Adventure #2: Arnhem, Netherlands - ho!

At the end of January Berkley had a conference in Amsterdam. Berkley has some old family friends living in a smaller town about 1 hour outside of Amsterdam so we decided to make it a family trip - complete with...

...a RENTAL CAR. 

What??! I know. But let me tell you...we felt like we were living the high life! 

We were stoked to drive, but also realized that driving in Europe is definitely different than the US, and we needed some prep...some of which proved a bit challenging, like:

1. Road signs are not universal...studying before hand, definitely required (thank you, Berkley!) 
2. Our phone plan is cheap (yay!) which means our phone stops working outside of Germany (boo)...so no Google Maps.

3. We brought our Garmin GPS with us (yay!) but the European maps needed to be added/updated (boo!). 

4. We started said download process the night before (yay!), but it takes a ridiculous amount of time (like 3 hours -boo!), but the download was interrupted once when there was an internet outage overnight (boo!), twice, when we accidentally closed the window when it was 90% finished (boo!), and three times, when we decided it was taking too freakin' long.

We ended up using an "offline maps" app that we'd never used before, and just moved forward with faith we'd figure it out!  

So yay! Off we went, to a completely different country, with a completely different language and our drive time was a whopping....1 1/2 hours (isn't Europe cool??!). Bridger couldn't have been more excited to be in a car (so cushy, right?) and Berkley did a great job as main driver. We successfully got ourselves onto the freeway, and before we knew it we were on the ever-famous Autobahn! Woo hoo! It looked something like this:

And felt something more like this:

Actually, it wasn't that bad...haha! Sure, people were driving way faster than us, but we just let them go around us. 

Oh, but wait...there was that one time that the tiny no-shouldered European traffic lanes seemed like a vortex too small for our car to squeeze through (between an ever-present concrete barrier and a truck weaving across the center line) and we both just kind of let out a long squeal and gunned it. We survived...barely. 

Believe it or not, we made it to Arnhem without incident, and were happily greeted by Debbi and her family. They have a beautiful little home with a large kitchen and heated floors...oooo. Tile floors are cold in the winter, and everyone has tile floors here, so that was a pleasant surprise!

All of us on a street in Arnhem

                                                                                                                                    We had enough time before dinner to run downtown. It was drizzling, but it was beautiful, with a few lights still up from the holiday season. We parked right near the original gate to the city, where the original walls still stood, complete with arrow slots. There was also another ancient, awesome cathedral, as well as other cool buildings. I had a chance to take a few photos (with my real camera, that I finally remembered!) before it really started to rain. We walked around a bit until Bridger exclaimed, loudly and suddenly, that he needed to poo. End of adventure for that day, but for a good cause.

Dutch is different than German...
but I promise they weren't serving
soap for lunch - ha~!

We headed home for a good dinner, finally got our maps downloaded onto the Garmin (whew!) and Berkley prepared for his conference the next day. 

In the morning, we headed back downtown to a huge farmer's market. There was one stand with small buckets full of ever spice you could ever imagine! I was happy to find some much-needed bay leaves and cumin, which I hadn't been able to find at the grocery stores in Germany. I am sure they're there somewhere, but was glad to just finally have them in my hands.

  There was also a big old fish stand, complete with squids, eels and and octopus, not to mention all of the fish. Bridger was totally fascinated - who needs an aquarium anyways, right?

At one point I caught him literally 1/2 an inch away from a pretty nasty looking eels face. I said "Um, Bridger, I think that's a little too close"...

"But I want to see his teeeeth" he replied...and I saw that the eel's mouth was open. Awesome.
We also hit up a really cool kitchen store, where I found some glass spice jars, a glass jar for the oats we use practically every morning, and a dish for quiche and pie an stuff. It was such a cool store! Everything was gorgeous, like Pottery Barn-esque, but priced more like IKEA. I was pretty excited, since we brought nothing with us for our kitchen except for two pans and a handful of odd utensils. I'm definitely going back some day!

From there Berkley had to take off for his conference in Amsterdam, but we stuck around and decided to take a closer look at the cathedral downtown. It was definitely not as massive as the Cologne Cathedral, but was almost as old (originally built sometime in the mid-1400's) and had it's own, cool story. I think we're going to find a lot of that pretty much everywhere we go.

