Author: Christy

Our last day in Berlin started with a quick breakfast at a little bakery/cafe we’d spotted just down the street from the hotel. We were looking forward to some coffee and pastries before heading out for more sightseeing. However, the cafe in and of itself was quite an experience due to the comically rude clerk, who was angry and exasperated that we had the audacity to purchase items in her cafe. Her audible sighs and complete disregard for our food (she put one plate down on the counter so hard the pretzel flew off of it) were the worst rudeness we encountered the whole trip.

We finally escaped the cafe and set out for our first real destination, the Berlin Wall Memorial. Our guidebook rated it as a must-see, and we were certainly glad we went. Across from the visitors center, there is a long stretch of the wall and various informational signs in the surrounding land.

This monument called “Window of Remembrance” honors those who were killed trying to escape.

Once we made our way over to the visitors center, we climbed up several flights of stairs to see the recreation of what the wall actually looked like.

We read that the guard tower shown here actually came from a different area of the wall, and that it was purchased on eBay (!) in order to recreate the scene.

When we were done at the memorial, we decided to take the train and went to the nearest station, which was another of the “ghost stations.”

Our next destination was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which was badly damaged in 1943. The ground floor is now a memorial.

There is a new church right next to the old one; the new church doesn’t look much like a church from the outside.

However, it was quite striking on the inside.

On our walk around this part of Western Berlin, we came upon a row of these, which reminded us why all the hotels had been booked.

These were in front of the posh Waldor Astoria.

The last thing we had on our agenda before leaving Berlin was to try the currywurst. We’d walked by a little stand the day before, so we went back to it.

It’s a little sweet and a little spicy and was a big hit with all of us. Even though Finn’s face in this photo seems to indicate the opposite, he loved it!

On the way back to the hotel to get our bags we bought some more of the delicious raspberries at a corner market.

And I took a picture of the outside of our hotel for posterity’s sake.

Unfortunately, we set the raspberries down to grab the bags and forgot to pick them up again. We were extremely sad, but we drowned our sorrows in some gummy candy and screen time at the train station.

On the way back, the German countryside whizzed by since we were on the super fast train.

And we had no problems making it back “home” to Jokke and Merja’s. That evening Jokke gave us a forging demonstration. The boys had great fun dressing up in all of the safety gear.

They got to pound on some hot metal and learn about how the process works.

I’m just glad Finn’s hair didn’t catch on fire.

Here’s a video of Jokke at work.

It was a busy and great day! All of my photos from that day are here:

For our only full day in Berlin, we decided against taking a group tour in favor of doing a self-guided tour following Rick Steves’ audio guide. We loaded up four iPhones with the free app, and after breakfast at a cafe near our hotel, we took the train to Berlin Hauptbahnhof to begin our tour. Here are the boys in front of the big station.

The first stop was Reichstag, the Parliament building.

While we were walking there, a group of four or five girls walked up to us and in good but broken English told us they were on a scavenger hunt for their school and they were supposed to trade their apple for something slightly more valuable. They were very sweet and shy, so we searched Bruce’s backpack for something and came up with an umbrella. They were delighted, and the one who had done the talking said, “You are a very nice family.” I am still kicking myself that I didn’t get a picture of them.

From the Reichstag you can see the Chancellery, which is apparently nicknamed the “washing machine.”

To one side of the Reichstag is a memorial to politicians who opposed Hitler. It’s a row of slate slabs, each one memorializing one member of Parliament.

Unfortunately, they’ve also erected a less than majestic building right next to it, which diminishes the look of the memorial a bit.

As we continued, we saw a memorial to Berlin Wall victims …

… as well as the marking of the wall itself, which is done with this double row of bricks in the street.

Next we made our way over to the Brandenburg Gate.

There are lots of interesting buildings in this area, including the US Embassy.

And the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby off a balcony. (Who knew!)

There’s also a Frank Gehry-designed DZ Bank Building here, which our audio guide insisted we visit, but it was closed for an event. We assumed it was another casualty of Fashion Week.

