, and walk across country for a mile or so to a castle, that was on the adjacent map page. (Remember this bit.)

So we set out, and quickly got to the path after heading uphill quite steeply. Of course. It’s a given. It was very nice to walk the fields again, these were much grassier than the previous day’s walk and not so hazardous with lose rocks. We had walked for about 30 minutes when we came to a branch in the trail that hadn’t been on the map. Oh well, we picked a direction and kept walking. Up, Logan said, “I think we’re coming up behind the hill we were at the other day.” No, can’t be. We started out in the opposite direction. Well, it was. We kept climbing and came into the first sheep field that we had encountered, on Friday. This time we did walk up to the top of the fell. Magnificent view of Windermere. The clouds were starting to thicken to the northeast of us, we had been pretty much ignoring them until we heard a rumble of thunder. OK, time to get off the hill. We headed back across the other side of the field and soon found ourselves on the path we’d taken on Friday.

(These thunderstorms congealed over Yorkshire, dumping what they said was 3 month’s rain in about an hour. Flash flooding resulted, people and animals were trapped on and rescued from roofs, cars and small sheds were carried away, one senior couple was pulled from their car just as it was starting to float, and were carried through the chest-high waters by their rescuers. We saw that on the news. The next day, the headlines were calling for Mr. Blair to get serious about climate control. “Extreme weather” is likely to be a hallmark of global warming, which is taken quite seriously in this part of the world.)

Back in Bowness, we looked at our map book to see how we got so turned around. It finally dawned on us that we had been looking at the blow-up of Bowness, and the blow-up of some entirely different part of the area was on the adjacent page! They were miles apart. In the main section of the maps, adjacent pages are indeed a continuation of the area. Not in the blow-ups. We had a good laugh about that. Oh well, that was our biggest tourist mistake so far. That night we ate at the restaurant on the corner, Messinas. Afterwards, we drove to the Belsfield Hotel to enjoy our last Windermere sunset of the trip.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Third day in England, waking up in Bowness

Wow, it's been almost a week since this day. I got caught up in laundry (11 loads) and grocery shopping (3 trips) since I returned to Germany late Tuesday the 21st. It's been hot here, so I haven't been doing too much except looking on-line for a new place to live.

Saturday June 18, Bowness-on-Windermere. We slept late, as the B&B offered breakfast between the most decent hours of 8:45 and 9:15. It was the full English breakfast for Logan: 1 fried egg on fried bread, hashbrown potatoes, sausage, mushrooms, broiled tomato, toast. The ‘small English breakfast’ for me. Even at that, I was served a mound of scrambled eggs, toast and a crumpet, and bacon. (What we’d call ‘back bacon’, very close in flavor to what we call ‘canadian bacon’, except it’s in a long strip instead of a round.) So I gave Logan half mine and we were both happy.

We had decided to do a bit of touring, had read about a stone circle near the town of Keswick. Marian, our hostess, said that Keswick is a market town, so there’d be that going on today, and it was about a 40 minute drive. We had been promised clear weather for the weekend, but it was very cloudy. That may have kept the number of visitors to the area down a bit.

We headed north following Lake Windermere, then turned towards Keswick. Came to the town of Grasmere, where Wordsworth lived. Took a couple pictures of the town, the fields and a monument. Then, on to Keswick.

We drove through a high pass between two very steep fells, took a couple pictures of the farmhouses and a waterfall high up the side of a fell.

We got to Keswick about 11:30, and it was very busy. “Heaving” our B&B hostess said. Everyone comes into town for the Saturday market, and it’s full of tourists too. It took a while to find parking, the first lot was full. We were cruising through the second lot and spotted someone going to their van, asked if they were leaving & they said yes. The guy even gave us the remains of his parking sticker – how nice! The lots are ‘pay & display’: you park, go to the machine & buy a tickets for how ever long you want to be there, then stick it to your windshield. NOTE: Carry change!! In most of the machines the minimum tickets was 2 pounds 10, they don’t take paper money and they don’t take cards.

We walked through the market place in the pedestrian zone. Looked like a farmer’s market. The veggies looked great, but we really didn’t have need to buy any, and I wanted to stretch my legs before lunch (not to mention I was still full from breakfast) so we continued on past the park, and to the shore of Derwentwater Lake. (Keswick sits at the north end of this lake.) The path took a turn through the obligatory sheep field, and headed towards some woods at the shore of the lake. We followed it for a bit, took some pictures of the lake. As we returned through the sheep field, to my amazement and no small measure of incredulity, I saw families picnicking in the sheep field. Now, remember, there is no place that doesn’t have sheep doots at least every square foot. So the picnic blanket is on doots, the kiddies are likely to be encountering doots, you’re eating while smelling doots. Ye gods. I revised my thoughts on the British views of sanitation right there.