While out and about, I think the two things that struck me most were
1. the number of bicycles...everywhere (just lined up, unlocked outside of businesses) and
2. the amount of devastation Arnhem suffered during WWII, and how courageously and determinedly it was rebuilt.
While at the cathedral, learning a bit about the history, I saw a photo (you can see the same photo here) that looked down an Arnhem street, a street that I had walked that same day. Each building was a pile of rubble, spilling into the street, and the cathedral stuck out of the ground like an old snag built of broken bricks and dashed hopes. When the Luftwaffe hit that city, they didn't hold. Anything. Back. I can't imagine living in such a pretty little town, being surrounded by heritage and tradition wherever I looked, then being forced from my home, only to come home to that.
But you know what? They rebuilt it. It's insane, and it's beautiful today. I imagine the people of Arhnem were courageous, determined people, who were not going to just leave their ruined city. They loved it, and they reclaimed it. There are whole walls and fences built with the rubble of old buildings, since they had no place to put it, but I would have never known that had Debbi not told me.
I feel like that's kinda how I am going to have to be as we build our life up here in Dusseldorf over the next couple of years - courageous and determined. It's a cool process, but can be hard sometimes, you know? But I'll wax eloquently on that another day.

Bridger cooking with Debbi in
her fabulous kitchen

We spent the rest of the weekend with Debbi and her family. They are so wonderful, and Bridger really enjoyed being around a real-life-English-speaking grandma (although Debbi looks too young to be a grandma!). They made cookies together, he helped her make dinner, she read him books, and even showed him a movie before bed one night. He. LOVED. it. Juni was in 7th heaven as well, with more room to run around, a big comfy couch, and even a friendly little dog and big, strong grandpa arms to pick her up.
And of course - I'll admit it was wonderful for me too. This was the first time I'd ever met Debbi, but she made me feel loved the minute she looked and me and smiled. She's laid back, full of love, and took me in like family immediately. Oh, and her kitchen is full of good food :) It was so, so nice to be in her home, filled with a Spirit of warmth and love.

Isn't she
lovely? Good people are the best.

31 Adventures and Adventure #1: Cologne Cathedral (Köln) and Chocolate Museum

Many of you know that I am now a whoppin' 31 years old. To make sure that this year of 31 is as wonderful as I can make it, I've decided that I am going to try and make sure that 31 adventures happen in my life this year. I am leaving the definition of "Adventure" open, since sometimes an adventure can be something like giving up sugar for a week, or consistently getting up early, or running a race...or...or...or...

...But there will definitely be a heavy leaning toward physical, get-out-and-enjoy-Europe adventures, simply because it MUST be done! 

So - duh-duh-DUUHHHH: Adventure #1: Cologne Cathedral and Chocolate Factory happened a few weeks ago (forgive me, I am catching up!).

We have a wonderful friend named Emily that just happened to be visiting Cologne while her husband was doing some research there. Since Cologne is only about 45 minutes away, it was a complete NO BRAINER that we were going to make our way over there and spend a day with her while she was in town. PLUS - Cologne is an awesome city, touting some awesome sights which we had yet to see.

We got up a little bit early, loaded up the kids (Juni in the mei tai, Bridger in the stroller) and headed out. After a small fiasco* trying to figure out how to buy a train ticket to a city spelled with an umlaut in it (it was way harder than we thought it would be - come on, German train ticket machines! Why can't you bow down to awkward Americans!) we got on a bullet train (woohoo!) and were off! Bridger loved the super-cushy train, which was full of business people since we were traveling in the morning on a weekday. Most of them seemed relieved to see a couple of little kids - something out of the ordinary - on their commute. 

