Our first week, continued

On our second evening here, we met with Cam's colleague Isaac and some old friends from our Livermore, CA days--who coincidentally happened to be here as well--to see downtown Stuttgart and have dinner. (These friends are now stationed at Cam's alma mater, University of Texas in Austin.) Outdoor cafes swarmed with fuβball (soccer--pronounced something like "fooseball") fans clad in black, yellow, and red flags or joker hats (for Germany) or red, white, and blue or red-and-white-checked flags (for Croatia) watching the Euro Cup on giant screens. Their wild enthusiasm shook the air each time Germany made a good play, but it was cars waving red-checked flags that drove through town celebrating afterwards.

Navigating a German menu is a challenge with my spotty Deutsch. As with China Cottage at home, there was an English menu at our first restaurant, but it contained many fewer entrees than the German one. The value-added tax here is 19%, and last time I looked the dollar had dropped to about 0.66 Euros, so getting the bill can be an eye-popping experience. And waiters aren't happy--and often unwilling, we're told--to bring patrons free tap water when bottled water brings 2 Euros or more per serving. No free refills!

We are living sans car, and refrigerators tend to be small, so grocery shopping is a frequent and sometimes physically demanding (if we mistakenly buy too many beverages) errand. Luckily we remembered to bring cloth grocery bags; there are no baggers at the end of the checkout line. While many groceries are recognizable by sight, the packaging can be quite different (e.g., glass and cardboard containers for milk--not plastic). Already I experienced an embarrassing near-miss after Cam did the first grocery shopping and I absent-mindedly (okay, is there any other adverb to describe my actions since having children?) poured myself a glass of milk from a plastic bottle, only to find it was laundry detergent. Daniel will not let me live that one down! We usually buy milk three gallons at a time at home, so shopping by the liter is quite an adjustment.

The breads here are fantastic. Everywhere we go--even the campus market and little bread carts on the streets--there is fresh and delicious bread. Although the grocery stores have many fewer choices and overall higher prices, good bread is very affordable and most groceries seem to be higher in quality. Organically grown foods, fresh ingredients, alpen-raised milk, and whole grains abound. I have yet to see Wonder Bread, and the egg yolks are the deepest yellow I have ever seen. In addition, packaging is standardized, so Germans recycle virtually everything (even the plastic-wrap packages for cheese, cardboard milk cartons, etc.). Someone told me they have a greater than 100% recycling, as other countries also send their trash to Germany to be recycled. And yet with all of this healthy living, a very high percentage of folks on the street puff constantly at cigarettes as they pass. That is taking some getting used to!

(In this photo, you see Emma sampling some of the exotic treats we have found at the local store. And in the other, you can see that Maya has fallen in love. )

The weather here was predominantly drizzly and cool (highs in the low 60s) our first week--a little cooler than usual, we are told. Still, on our first Sunday, tour guide Isaac led us on a long-distance hike (about five hours) through the countryside. We passed (and the kids posed with) hand-hewn statues and played at a wonderful, rustic-looking playground with stripped log see-saws and a thrilling zip line. Eventually we came to a lovely park called Schloss Solitude (Solitude Palace: http://www.stuttgart-tourist.de/ENG/leisure/schlosssolitude.htm), which sits on a hill with fantastic views of the terra-cotta-roofed city. Isaac is an interesting person: American-born but raised in the Australian outback, homeschooled along with his twelve brothers and sisters. He eventually got a scholarship to Princeton and went on for his Ph.D. at the U. of Texas. (It might not seem like it, but we do know some people from other universities as well....)

We are living in a guest apartment on a university campus--back to that once familiar but surreal world where almost everyone is twenty-something. Our first jet-lagged night (we slept little on the plane) resonated with the celebratory sounds of an international party until 4 a.m. local time; but fortunately that hasn't quite been an every-night occurrence. A duck pond next to our building hosts a number of goldfish, mallards, herons, and another white-faced duck I don't recognize, but perhaps the most rapidly reproducing resident is the beer bottle. A small campus grocery store sits just across the street (poor folks--I've been trying my German on them), and the outdoor athletic facilities are quite nice. Daniel and Cam have joined in some games of basketball with the college students. They aren't going easy on Daniel, and he's holding his own surprisingly well.

The campus duck pond with some of its residents.

Basketball court at the athletic field (but where's the ball???):

On the last day of our first week, we headed downtown again to meet a mom and children around Emma's and Maya's ages. They are a military family who were stationed here in April, and the dad (in special forces) was just sent to Afghanistan. It was drizzly, but she showed us the wonderful international foods at Markthalle (which had its genesis some 700 years ago), and the kids enjoyed playing. On our way home, however, we were horrified when Daniel hopped on a subway and the doors closed behind him--and on Maya--before the rest of us could get on. Perhaps we'd gotten a little too confident on our fourth visit to town. We spent a frantic time trying to communicate with the station masters and find Daniel. A very nice man who knew a little English helped me communicate with them; he even stayed with us until they had located Daniel at the next station. A university student (from the campus where we are staying) who knew some English got off her train with Daniel as well, and she very kindly stayed with him until we reunited. Daniel did not know our 13-digit cell phone number, though he probably knew how to get home. We learned a frightening lesson that we need a plan (one that takes into account the language barrier!) in the event that we get separated; we didn't have a specific one for that situation.