We walked out of the doot field back into town, and had lunch at a fish & chips place. From there, we went to the information booth in Moot Hall, in the middle of the pedestrian zone, and got a map for a route up the hills to Castlerigg stone circle. We started out, it was still cloudy but pretty warm. We walked through the town of Keswick, past another park where people were lawn bowling. The grass was amazing – it looked like a carpet. We continued up onto a former train railbed, part of their ‘rails to trails’ system. After about ¼ mile, we headed back through a neighborhood, found the street we needed and start walking up. And up and up and up. We walked past the houses and it opened up into fields. We had a great view of the fells to the north, and could see 20 or so paragliders up there, some of them seemed motionless. They had a great spot for gliding. Not to sure about the landing – steep and rocky.

We finally got the field containing Castlerigg. And, you guessed it, sheep. This stone circle comprises 48 stones. They estimate it was built around 3,000 B.C., but no measurements have been taken. It’s one of the best preserved circles in the area. We wandered around, looking at the stones, taking pictures. There were maybe 40 or so people up there. Families picnicking amongst the doots. One family had – get this – a Frisbee and were encouraging the kids to play with it! A couple small girls were playing hide & seek in the circle, running around and hiding behind the stones. Eventually, one smeared the other’s leg with doots to gain the upper hand. I can see the ad now: “Sheep doots™ – perfect picnic ambiance and offensive weapon, all in one! Amuse the kiddies!”

We decided to take the non-suburban-neighborhood path back into Keswick, and followed the directions in reverse order through fields, over stiles and bridges and made it back just before our parking permit expired. The walk back was a challenge for me; many of the segments were through a field just at the edge, by the stone wall. Due to the rains, and the walk back being downhill, the way was rutted with lots of loose stones exposed so we had to walk very carefully. (I’m pretty sure I can’t carry Logan anywhere.) It was easy to see where people get the raw materials for the stone walls around the fields. I cannot imagine how any of the land in this area is cultivated. We did see some crop-land type fields, in the distance usually. I guess they wall the cultivatable land off for crops and let the sheep have the rest.

Pretty tired again, by now. The benefit of all this walking, stair climbing and bike riding (in Germany) is showing up in my legs. Love that!

We headed back towards Bowness. One the way we stopped again in Grasmere, bought some treats and wandered to the town square to sit and relax. Logan bought something called a ‘flapjack’, which was a very dense cakey thing. It was about 4 x 6 inches, couple inches deep and he only managed to finish about a third of it. He said it was good.

Back to the B&B, we showered, got into clean clothes and –oh no – walked down the hill into town to find dinner. I knew the climb back up at the end of the evening was going to be hard. We ended up in the beer garden of the Royal Oak. I had wine, Logan had beer & we ate decent pub food. Nice thing about not driving is to have a coupla what you’re drinking. This restaurant is at the south end of town heading back up the hill from the low spot, and the tables in the beer garden overlooked the street. We noticed lots of people walking from farther up the street, down into town. Afterwards, we decided to explore to see where they were coming from, and we walked a short way up the road and found the Belsfield Hotel.


I knew I’d seen a sign for that hotel pointing up the hill when we were down at the marina. Thought it might be interesting to check it out, so we walked in, through the deserted lobby (OK, it was about 9:30 by now) and through the bar out onto the best kept secret in Bowness. The Belsfield has a huge lawn, with 6 or 8 tables on it, facing northwest, looking up the lake. It was virtually deserted, too. We got a drink from the bar, carried it out to a table and sat there enjoying the spectacular sunset. At this time of year, actual sunset is around 10:30 or so, and the sky is lit with reds and pinks and purples for an hour before the sun goes down.

The Belsfield seems like a fusty old place. We did see some people in the dining room on our way through, very dressed up and much older than us. This might explain its quietness.

After dark, we headed back to our B&B. The stairs up to the room were a killer. I was hoping to sleep well that night. The B&B is set back from the main road, but there’s a small open park between it & the road, and a restaurant on the corner, with outside seating. Due to the heat, we had the window open and people were yammering away outside the restaurant until after midnight, and the cars on the road were pretty loud. Then, to go with the late sunset, dawn is about 4:30 and there are certain birds who start chirping about 45 minutes before dawn. Short sleep, all nights.

I advise if you need quiet to sleep, look for places that are not on the main roads through any of the towns in the Lake District. All the people who work the restaurants are up quite late, so they all get on the roads between midnight & 1.

Friday, June 24, 2005

Second day in England - off to the Lake District

Friday June 17th. Friday morning we used the workout room at the Glendower hotel. It has been a long time since I’ve done a stairmaster so I took it a bit easy. I did some of my upper body wieghts workout too. Felt good, I really need to find a club in Munich.

We had breakfast at the hotel – great bacon & scrambled eggs and wonderful, not duplicated in the States or Germany, tea. Why can’t people in other parts of the world figure this out? (I once was confronted with tea that was presented as the cup, the tea strainer full of dry leaves positioned over the cup, and a pot of hot water that the waitress poured over the strainer. I was appalled and she said it was how she was taught. No, I said, the tea has got to steep in the hot water! This gourmet farce brought to you in Rochester, NY, at the city’s most high-end B&B.)

