New Blog Forwarding...

To officially wrap up our stint "over the ocean," I'd like to announce my new blog, based out of Atlanta:

Crossroads of my Doorstep

Thanks for sharing my European experience with me! And now, to embrace the American that I really am...

Madison

So good to be back - in time for the birth of a friend's baby, late-night talks with friends we haven't seen for almost three years, and watching Daisy reacquaint herself with a place that we still consider, in a way, home.

Here's some pictures of our trip to the Farmer's Market this morning with our friends, Jen, Dan, and Megan. We will miss this city and all you friends!

Wisconsin State Capitol - still protestors 

Megan and Daisy browsing the stalls

Accompanying Boo Bradley on the square

Manhattan

An update to our travels: what we've done today.

Pull into the Manhattan Cruise Terminal at 7:30 AM

Gazing at the Statue of Liberty

Manhattan

We checked into our hotel and thought about what to do. I'm not sure if there's a more stark difference than between cruise life and the bustle of New York. We decided to head downtown and see as much as we could by foot.

Times Square

 Then, we spent some time in Central Park. We met a German (but longtime NY resident) mother of three at the playground who pointed us to Via Quadronno for lunch, the kind of Italian restaurant which creates delicious yet simple sandwiches with imported meats and cheeses. Our meal there was the highlight of my day: a taste of "home"?

Daisy on a slide in Central park

People rowing boats in Central Park

We also went to the American Museum of Natural History. Daisy enjoyed it, but we thought it was only so-so.

Other news, haphazardly: The temperature is absurdly hot and humid - our northern blood is not ready for this! Also, we keep having the urge to "spend up" all this "foreign" USD currency before we leave tomorrow. The subway system here shocked us by being completely without escalators or elevators, unlike Europe's. Chris bought a used copy of "Crime and Punishment" at a sidewalk sale, since he finished 2/3 of it on the ship and desperately needs to finish (although it is making him a little paranoid in public), and I scooped up the latest issue of "The New Yorker." Time for a little bedtime reading before walking around Brooklyn tomorrow morning and flying to Madison in the afternoon.

Ahoy from Southampton

I have some more pictures to share from our time since leaving Germany! This will be short on words and high on visuals:

Renting a cabin at our beach in Holland - it really shields the wind away!

 Daisy couldn't get enough of wading through the pools left by the tide.

 This being Holland, the city was very charming:

 Kids eating ice cream in the wagon. Kathrin has a great one of the two of them sleeping here, next to each other!

 On board our cruise ship!

 Daisy was so tired our first night that she fell asleep at the dinner table before her food arrived.

 Leaving Rotterdam on July 3, 9 PM:

 There was a festive send-off with music, balloons, white scarf waving....

 ...little boats surrounding us with well-wishers, glasses of champagne handed around...

 ...and more people flooding the docks to see us off.

 Today, we had our one shore excursion of the trip. We saw Stonehenge, which was awesome.

 And we also saw Salisbury's cathedral, which was impressive.

Now we're in Southampton, checking the progress of our DHL packages and keeping our photographs uploaded! Next stop, NYC....in one week.

Camping on the North Sea

A few quick pictures from our time so far as nomads:

Waiting at the Muelheim train station:

 Daisy, with her new backpack, straw hat, and neck pillow that Katty made for her.

 Our camping space is so clean: grass, quiet neighbors, no campfires, and amazing bathrooms. This is Daisy's first camping experience, on the North Sea....it joins the ranks of other wild "firsts for her, like her first chocolate in Vienna and her first ice cream in Venice.

 I met Katty at a playgroup during my first year in Muelheim. She and Fauz, their kids Berenike and Jolanda, and their niece are hosting our camping experience this weekend. Here we are on the (windy) promenade by the beach.

 The clouds perform a ever-changing, low-slung parade over the sand.

 Daisy is having a great time with her friend, Berenike! Having such an expansive, chilly beach experience is a lot of fun.