Our next stop was the Holocaust memorial. We didn’t go in the information center because the line was long and we figured the subject matter was a little too heavy for the boys. But we spent some time at the memorial itself, which is a collection of concrete pillars shaped like graves. They are varying heights and seem to go on forever.

I found it very moving, with a similar feel as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC.

One of the places we found very interesting was the Brandenburger Tor train station which was one of the Cold War “ghost stations.” These stations were closed for almost three decades and then reopened when the Berlin Wall came down. This one has the original tile and signs, and felt quite different than other stations we were in.

After lunch at an Italian place we’d ducked into when it started to rain, we continued with the audio tour. The skies had cleared and it was beautiful (although still windy and chilly). Among other things, we saw Humboldt University …

… St. Hedwig’s Church …

… and near the library a memorial to the Nazi book burning. Here are the boys looking at the empty book shelves through the glass.

One of the last things we got to on the audio tour was the statue Mother with Her Dead Son.

According to our guide, it “marks the tombs of Germany’s unknown soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim.” The building it’s in has an open ceiling which allows for all kinds of weather and casts this circle of light around the room, moving with the light of the sun. It was crowded, and therefore impossible to get a picture without other tourists but here’s the best I could do.

I also tried to get the boys in the circle of light. They sort of cooperated.

We ended our tour at the German History Museum. We were losing the boys to exhaustion (and maybe a little boredom) but they initially liked this museum.

This room had a great exhibit with photographs of the room at different periods of time. It was a hit with all of us.

They also had a great exhibit on the Berlin Wall and the time period just before and after it came down. This part was very interesting to Bruce and me, but the boys were done. So, we decided to take a boat tour on the River Spree in the late afternoon, which wasn’t great but it was easier than walking around the city! Here are a couple of photos from the boat.

On the walk back to the train station we found these little trampolines.

And then we took the train back to our hotel neighborhood, had dinner at an Indian restaurant called Kabir (very good!) and bought some fresh fruit for dessert. We were all blown away by how good the raspberries were.

Back at the hotel, we ate our fruit and watched Storage Wars dubbed in German before collapsing in a good night’s sleep.

Here are the rest of my photos for the day.

We’d made arrangements for a side trip to Berlin and this was the day. Train tickets had been purchased and we were finally able to book a hotel for two nights, not an easy feat considering it was (unbeknownst to us) Fashion Week in Berlin and things were pretty booked up. Our morning started with another Lagerspets breakfast — this time Ezra used Nutella to secure his chocolate to his roll. He was pretty pleased with himself.

After breakfast, Jokke took us over to the local train station and helped us make sure we got on the right train.

We made it safely to our first stop, Hannover, but then things got a little wonky. We still don’t know what exactly happened (because, of course, all of the announcements were in German) but we ended up being delayed about an hour and a half and there was tons of confusion about which train was actually ours. When we finally got onto a train, we were told by the ticket checker that we’d need to get off at another station and switch trains. So we started to do that but when we got off the train, another passenger (who’d been in Hannover with us) told us we didn’t need to switch and we should stay on the train. So, back on the train! The whole ordeal was stressing out poor Finn, but finally a light snack and some screen time calmed his nerves.

Ezra wasn’t worried at all and barely looked up from his game. This was a recurring theme throughout the trip.

We finally made it to Berlin …

… and found our way to our hotel. Unfortunately our room wasn’t ready, so we just dropped off our luggage and headed for a late lunch. We ended up at a place called Cafe Literaturhaus, where the tasty food and the waiter’s extreme friendliness made up for the slow service. After lunch we got ice cream cones at a not-so-friendly shop and then checked into the hotel and had a little rest.

Once we felt somewhat refreshed, we took the train back to the city center to have a look around. Here are a few shots from that first mini tour.

We had hotdogs and crepes from a street vendor for dinner.

Then we went back to the train station to take our short hop back to the hotel, where we collapsed!