We packed up and lugged our suitcases down the stairs, through the fire doors and out into the howling gale. (People must expect gale-force wind there, no one but me seemed surprised.) Took off for the Lake District. We headed back to the M6, and north. Turned off at exit 36, headed for the town of Windermere and our B&B in Bowness-on-Windemere. The roads wound through farm country and it was just beautiful. Each field is separated from the others by hedges or stone walls. Lots of sheep. Steep hills (mountains, really, and they call them ‘fells’) in the background, and the houses that we passed were all made of stone.

We check in to our B&B, The Beechwood at the north end of Bowness-on-Windermere, it was around 1:00. We lugged our suitcases up the 2 flights of stairs (I think people look at Logan & automatically give him the room at the top of the building!) Windermere is a very large lake, 10 miles in length with lots of great nook & cranny coastline, surrounded by fells. We got some stuff put away in the room and then headed in to town to get lunch.

We had lunch at a small sandwich ship/café about ¼ mile into town from the B&B. Here I had my first food surprise, I ordered the cheese & pickle sandwich. Turns out that ‘pickle’ is like a sweetish relish. (They have something similar called ‘chow-chow’ in Pennsylvania.) It was OK, but I wouldn’t knowingly order it again.

After lunch we continued into town, which basically borders the road that runs parallelish to the lake. The road into town is mostly downhill, not super steep but definite. We wandered around and looked at the shops & restaurants, walked down to the marina; all very touristic. We decided we wanted to get out away from town, so we went into the information center at the marina and looked at the walks that one could do from in town. They sell guide books to the walks, and small packets of brochures for individual walks. Within the past couple years, England has enacted a measure that opens up more countryside for walking. You can’t walk through agricultural land, or within 20 feet of a private house or garden, but they have ensured that people can’t close off right-of-way for walkers.

A couple of the viewpoints mentioned were up the fell behind the B&B. SO we got back up there, and continued climbing through the roads at the east side of town until we came to the Biskey Howe viewpoint. Tremendous view up & down the length of Windermere and across to the fells on the other side. It was a pretty short walk, too. So we decided to continue on, after admiring the view and me catching my breath. We walked up a street and turned off onto the marked footpath, walked along through forest and then into the open at the top of a hill after about 20 minutes. This was the Post Knot viewpoint, and part of The Dales footpath. We continued on, coming to a wooden ladder over a rock wall. The sign said that the farmer permitted people to walk in the field, to sight the cairns and use those as guides. So we climbed over the wall, and into our first sheep field, close up. Reality hits pretty fast, the field was dotted with tufts of wool and sheep doots. Lots and lots of sheep doots. There wasn’t a square foot that was not dooted. There was not too much of a smell (unlike a cow field, for example) so we continued up the field and hills for a bit, carefully watching our step. We climbed for a few minutes but I was getting pretty tired. So we retraced our steps, took a bit of a different path when we got in town, and headed back to the B&B to get cleaned up for dinner.

By the time we left the B&B, it was about 7:00. We had dinner at Jacksons, a modern café at the south end of town. Good thing we got in when we did, as the place really started filling up at about 7:45. Had a good meal, and we wandered from there into Hole in T’Wall, a pub that Dickens spent time at. Had one drink and decided to call it a night.

A note about smoking: there didn’t really seem to be too many people doing it. And, Yay to that! ALL the B&B’s we passed said that they were non-smoking establishments. Most of the restaurants we ate in (at an indoor table) were non-smoking inside. There weren’t even too many people smoking in the pub.

The walk back up through town to the B&B was a challenge, my legs were very tired. And then I still had to climb 2 flights to get to the room! It felt great to lay down and the bed was very nice.

Went to England over the weekend

And it was great. Didn't feel like using the computer, hence the delay in posts.

Thursday June 16. I cleaned up the apartment, grabbed my suitcase and got the S-Bahn to the airport. I had a 3:30 flight. I got to the airport early, didn’t know what to expect in travel time. So I had lunch, browsed the bookshop and checked in. I kept my suitcase as carryon, which was a mistake – we climbed down 2 flights of stairs, took a bus out to the plane on the tarmac, climbed up the narrow flight to the plane, which was small and every seat was full. But I made it to Manchester with no trouble, and only half hour after scheduled landing time. The arrival area is dismal, and under reconstruction. Think Newark in worse condition.

Logan was there to pick me up. Good thing too, I found the airport horribly disorienting. I do not know why, it wasn’t a ‘Macy’s effect’ with mirrors everywhere, but nothing was where I expected it to be. I used the ladies and found Logan again, as he was waving his arms and in the opposite corner of the room from where I thought I had left him.