We'd planned to meet Emily at the Cologne Cathedral, which just happens to be right outside of the main train station, and also just happens to be COMPLETELY MASSIVE. I am not even over-exaggerating. At all. I knew it was massive on our way there, but I couldn't have prepared myself for the massiveness that I saw as we walked out of the train station and looked up:

Photo credit: http://rogue-alien.deviantart.com/art/The-Dom-Cathedral-322485621

Bam. 
Cathedral. 
And not just a Cathedral, but basically the largest cathedral in the world. It's as long as 1 1/2 football fields, and 75 yards wide. But what really makes the gigantor-factor hit home is the towers: they're even taller than the thing is long, at 472 feet tall (about 175 yards). So, this thing is big. So big that they started construction on it in the 12th century, ran out of money (and probably motivation) and then decided to finish it in the 1800's. So massive that when they finally finished it, they started having to repair it right away. So massive that I still can't get over it. While writing this post, I've been sitting here, whispering to myself under my breath "man...that thing is just so massive".
It's so huge, that the picture above is not mine. There was no place I could stand that would either get the whole thing in the frame or do it any justice. But here's a picture of us by the front doors, for scale:

*Dink* - Do you see those tiny little people at the bottom of the picture in the middle? Yeah. That's us. I am lucky I stuck my arm up, or there's no way you'd ever pick us out. AND we were still standing like 50 feet in front of the church...you can see the massive doors behind us. 
We were but small ants...
But yes - so this is where we met up with Emily, and man, what a good friend (SO dang good to see her) and man...What a cool place. 

Berkley and the kids looking at the
giant, ancient, golden box that is
believed to hold the relics of the Three
Magi. Yes, Bridger is trying to
squeeze Juni's head. 

The cathedral was originally designed and built to house what is believed to be the remains of the Three Kings that visited the Christ-child (see that out-of-focus golden box to the left?). Pretty cool!  Looking at it from the outside was just mind-boggling. So massive (there's that word again) and every square inch of it's stone exterior was painstakingly carved, designed to be beautiful, but part of a great whole. When you walked in, it was hard to know where to start - partially because it was really dark, but more so because it was just so big, and was filled with ancient, cool stuff. And it was just so big...Think about the biggest cathedral you've ever been in, now lay about six of them end to end...that's what the inside felt like. 

After exploring the interior, Emily and her mom (with whom she was traveling) offered to watch the kids while Berkley and I climbed to the top of the tallest tower. Super-fast-impromptu date?? Sure! So off we went. Remember how the tower is super tall? Well, the only way to the top is taking the stairs - 509 of them, to be exact. It was quite a workout. The steps were cool - worn away by time and thousands of feet, and we just spiraled up, and up, and up. At one point there was a little hallway that led away from the tower (which we had to explore, OF COURSE!) and we discovered a legion of giant church bells, which I'd never seen in person! The hallway also afforded us this view, showing that even today, the cathedral is under continuous repairs and renovation.

As we ascended the final, more open and recently built stair case that took us to the top of the tower, we were also able to see, more closely, the detail on every inch of the cathedral. Here's a picture I took of one statue, just one statue. 

It was an angel, holding out a piece of cloth that was draped across her outstretched hand. The detail was insane. I pointed it out to Berkley, who then said "Man - and it's crazy to think that that is just one statue, on one tower, facing the inside...and that when it was originally made, no one would ever see it from the outside...".

Like I said, mind-boggling, huh?


When we did finally get to the top, we could peer out at the city below. Here's what we saw:

View from the top!

Not only the Rhine River, but see all of the other, normal-sized cathedrals dotting the city? You can see 4 in the above photo, but there were 12 additional Romanesque cathedrals dotting the city, all dating back to the 1200's. Cool, huh?

And still, they were utterly dwarfed by the presence of the Cologne Cathedral. Insane.  

There's more pictures of all of this at the end, so I'll spare you for now. 

After a brief but delightful look at the top, we headed down, down, down the 509 spiraling stairs, which felt like an eternal down-stair treadmill, and were

Bridger and Logan getting some well-deserved goof-off time.

happy to greet this goofy crew at the bottom. Then we loaded up the kids and headed off to a German-Roman Museum!

The museum (which was literally right next to the cathedral) was fantastic. They put it in that particular spot because in WWII they were digging out a bomb shelter when they came across this amazingly-preserved, huge Roman mosaic. RIGHT THERE. 