Here are all of my photos from this day.

Tuesday the 7th started out with a quiet breakfast and some laundry at Jokke and Merja’s. The boys took a moment to show us one of their favorite Minecraft videos. They could watch these videos for hours.

Jokke, Bruce and I took a walk into town to check out Jokke’s favorite secondhand store and visit a drugstore so I could buy a contact lens case, which I’d forgotten to pack.

After the second load of laundry was hung out to dry, we jumped in the car and headed to a lake called Heyeglassee. No surprise, Finn was the first one in the cold water.

Ezra and Bruce were more skeptical.

Eventually Ezra was all the way in, too.

And so were Bruce and Jokke.

After everyone was dried off, we headed to Kloster Luccum, a former monastery dating back centuries.

We stopped for a coffee and snack at their very modern looking cafe.

And then went on a walk around the grounds. It was wonderful … except for the biting horse flies!

On our way back out to the car we noticed a not-so-little free library. Tons of books! We saw two more in other areas of Germany that looked exactly the same.

On the way home the skies opened up and it poured. So much for leaving the laundry out to dry while we were gone — good thing they have a dryer!

Here are all of my photos from this day.

On Sunday, July 6th we headed to the Hannover Zoo with Emi and Jakob. It was a super fun day; here are some of my favorite photos.

And here are all of my photos from the zoo.

Not to be outdone by the previous morning’s breakfast selections, July 5th brought this:

Ezra approved.

After breakfast we packed up the car and headed to the North Sea, specifically to the town of Bremerhaven. Here’s Bruce driving on the Autobahn (insert scary face here!).

I think he got the car up to 190 km/h (118 mph) which I was not comfortable with at all. Finn was. The whole rest of the trip he kept asking when we were going back on the “autobond.”

Bremerhaven is a port city from which lots of Germans emigrated. Here are some photos, including the memorial to emigrants.

After a bit, we started walking to another part of town. On the way we saw a U-Boat museum and stopped in. I learned immediately that I would never make it on a submarine. The boys, all three of them, loved it.

After the U-Boat we continued our walk. Finn and Jokke had a lot to chat about.

Here are a few shots from the journey.

We finally made it to our destination and had a great fish lunch. After lunch the boys played a little impromptu whiffle ball game while we waited for a taxi (that never showed up).

We finally decided to take the bus back and, after a mad dash, we made it onto the bus. The boys were very happy to not be walking back.

Our next destination was first, coffee, and then the German Emigration Museum.

This museum was really a fabulous experience. It took us through all of the steps of emigration and showed the various travel accommodations (or lack thereof). Here are some shots from our visit there.

At the end of our visit we spent some time in their research room and Bruce found the records for Paul Meyer, his great grandfather who emigrated to America.

What a great day trip! Here’s a slideshow of the rest of my photos.

Feeling a bit out of whack from jet lag, we managed to pull ourselves together Saturday morning with the help of good coffee and a delicious breakfast. As if the sausages the night before weren’t enough, the boys were pretty pleased to see their morning selections — bread with honey, chocolate, and/or Nutella.

After breakfast, we set off on a walking tour of Nienburg. The first photo is Jokke and Merja’s house.

We stopped at the bank to get some Euros and then made our way to the “downtown” area.

We saw the first of many churches we would see on our trip.

Finn’s face here sort of sums up how the boys feel about visiting churches.

We continued on …

… and made an impromptu stop at their police museum.

They gave the boys some police car shaped gummy candy.

And then we moved on to the Saturday market and saw this ode to asparagus farming fountain.

We made our way to a cafe for a much needed cold drink.

In the evening, Emi and Jakob came over (although I have no pictures of Jakob — he’s camera shy, I think).

Jokke, Bruce and Finn played horseshoes on the side yard.

Ezra enjoyed the pond and the fish.

Later, he and Jokke stuck their feet in, hoping for a little nibble.

We also enjoyed some cherries that the boys picked from a neighbor’s tree. Yum!