We headed out; he had a Ford Montero rental car. Automatic, thank god. It was very weird sitting as a passenger in the driver’s seat. And even weirder, both the side- and rear-view mirrors reflected our car from my perspective, and I could see the reflection of the traffic on the roads in the reflection of the window in the side-view. I had to work to not see it, it was nauseating me.

We drove north to Preston, then off the M6 to the smaller roads towards Lytham-St. Anne’s, where Logan had been staying. The roads got alarmingly narrow, from my perspective, as hedgerows and rock walls zoomed by mere inches from my side of the car. I was to have a shift in perspective when we got to the Lake District.

St. Anne’s is on the west coast, on the estuary of the River Ribble. It is tidal, the water came slowly up and then retreated hundreds of yards every day. The wind was fiercely blowing and it was quite cool, and gray. We got to the Glendower Hotel, tossed my suitcase in the room. This room was a hoot – one double and 2 single beds took up most of the floor space; one of the singles perpendicular to the other beds, across their foot. The bathroom tiny, done in 1950’s linoleum, and had the old-fashioned separate faucets for hot & cold water. The room did have a window overlooking the coast road and out to the beach/river/ocean. Oh well, work is paying for it, and it is a B&B with hot breakfast provided. Logan said that he was the youngest by far of the people staying there. It looked to be quite the hit with the senior set. Which is also weird – our room was on a floor up 2 and 2 half-flights of stairs, not serviced by a lift. The doors were hard for me to yank open. I think it’s a ‘stay fit or die’ as you age thing, and was to be repeated at the next place we stayed.

We walked into town for dinner, had a great meal at an Italian restaurant. I had prawns Marie Rose for an appetizer. We’d call them bay shrimp, and Marie Rose is a cross between a very mild cocktail sauce and mayo. Like a really really good Thousand Island dressing. I must see if they have that in Munich.

Didn’t check email that night, although Logan had told me that he had contacted the shippers and they said that our stuff would be on a plane to Munich on Friday, and in country Monday. That turned out to be a lie. More later.

It was heavenly to be able to easily read the signs, menus and to be able to talk with people! I may need to go to England once a month.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Heading to the UK

Yesterday night we had a monster thunderstorm. Shook the building! It took about an hour to roll through. I have not been in a storm like that in my memory. Of course, it was pouring this morning, so the planned cross-country walk (International Women's Club outing) was cancelled. So I finally updated my web site (www.caroleamos.com).

Tomorrow I get to have another adventure: taking the S-Bahn to the airport, catching a flight to Manchester UK. Logan will pick me up, we'll stay the night in Lytham St Annes. Logan's there for work, for a couple weeks. Friday we'll drive to Bowness in the Lake District for the weekend.

I hope I take the right clothes (of the few I have here.) The weather is even more variable than the Bay area because it may have a big temperature swing plus a big precipitation swing. I need to find a hair style that looks good wet!

I will regale you with the trip info, after I return on Tuesday the 21st. Have a nice weekend, y'all.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

I think I've got some photos up

Check here: htpp://www.flickr.com/people/caroleamos/

(10 minutes later) Yes, success! I will continue to add pics. Note the link to the pick at the left side of the screen, that one will stay up.

Happy Birthday brother Greg!

It's a semi-nice day out; having done some things off my chore list I am going to go out for a bike ride.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Lazy Sunday

Slept lateish, got up around 8. Logan walked in town to the bakery. We dawdled over breakfast (it’s still cold here, so we sat inside instead of on the balcony). Around noon we got in the car to drive to the town of Gauting, west and south of us. Gauting is near the town of Starnburg, which is where the Munich International School is. Many English-speaking people who come here with family put their kids into this school. And this is the time of year that people move out of Munich, back to the States as the school year is over. Hence, they have stuff for sale. I had heard that Donna and Tom had lots of appliances and shelving for sale, called & they said the sale started at 1:00 on Sunday.

I was hoping to score a stand mixer. (We saw mixers in the department store yesterday, Kitchen Aids started at 469 Euros and went up!!!) But when we got to there, Donna said the mixer was sold. We browsed around and picked up a few things, but the kitchen stuff and the closets (think Ikea) were sold. I overheard Donna telling someone else that “there is a family that was here for 10 years, then back to the states for 2 and they’re coming back because they didn’t like it back in the states. He bought just about everything.” I broke in – “Are you talking about Bill?” She looked startled and said yes. Bill is Logan’s other new co-worker! Unbelievable. Donna said, “He’s the one who got the Kitchen Aid! And he said that Nina (his wife) didn’t want it, but that he’d take it anyhow and learn how to use it!” Well, I am hoping that when Nina gets over here in August, she will think their kitchen is too cluttered and I will end up with the mixer after all.