Berkley, Juni and the mosaic I mentioned in the background.
I wish you could have seen it! Each tile was perfect.

They built the museum around the mosaic to preserve and display it. It was beautiful! Looking at it, and the other stuff there, like Roman jewelry or an original Roman arch, totally brought me back to Greek/Roman daydream land I used to find myself in often during 7th grade history class.

Berkley, checking out a head-piece of gold leaves.

Pretty amazing culture, pretty amazing stuff - and way too much of us to soak up within the attention span of three toddlers...


...so off we went to the Cologne Chocolate Factory/Museum!

Original Roman Arch that was at the Gateway to the city.
Cologne was right on a major Roman highway. Freakin' cool.
This was also right before I forgot that Juniper existed (for
just a minute) and happened to remember to look for her
right when an entire class of 14 yr old surrounded her, looking
confused as she tried to step up on the display...oops.

We walked/took a metro to get there, which ultimately left to an odd separation between our family and Emily's family. When we did finally meet back up again, Emily informed us that they'd managed to come out of a door of a building exactly when a bride and groom were supposed to be exiting the same building. There was a whole crowd of people waiting outside, and when they walked out the doors, everyone released a bunch of balloons and started cheering! Emily's 20-month-old Logan loved it, and thought the balloons were for him...haha! Oops.

The Lindt Chocolate Museum was awesome (and delicious, of course!). At one end of the museum they had what was basically a scaled down, real chocolate factory, which made the small chocolates that they handed out to people who bought entrance tickets. It was sooooo coool to see the process, the churning chocolate (which churns for days!) as well as the chocolate fountain at the end.

You guys. 
A Chocolate Fountain. 
With Lindt Chocolate pouring out of it. 
It was my dream come true. 

And they even had a sweet little lady there handing out wafers dipped in the chocolate fountain to anyone that walked by. We soon found out that it didn't matter how many laps you made...she would always give you one more!
Juniper was pretty blown-away by it all. Here's her reaction:

 We were all pretty toasted by the time we were done with that, so we headed back to meet up with Emily's husband and grab some grub. On our way, we passed by this thing again - it was just as impressive as it was earlier in the day. Once again - note tiny people passing by at the bottom for scale. Insane. 

A nice photo of me & Emily

Now - Can I just take a second to say how nice it was to see a friend this day? Really - it was so fun to laugh with someone and have someone laugh with me - and at me :)  There's really nothing like living in a country where you don't speak the language to help you appreciate a friend that understands your puns or sarcasm! Plus Emily is the best, her mom is hilarious, and her little boy couldn't be more cute (and she's got another little bean on the way - yay!). Oh, and a shout-out to her for sharing some of her photos with me for this post! The not-phone-looking ones are all hers :)

How I really felt about the fact that
Emily was standing in front of me

After dinner we parted ways and we Walkers headed back to Dusseldorf. It was late, and the kids were pooped, but we were happy. In fact, we were so happy-pooped that we managed to blindly walk onto the wrong, last train after getting back to Dusseldorf and only realized it when our only option home was to walk 40 minutes to get back on track. Oops! While we were pooped, it was nice to talk and reflect, and it just meant that we slept extra good that night. 

Below are some extra photos of our adventure!

Juniper sitting behind just one of many, many sets of pews in the cathedral

Tiny us, eating a snack outside

Berkley and I inside of the tallest tower, just as it opened up

Going down the seemingly-endless staircase

Berkley and Bridger checking out step one of the chocolate brewing process

Churrrrning chocolataaate....mmmmm

Chocolate being drizzled into molds

A chocolate version of the cathedral (really??!) Perfect, huh?

THE FOUNTAIN. 

Me and the awesome little lady who handed out chocolate all, and a still-chocolate-dazed Juniper reaching mindlessly for another wafer dipped in the chocolate fountain of youth

Happy Walker Crew!

Life In General

I have had a lot of questions about our living situation, my social situation, my birthday, and more, and just thought it would be a good idea to update people on life in general. 