It was a great day! At some point, we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer and we gave in, hoping for a good night’s rest.

Here’s a slideshow of all of my photos from this day.

Ever since Jokke and Merja’s visit in 2010, we’ve been talking about taking a big vacation to Germany and Finland. This year, we finally made it happen. We returned three days ago and I’ve finally organized my photos (I took nearly 1,500!) and am ready to start posting about our days. First, of course, was just getting there. We flew out of San Francisco in the evening of Thursday, July 2nd. We had a long overnight flight to Copenhagen.

The flight was, as we’d expected, fairly cramped and unpleasant, but most of us got a little sleep and made it through OK. Finn liked the games and we all enjoyed the front- and downward-facing cameras when we were taking off and landing, as well as the overall map display of our journey.

Those are the only pictures I have. When we landed in Copenhagen, Finn wasn’t feeling too good and ended up leaving the contents of his queazy (or “weezy” as he calls it) stomach all over the floor of the Copenhagen airport. He was convinced it was the airline food (he’s probably right) and will most likely swear off cheesecake for the rest of his life. I think it was the food and the rocky ending to the flight.

We continued on from Copenhagen to Hannover, landing about 4:00 in the afternoon of Friday, July 3rd. Jokke and Emi met us at the airport, where we rented a car and made our way (with one stop for Finn who was feeling weezy again) to Jokke and Merja’s house Nienburg. We had a lovely dinner in their backyard; Finn was immediately won over by German sausages and bread. Actually, we all were.

Back in April after our short trip to Laguna, Cari and I picked out the week of June 15th as a good time for a longer return trip. (Four days, two of which are full-day driving days, is just not enough time!) We planned that the boys and I would come down on Monday and Bruce would fly down Friday night, knowing he’d never be able to take any time off work. As we got closer to the date, and Bruce’s work schedule got crazier and crazier, we realized he may not be able to come at all, but we remained hopeful. At any rate, after returning on Sunday the 14th from Big Basin, I hurriedly did a bunch of laundry and packed up the three of us so we could leave bright and early Monday morning on our long journey. As usual, there was a traffic snafu — repaving on the 5, but it didn’t cost us too much time.

We were happy to arrive while it was still light out and everyone was still awake! The next day, we got started with beach time. It was cloudy but no one cared.

Ezra buried himself for the first of many times.

So did Chapin.

Finn and Ruby outlasted Ezra and Chapin by a couple of hours, spending the whole afternoon in the water.

When we finally did get everyone back up to the house, we had a nice dinner and three of the four kids crashed quickly. Ezra, the lone holdout, finally found his happy place … with Chester.

The next morning (Wednesday) we had a visit from Jamma who was coincidentally in SoCal for some paperwork issues. The boys (and I) had a grand time catching up with her, and playing Life.

In the afternoon, everyone but Ezra wanted to go kayaking. So, Ezra and I headed off to Jiffy Lube and Target to take care of some pressing matters, and everyone else kayaked in Dana Point for several hours. I think they got the better end of the deal, but for the life of me I couldn’t talk Ezra into going. It turned out OK — a little mother/son bonding time over errands. When we were done I took him down to the beach and caught this lovely shot of him running along the shoreline.

On Thursday we went to Discovery Cube and learned about science for a few hours. Here are the kids on the Dino Quest, which unfortunately turned out to be a bust when no one could find anything on the scavenger hunt-like list. And it was HOT!

Well, Finn and Chapin found one thing on their list.

We headed back inside for wind tunnels, hockey displays (sadly, Ducks only), and much more.

Once we were done with the museum, we drove up to Altadena for a barbecue that Jerri had thrown together so we could visit with some of our besties. The kids swam forever and jumped on the trampoline, while the adults chatted and enjoyed great food and drink. I had such a good time that I have only one photo — Finn and Lucy in the pool.

We left Altadena pretty late and had an emergency stop in Pomona at 10:00 for Finn to use the bathroom. By this time, my ankle, which I had twisted the previous day, was pretty swollen and painful and I was just looking forward to getting back home to Laguna. We eventually did.