Bill & Nina and family had been over here, Bill working for ESEA until two years ago. They moved to New Hampshire, and Bill (whom I met on Thursday last week) said it is a beautiful small town, has a small college, great shops, lots of ways to get outdoors and hike and bike and ski. But the family wanted to come back to Germany, their kids were raised here. So Bill is now working again for ESEA, and he is now in Munich for 3 weeks getting things ready for the family to come over in August.

Logan heads off to the UK tomorrow, for 2 weeks.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Happy Birthday, Gavin

Happy Birthday, nephew Gavin! I called Rochester today to talk with the birthday boy. He says he's got a Mohawk haircut - I want to see pictures!

We putzed around the apt in the morning, after lunch we headed into Munich. This weekend is the celebration of Munich becoming a city, in 1158! There was a big festival at Marianplatz, lots of craft booths and food vendors. And thousands of people. It was like walking in Manhattan, we had to queue to cross the street.

We stopped into a couple department stores to look at what they offer. Kaufhoff had wonderful kitchen knives and pots. In their basement, in the food section, we counted 4 deli-style counters selling meats, one for cheeses, the bakery, the butcher counter, the seafood counter (including lobster tank), the deli salad counter, plus the cold cases holding pre-wrapped meats, cheeses, salads, and mild products. Amazing variety. Wine too, of course, with – my favorite – a Veuve Cliquot bar! I will have to plan how to buy stuff there and carry it home. We found both lactose-free milk and vintage port, two things I have not been able to find yet anywhere else. I may need to make the trip back there with a carry-on suitcase so I can roll all the stuff home.

We wandered to Munich east that evening, for a ToyTown event. ToyTown is a great web site/forum for English-speaking people in Munich. (They let Americans in, too.) Thanks to Nancy, who sent me a link for a ToyTown drinks/dinner meet up, for the ‘over-30’ crowd. We met at Lisboa, a Portugese restaurant on Briesacher Strasse. Which, coincidently, is the same street we were on last Saturday, for the party at Kims house. We met several new people, had a great dinner and wine, and got home on the S-bahn. That is so cool. No worries about driving.

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Bike riding in the evening

I love the long daylight hours. When Logan got home this evening , it was nice enough out that we went for a bike ride. Rode through the Perlacher Forst, the main path that we were on is very wide, but ‘paved’ with rocks. It was rough, for me.

We rode over to the town of Harlaching, to look at an apartment that was listed. It looks like a great town – nice houses, lots of stores near the building the apartment is in. No S-Bahn nearby, but there are both buses and trams for transportation. And, Harlaching is the southmost neighborhood of Munich city proper. We rode from that apartment towards the city center, browsed around a bit, and then rode back south to Unterhaching on mostly paved paths and streets. We were only out for about an hour and a half; everything is pretty close. So now my sight is set on Harlaching as a place to live. Hope we can find something we like there.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Looking at apartments

Yesterday, we looked at 3 apartments and one house for rent. The first place, in Grunwald, was beautiful, elegant, and icy cold with white marble everywhere. I believe it was currently occupied although you couldn't tell. There was only 1 small closet in the entire place, so who ever lives there must own only 4 pieces of clothing. This 'no to little' storage theme played out at all the places we saw.

The second place was a house in Ottobrun, an end-unit of a building. Very nice, open floor plan; split level with several floors; fireplace; basement room; beautiful sun room and big kitchen. The only drawback it the very suburban, un special neighborhood that is far from the S-bahn, and with no shopping close by.

The third place was in Bogenhausen, a neighborhood of Munich city. Also a 'house', a duplex. Funky, for example you couldn't stand up straight in the bedroom due to the sloped ceilings. Shared backyard with the neighbor who is the landlord. I noticed a huge ashtray filled to the brim with butts, on the table on his side. Eeech. It was on a busy street, no shopping nearby, miles from the train and had no garage. So no to that one.

The final place was an apartment in Sendling, also a neighborhood of Munich. We both loved the neighborhood. But the place was the funkiest we'd seen, on the 6th floor, with miniscule kitchen (4 cupboards in total, and the counter extended only a foot beyond the sink.) There was a great rooftop terrace, with a tub and a shower (and the current tenant's bath products! He obviously bathes out there!) But also no garage, and very far on the other side of the city from where Logan works. Big traffic jams, daily, on the route.

The agent was a cute 24 year-old who failed to meet us at the first appointment, her GPS had her snarled up in detours and one-way streets. Our map got us there fine. So we met her at the second place. We asked about another apartment that we had wanted to see, and her reply was that the tenant had just moved in & didn't want to show it. (Yet, it's up for rent again soon.) We went in her car to the 3rd and 4th place. And she dumped us at the last place. In the rain. So we schlepped to the nearest U-Bahn and made our way back to Ottobrun and the car. I think we need a pit bull type for an agent instead of the kitten we got.

So that was a bit discouraging. Logan to me out to dinner at an Italian restaurant near where he works, it was wonderful. I said 'grazi' to the waiter, who asked me in Italian if I spoke it. 'Poco', we both said at the same time. Later he asked if we were American. Yes, and from where? Logan said California, and the waiter pointed to me & said 'New York'. I said yes, and he said he knew it, that's how I know some Italian! That was fun. Great meal & they even had a no-smoking section.