So first, my (mid-January-belated) birthday update: Success?? Absolutely. I couldn't have felt more loved. It was absolutely splendid. I kind of just expected to spend the day with my little family and I was totally fine with that. I enjoyed a pleasant day with the kids, and even went to the local library for the first time. Berkley had made the ever-delicious, butter-and-chocolate-filled-so-unhealthy-for-you-we-only-make-it-once-a-year-for-my-birthday cake, and had told me to be home by 4 pm. I was walking home from the library with the kids, and as I approached our little house I saw a dear friend I made at church out in the driveway! She had stopped by quickly with delicious little treats from a bakery, and flower bulbs for me to plant and grow. I don't even know how she knew it was my birthday! It was a small gift that spoke volumes of her kind and giving heart. It was so sweet. 

I thought that was the surprise that Berkley had set up for me at 4 o'clock, but I was wrong! Shortly after getting inside another kind, new friend from the ward came over with her three little kids (1, 3 and 5) and THEN the twin 7 yr old neighbors showed up bringing a friend (so, 7, 7, and 7) and then there were Bridger and Juni (1 and 3). So our house was pretty much filled with small, extremely excited little children singing me happy birthday and giving me chocolate. It. Was. Awesomelycute. Seriously - it made me so happy - they were all just so happy it was someone's birthday, kind of like Christmas is more fun when there's little kids around to freak out about it, ya know?

The Birthday crew, mostly focused on delicious cake

The Caaaake...almost gone, of course.

On top of that, Berkley disappeared for a minute and THEN - out of nowhere, Berkley brought the computer around the corner, and on it were some of the people I love most in the world who had all Skyped in at the same time to sing me happy birthday. It was so sweet - so thoughtful, really, and made me just want to cry. I felt so loved. People from Idaho, Berkley's parents in France, a friend in Seattle, a friend from Brazil...it was just so sweet.
So yes - birthday was a success.

Success #2: WE FOUND A PLACE TO  LIVE and have signed a lease!! And we will be moving in...at the end of March. 

Finding an apartment has been an adventure in an of itself. No joke. We got on the task right away when we moved here. We searched for apartment listings online and when we found anything that seemed like it would work, we would email the people right away. We sent probably 20 emails (no exaggeration) and we literally heard back from 4 people...3 of which were just telling us their apartment was already rented. Fortunately, our heaven-sent hostess, Martina, offered to make some phone calls for us, and we were finally able to track down some apartments to go look at. 

After visiting the first two apartments, something became very clear to us: 
In Germany, When someone leaves their apartment they LITERALLY take everything with them. I am not even kidding - like, there is no kitchen. At all. They take out all of the appliances, disassemble the cupboards and counter tops, and leave the walls compleeeetely bare.  I mean, they even take the light fixtures with them so there's freakin' wires sticking out of the ceiling. When you move in, you have to bring a flashlight to the bathroom with you. We even talked to one family who's apartment DIDN'T EVEN HAVE FLOORING IN IT (well, that was in The Netherlands, but still!). 

So why...WHY does this make any sense at all??! I guess it just all goes along with the German ethos that you buy things that you absolutely love and you keep them with you forever. Even the kitchen sink. 

So needless to say, since we're only planning on being here for a few years, and we came with nothing, and we don't plan on bringing our light fixtures home with us when we go back to the states, we were hoping to find an apartment where the people moving out would be willing to leave some of the stuff behind for us, or at least sell it to us, right? And we found a great place.  It's a smaller, but not too small, 2 bedroom apartment. The living room has a door on it so it could double as a guest room. The people that are moving out are moving to Austria, and - can you believe it - want to sell their current kitchen to us! Yay! And...ANNNND...the kitchen has a dishwasher (what?!). And a fridge that's taller than Bridger. And more than 4 cupboards. Huge improvement from our current kitchen:

Our current kitchen. Can you find three cupboards? Extra points if you find the 4th! And yes, that is the fridge on the far right under the counter, and that manly man on the left? Making a delicious dinner (with Bridger's help). The bessst.

The family that lives at the apartment now is actually pretty awesome - they've been so kind, even invited us over to dinner another night, and are going to leave some of their furniture behind for us as well. Yes!