On Friday we took our traditional trip to Balboa for lunch, arcade and bike riding, but this time we had the bonus of taking the ferry over. My kids, who’d never done this before, thought it was the coolest thing ever.

After lunch and the arcade, we rode bikes to The Wedge and the kids made up a skit about s’mores.

It involved lots of jumping.

Here’s a video.

In the evening we were joined for dinner and craziness by the Bondsmith clan. Ezra and Jenner were very happy to see each other. We were also joined by Rob and Cari’s friend Mike and his two girls.

And they wanted to be alone for their bonding so they didn’t sit with the rest of the kids for dinner.

During the week it had become abundantly clear that Bruce was not going to be able to join us, so Cari made version 2 of Paperplate Bruce. His arms were a little higher than the version 1, and since he was preparing for a field test, she nicknamed him Optimistic Paperplate Bruce (OPB).

We also did a little stargazing from the deck, and thanks to Jerri the night before, we knew that Venus and Jupiter were very close. Here’s a shot showing from top to bottom, Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon.

On Saturday morning, Mike took the kids down to the beach and sent up these two photos.

The kids had breakfast and then served the adults, restaurant style, while I monitored my phone for the play-by-play from Bruce about this field test. When we learned it was successful, we took this shot with newly-renamed Celebratory Paperplate Bruce (CPB).

Later we managed to squeeze in a trip to the candy store before Cari and I took Ruby and Ezra to Pasadena. Ruby went to play rehearsal and I dropped Ezra off at Jack’s for a play date. Cari and I had our own play date — over ham and butter sandwiches at Little Flower — before picking up the kids and heading back to Laguna.

After another wonderful dinner (including CPB) …

… the last bit of excitement for the day was “stackers” for dessert — creations of brownies, ice cream, fruit, and other delectables, smushed into shapes, rendering them magical to kids and adults.

Ezra went a little crazy with the whipped cream. Who can blame him?

Sunday was Father’s Day, so the dads got breakfast and CPB got a crown.

And then we had to say our goodbyes. I was a little worried about the drive home and wanted to get an early start to beat some of the traffic. The plan worked, but it’s still a good eight hours from start to finish, which is painful, but as always, well worth it.

A couple of months ago we were invited to join a group camping trip to Big Basin the weekend after school ended. It was mostly families from our school, although we only knew the one family who invited us. Bruce ended up having to work all weekend, so I took the boys by myself. Thank goodness we had a tent cabin and it was only one night. I am a reluctant camper, especially without Bruce there to do all the hard stuff. In a weird coincidence, we ended up in the same exact campsite we had when we stayed there last year. It was still beautiful.

I didn’t take a ton of pictures, because it was a short time and the boys were pretty much roaming around with a pack of wild kids most of the time. Ezra was thrilled to have so much time with his best friend, Henry.

Here they are in a rare quiet moment building Minecraft LEGOs at our campsite.

Here are Henry and Finn with the centipede they found.

Extreme closeup:

Ezra built a fire and we had dinner (hotdogs roasted on the fire and fruit) at our campsite, and then later we had s’mores at Henry’s.

The next morning, the boys built another fire to warm us up while we had breakfast. Finn danced.

Ezra, as always, enjoyed the fire.

Before we left, Ezra took my phone to take some pictures of the fort they had discovered. They called it Fake Fake because they were going to use it as a fake fort but then realized it was actually better than the fort they’d previously chosen. It was this very cool partially hollowed out tree.

When he was done with the documentation of Fake Fake, he left with Henry and his dad, Chris, on a 12 mile (!) hike from the campsite to the ocean. Chris sent me a bunch of pictures from the hike; here are a few.

In the meantime, Finn and I headed back home. Poor carsick-stricken Finn was dreading the drive after being super miserable the previous day, but I took an easier-on-the-stomach route back and let him sit in the front seat. Luckily he was fine.

The rest of my photos are here.