Oh - I have heard that the restaurants in Italy have now gone non-smoking! And I read that in Sweden, that just happened on June 1. Ireland went a year ago. So the non-smoking fad is spreading, albeit slowly.

Here's some from the past few days. When I can't get on line, I write offline so I can maximize my time connected. I did try to put pics up, using Picasa (sorry, Karen) and Hello, but it seems that you must be signed in to Hello to see the pics. So I think I will load the pics on my data stick, get to an internet cafe and upload them either to Flickr or put them somewhere on caroleamos.com so that people can see them.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Midweek, and it's gotten COLD here

Tuesday June 7. Not much to today, except that we’re going to England! Logan is to cover testing at a BAE location in Warton, Lancashire. I will join him on June 16, we’ll take the weekend in the Lake District, then I’ll come back to Munich on Tuesday and he’ll be back on Friday that week. I am really looking forward to this! It has gotten severely cold here. The daytime high is about 55. I still forced myself out for a walk, went back to Perlacher Forst. It was great walking through the trees, and seeing the wildflowers and hearing the birds.


Wednesday June 8. Still cold here. I may need to buy clothes! Went to my first monthly meeting of the International Women’s Club. Got to explore a part of Munich I had not been in yet as I was 30 minutes early for the meeting. There were at least 40 women in attendance, and the speaker was very interesting. After the meeting, many of us headed to a nearby restaurant for lunch. I hope to make friends there, although I fall between groups. There are women my age & older, with grown children, and there are younger women just starting their families. But the membership is over 125 women, so eventually I may find someone more like me.

Monday, June 06, 2005

Silicon Valley Mood Disorder may be lifting

While I was on email today, I got a note from a friend who says she’s job looking but it’s still flaky: recs are opened, then closed, of course after she interviews. The good news regarding the Silicon Valley Mood Disorder is that when we were first talking with Donna about using her property management service, we asked how long she thought the house would take to rent. She said she’d like to start advertising a month before we wanted it rented, and that for the first time in 4 years she has more people looking than inventory available. She said that Google, Yahoo, Intel, Altera & others are starting to relocate people into the Valley.

When she put it on Craig's list it got 3 hits within the day, and 2 followed through and came & looked at the place the next day. So take heart, it looks like the local economy is starting to pick up. It may still be patchy in places.

* * *

I’m on dial-up. I’m back in the Triassic! I really miss my cable modem. I can spend HOURS on line because everything takes so long. Except I can’t get on-line that often. Get this – there’s a single account for everyone where Logan works, which is 2 – 4 people, depending on who is in town; plus the apartment! So I often cannot get on-line during work hours. We plan to move to a place that better suits us, and when we do we’ll get DSL. (Unless it’s already there, it will take a couple months to get it.) And in the meanwhile, we’re trying to get a T-mobile account up & running so at least I’m not competing for the single account.

Sunday, June 05, 2005

Weekend partay!

June 4, Saturday. Errand day! The weather broke so it’s quite a bit cooler now. We ran out first thing to pick up the printer, which came in on Wednesday. (I was not willing to pick it up myself and carry it home, the store’s at least a mile away.) Just up the way from the Apple store is a produce store, we wandered in and everything looked great. It was a self-serve store, too. (The produce stands downtown are not, and my language isn’t quite up to asking for what I want). The clerk even got a fresher bunch of asparagus for me from the back. I was so happy. The produce in the local supermarkets is not great. For one thing, they don’t refrigerate it. For another, they don’t seem to care if it’s wilted or obviously past its prime, it stays out on the shelf.

We got all that stuff home, then headed out to the big Edeka market for more grocery shopping. The place we went, Isar Center, has about 15 stores in it. The grocery store, Edeka, is big with a lot of selection (but the produce still is third-world).

When we finished our shopping we stopped and grabbed lunch at the snack bar. Logan had a Leberkase sandwich. Leberkase is a cooked meatloafish thing; and it tasted like baloney (but better.) And of course the bread was a fresh roll. He liked it, and that’s great as they sell it pert darn near everywhere – at the beer gardens, the snack shops, the bakeries.

When we got home, I started to work on my pot-luck dish for the party that night. Yeah! Kim, one of the IWC members was having a wine social that night, and we were able to go. It was in a different area of town than we’d been in before. So that evening we packed up our appetizers – I made ham & cream cheese roll ups, I couldn’t think of anything else to make – and a couple bottles of wine and headed off to the S-bahn. Getting to the station, I headed for the ticket machine. You can buy a ticket that offers several trips, and I needed a new one. But I noticed something weird, on the other side of the station, across the track, a guy was running to the ticket machine. Well it turns out that the ticket machine on our side was broken, which I discovered just as the train was arriving. So we had to head back out of the station, down the stairs, up the other side to use the working machine. Missed our train. Oh well, we caught the next one. (The train system is an honor system, but the fine is stiff if you’re caught without a ticket.) While waiting, we got to watch the cloud roll in over half the sky.