On top of that, we have a view of the distant Rhine River from our living room window with easy access to a path that runs along it. Between our building and The Rhine lie several acres of greenhouses used to grow flowers. Not bad, right? Also, the apartment is just a 5 minute walk from a train line that can take us right to the city center and will also cut our travel time to church from about 55 minutes to about 40 minutes. Woo hoo! 

So yes - we are excited. I am grateful, however, for the time we will get to stay in the little house we are currently in. It's a cool little house - the only one that stayed up after the neighborhood was leveled post WWII. Martina said that the only reason it wasn't knocked down as well was because a disabled veteran lived here.  It's smaller, and sits in the back yard of the larger house in front where Martina lives, but it has a beautiful garden, nice yard, and a couple of sweet 7 yr old twins (our neighbors) that show up and play with Bridger at random. Tonight they came over and played and we made "American Cookies", which they were quite excited about. We love them, and as excited as we are, it will be hard to move!  Here is a little video of Berkley and the kids playing in the living room:

So, all in all, things are coming along. We're still waiting to hear back from a Kindergarten (preschool) for Bridger, which he won't be able to start until August. We're also still in the process of figuring out the best, most comfortable form of travel for the family. The train/bus system here is amazing,  but even so we are still walking a LOT to get to and from bus stops and walking a lot around town when we aren't on a train or bus. We have one umbrella stroller, which Bridger rides in when he's not walking, and I carry Juni in the Mei Tai. When it's raining (and it rains a lot), we lovingly cover the umbrella stroller with some second hand plastic that we cut off of our car seats after we got home from the airport. I then hold an umbrella over Juni and I, and do my best not to run into people as I steer the stroller with one, exhausted arm. Pretty chic, right? We get some pretty funny looks :)

And my social life? Friends? They're coming. It will take time, as I know. People have been so kind and open and helpful - more so than we ever could have asked for - but friendship is more than just finding nice people. True friendship is built on giving and receiving, where you give because you love, and you receive because you are loved, and in doing both you feel loved by your friend. And the best of friends give and take without even realizing it - they just love each other and enjoy each other, giving and taking in the process. It's not just kindness, it's sincerity. It's not just fun, it's joy. It's not just happiness, but empathy. It's a beautiful thing, and something that takes time and often work - and that's okay! I can be patient. I just hope that Bridger can be too...

...Right now, we are his best friends, which means we're closer as a family and really enjoying each other. But I've gotta be honest - Bridger needs friends that are 4 yrs old, like him, and I, surprise surprise, am not 4 years old. I try, but sometimes I tire of being the best 4 year old I can be. Sometimes I just don't want to play "chickens" or "Shaun the Sheep". Sometimes I just want to sit at the playground and watch. Sometimes Bridger's jokes aren't funny to me, and I know they would be to another 4 year old, and I know he misses that. We've hung out with other kids, but with the language barrier he's sometimes left out of the action (which is so not his thing - he's usually in the middle of it all!) and he stands on the edge of the scene just jumping up and down saying the only thing he's comfortable saying in German which is "Ich heisse Bridger!" (my name is Bridger) over and over again. It's pretty...heartbreaking. He's settling in, and learning German drop by drop, but sometimes, when I am trying to immerse him in as much German as I can,  and I am speaking simply to him, he just looks at me and says, in the sweetest way "Okay Mom, you can speak English now." But he's resilient. And he's doing well. He's taken to making his sister laugh, which makes him laugh in return, and often starts a conversation with me by saying "Mom, do you know what I love about you?". 

Love that kid.

And while we're at it, here's Juni:

She couldn't be more fun. Love her too. 

Berkley is also doing well. He's just kinda getting things set up and getting settled in at work, like he always does when he arrives at a new lab. It too will take time, but he's patient and persistent, and excited about his work. People in his lab are still getting to know him and understand his humor, which I am sure they'll enjoy soon enough.

But yes - time, time, time. That is what we're really waiting for, but we plan to make the most of the time at hand while we're at it. We recently went to a giant "Castle Church" in Cologne, visited The Netherlands, and are currently enjoying the Carnival celebrations here in Dusseldorf this weekend (don't worry - I plan to share all about these in upcoming posts). And for now? We're good. We're happy. We have each other, and we're happy. Life is good.