We got on the train and had just started off when it started raining. A real downpour. Raining on the left side of the train and a full rainbow off to the right. (The weather here is fun to watch. Often cloudy, but the skies change all the time. There’s variation and frequently sunny patches on the cloudy days. It has been hot for a few days, and feels almost tropical, with some humidity and breezes. Then it can snap down 10 – 15 degrees cooler in an hour, if a front is moving through. The cool days are breezy too, and very fresh, so it’s like the best spring day. What a treat.)

We arrived at Kim & Chris’s place along with 2 other couples, so we weren’t too late. The apartment was beautiful, very open and spacious. There were about 20 people there; we had wine, lots of food and great conversation. At one point I was talking with Ludolph and Michelle, and he slipped into French and she’s French and they were talking about the difficulties of living in Paris. I was able to follow the conversation and even join in a bit. Wonderful!

We definitely need to learn the train schedules, though. Got back to the Ostbahnhof (station) about 9 minutes after our train pulled out, and at that time of night the next one was in 33 minutes. And the one after that was 2 hours later! Fortunately it’s a big station so we wandered around and looked at the shops for a while.

Sunday slept late. No wonder, we didn’t get to bed until 1:30. We had seen a sign on the local bakery that it was open on Sunday morning from 9 – 11. Weren’t sure we believed it, as nothing but restaurants are open on Sunday. But we took a chance, walked down and sure enough it was open. Got bread & some pastries for breakfast. Bundled up and sat on the balcony, it wasn’t raining but it was overcast & breezy.

Later, Logan went for a bike ride. I did laundry, and cooked my adaptation of beef burgundy. I don’t have the pots I’m used to, I have a ceramic bean pot and a cast iron dutch oven that I use at home. Didn’t pack those and even if I had our stuff STILL isn’t here yet. It was picked up on Wednesday May 18th, we paid to have it air shipped. They told us it would be two weeks. Last we heard, on Friday, it had not even left the states yet. I may have to do something about this to express my frustration, but not quite sure what yet.

That afternoon, we drove around to look at places that were listed as rentals. Like everything else, this takes longer than we thought. The roads are not straight (!), there are lots of stops, so it takes 30 minutes to go the equivalent distance from Saratoga to Los Altos. Anyhow, we saw the location for 3 of the places listed for rent. None very convenient to the S-Bahn nor grocery shopping. I am asking the Universe for a delightful furnished rental with lots of light, a great kitchen, at least one bathroom including a modern, deep tub and enclosed shower, master bedroom with enough space to walk around the bed without bumping your head on the overhead light, enough storage for all our stuff, an enclosed garage, guest bedroom and office, DSL and satellite TV, a nice balcony or deck that we can cook out on, and at least one fireplace; nice and quiet neighbors, close to shopping and public transportation, and convenient to work for Logan. Whew! We’ve seen some that look about right but are way on the other side of town, or 20 km out of town. I want to be in or close to the city.

Dinner turned out great. The set of pots that are here are incredible. They’re ‘Fissler’, stainless steel and thick walled with great lids. I love using them and I expect that I will buy a set here and take them with me the rest of my life. The knives that are here in the apartment are another story. Blunt, dull, and crooked. The bread knife works OK. I did not pack any knives in our air shipment, because I figured I could get some good ones here. I will need to do that soon. I did see a couple places selling knives downtown, but I expect that stores outside the city may have lower prices so I will shop around. There is an Ikea near here, have not been there yet but we will go once we move into the more permanent residence. Don’t know if they sell good knives.

Friday, June 03, 2005

Beer bad

June 3, Friday. Got up at 6:30 with the construction crews. I spent a couple hours online, there’s a great site called Toytown, primarily for English-speaking expats in Munich, which has extensive discussion boards. I was reading up on various things and time passed. I think being on dial-up is an amazing time sink, I hope we can get DSL where ever we move to.

At about 9 I decided that I’d head into Munich and try to find the city office where I need to register, anyway. I hopped the S-bahn, did find the office. I had written out the name of the forms and fortunately also carried my dictionary so I could look up ‘looking for’. Ich suche Anmeldeformulare. I came away with a form & checklist of what we’ll need to bring back. Success!

From there I walked into city center, and found Kustermann, a department store specializing in housewares. Bought a wine opener. There was quite a selection, from 9.95 Euro to 49 plus! I’m not sure what makes an opener so expensive but the cheap one is working just fine. I was feeling so happy with my successes that I decided to have lunch in town, and sat at a table for a café at Marienplatz. Had a salad topped with baked Mozzerella sticks. It was good! Good lettuces, and the cheese was indeed baked so it was not greasy. I must say I have had only good meals here. Some comprise dishes that are not what I would have thought to combine, but they all taste good! I did, however, make the mistake of having a beer. Helles again, the light beer, on a hot day. And sure enough, got a headache and felt badly in a couple hours. I have to see if it’s the beer, just the light beer as opposed to the yummy Dunkles dark, or just any alcohol at lunchtime on a hot day that brings me down.

Logan got back this evening. His trip was good, and he got to learn about the ‘all the tests passed’ celebration. Lunch that day for them started with Champagne, included 3 courses, chocolate mousse for dessert, and wine was poured too. Both of us were content to stay home for dinner on the balcony. After dinner we went for a walk, and found the path that leads from the Unterhaching Rathaus Platz, through a few blocks of neighborhood, and into the Perlacher Forest (Forst). There are many many paths crisscrossing through this wooded area, it’s great for walking or biking. We walked for about an hour as the sun set.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

My kingdom for a wine opener

June 2, Thursday. The International Women’s Club had an outing to the Bavaria Film Studio. I decided to go pretty last minute but there was room for me to join along. The Film Studio is in the lovely town of Grunwald, coincidently where Bruce & Barbara live. It is bordered by the Isar river, and seems to be equivalent to Los Altos Hills, by the looks of the houses.

So getting there involved yet another bit of the great public transportation, the Tram. I took the S-Bahn to Rosenheimer Platz, then the 25 Tram to Grunwald. (That’s the reason I meet Barbara at Rosenheimer Platz when we’re heading out together, it’s where she first gets to the S-bahn system.) It’s fun to ride the tram, which does run on tracks up the middle of the street. You get to see a lot – I passed the Pauliner Brewery and some great looking restaurants that I will explore later.

There was a group of 10 from IWC taking the tour. We were early, so I got to meet a new set of folks – the only person who’d been at the cooking event that week was Barbara. One of the great things about IWC is that the membership is truly international. 2 of the women on the Film Studio tour were German, a couple from the UK, one from Italy.

The studio is pretty big. It seems they mostly do TV now, but they did film ‘Enemy Mine’, ‘Das Boot’ and ‘Neverending Story’ there. We got to tour bits of sets from all three. The submarine set from Das Boot was so small & cramped I don’t know how they got cast and crew into it.

The tour ended at about 1:00, and we all dispersed back to our public transit. That was rough, coming back to the empty apartment and realizing that my friends are all thousands of miles away. (I think I curled up & sucked my thumb for a bit.) I did talk with Barbara again by phone that afternoon; she had been planning to go into Munich to renew her & Bruce’s residence permit; but she didn’t have his passport so she couldn’t. Everyone living in Germany registers with their local city; non-Germans also get residence permits. We are just starting this process, and I wanted to follow along as she renewed theirs so I got a better idea of what to do for us. But that will have to wait.

I really wanted some wine, and there’s a tempting bottle of Prosecco in the fridge BUT our stuff isn’t here yet. The apartment is furnished and has some kitchen things, but the wine opener is this tiny little corkscrew in the shape of an old fashioned key. The top of it, where you hold to pull out the cork, is about the size of a quarter. I need more leverage than that! I just couldn’t make it work. I looked around for something to poke the wine cork down into the bottle, even picked up a knife but decided that was a really bad idea when I don’t yet know the words for “I’m bleeding, send an ambulance!” Back to sucking my thumb.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Helicopter? At 3:20 a.m.?

June 1, Wednesday. Ugh- at 3:20 this morning the loudest racket woke us up. I thought it was the constructions guys but noticed it was still full dark out. Looked at the clock, nope, not 7 yet! We think it was a helicopter. It sounded like it was buzzing the building.

Then at 5:30 Logan’s alarm went off. He got ready for his 7 a.m. pick up, and was off to Ulm for 3 days of system testing.

I finally staggered out of bed at about 8:30, after trying to ignore the construction noise. Fortunately it is cool enough to keep the window closed. I did a lot of things around the place – several loads of laundry, did some Yoga. I had a late ‘brunch’ on the balcony. There was some excitement across the way, the fire engines screamed up and there were several small conferences between the lady across the way & people in uniform. She kept pointing down to the apartment below hers, and the window down there finally opened and some smoke billowed out. It didn’t seem like a fire through, more like a pot of something had burned.

I decided I really needed some exercise so I went for a long walk. The network of paths around here is amazing. I can get all the way into, and through, Munich on a bike path. Instead, I headed south to explore that direction a bit more. Pretty quickly I was on the outskirts of town, walking past mustard fields. It was a beautiful day and I had a fine walk. (Note to self: remember, they have winter here. Don’t fall in love with the place yet!)

That evening, I spent some time online looking at a site that has furnished places for rent. We need to start looking fast, as the lease on this apartment is up at the end of August. I want to get to where we’ll live for a couple years soon, before I get too settled in here.