Anything that I See

(This was written yesterday morning. Blogger wasn't working, so I copied and am now posting 24 hours later...)
It is 6 hours until we get on a train to leave Germany. Of course, there are two loads of laundry, a music class, shopping, going to the bank, taking Daisy to the park, cleaning the refrigerator, and, dauntingly, lots more to do in that time, so I really don't have time for a blog post. But I remember opening this blog on a dark winter night in Munich two and a half years ago, and it feels necessary to close it while still "over the ocean."

Everything we've seen here...the people we've met...the art and the history we've encountered...it's made us different. I'm really sad to leave it behind. However, I feel a grain of optimism about this move and my ability to keep these experiences with me and around me and flowing out of me for the rest of my life.

My song for this transition has been Ingrid Michaelson's Lady in Spain. With more time, there would have been pictures to go along with this for a slide show. Perhaps it's better left in the imagination, though - who we are, what our essences are, and who we are to become.

I think that I'll blog again once we're in Atlanta. The travelogues will be missing, but I'm still very attached to our camera and to creative nonfiction! I'll post a link to the new blog once it's up.

Our itinerary for the next month:

June 30 - July 3: Camping at Katwijk aan Zee, Holland (near the Hague) with friends

July 3-12: Cruise from Rotterdam to New York City, with shore stop in Southampton, where we'll see Salisubry and Stonehenge

July 12-13: NYC

July 13-17: Madison, WI

July 18-25: Orange County, CA

July 26: Atlanta

August 1: Chris' first day of work at Emory

Until the next time, Auf Wiedersehen!!!

Grugapark

Thursday was a holiday because of the church celebration of the Ascension, and it was randomly also Father's Day in Germany. Chris was working, so I took Daisy to a park in nearby Essen that I'd heard a lot about but never visited called Grugapark. 

It was awesome. I felt like I was at an amusement park or a zoo, a sort of Leisure Park that reminded me of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. People of all ages flocked here, since there were flower gardens, live classical music, athletic fields and courts, surprise playgrounds and pieces of modern art around every corner, and endless fields for picnicking. 

Daisy had a blast. Since I wanted to show Chris what we did that day, I have quite the photo journal of our experiences:

Courageous Daisy on this glider rope

Cool park featuring wooden posts
and ropes

Cute play structure - made in Finland 

Petting zoo

Wading pool (with half-timbered, sodded-roof houses around) 

Waiting in line for her first pony ride

Loving it! 

Sharing an Apfelschorle at the end of the day

This park costs 4 Euros to enter for adults and is free for children under six. If you lived around here and wanted a season pass, it would only be 22 Euros! Although free parks are definitely a hallmark of good civilization, this one offered so much and was so well maintained that I became convinced that having a luxury park requiring a small fee is an asset for any city. Who wants to start one in Atlanta with me? We could import play structures from Finland...

Pantheon & Sacre Coeur

My last Paris post! More than a month after returning, sheesh.

To make it short and sweet, we walked to the Pantheon in the morning and then went up to Montmartre to do a final meeting with the Whitakers before catching a 4 PM train out of Paris Nord.

Foucault's Pendulum in the Pantheon

Voltaire, buried in the Pantheon's crypt

Seeing the tombs of people like the Curies, Voltaire, and Louis Braille brought back a feeling that often finds me when I travel, a feeling that my life is small, a challenge to do something great, and to hurry.

Sacre Coeur, in Montmartre

View of the city's rooftops

Daisy and Jack, playing with souvenir Towers

Jack gave a souvenir Eiffel Tower to Daisy, a blue shiny one that matched his. I thanked Jenny, and she brushed it off... it was fifty cents or something. We brought it home and Daisy still remembers being at the Tower with Jack, watching it turn orange, twinkle, etc.

When I packed up most of Daisy's things last week, I debated with myself about whether to ship this essentially worthless item. In the end, I decided to pack it. This little souvenir has come to represent an era, for me - a time when getting a souvenir in Paris or eating German bread or making a phone call in German are matter-of-fact non-events. I imagine holding this little Eiffel Tower later in my life, remembering how it was once all so blatantly ordinary. Life will not always be as it is now. That's true for me, and it's true for everybody.

Bare Necessities Pasta

Bare Necessities Pasta (referring to Disney's The Jungle Book) is what Daisy dubbed the dish I initially presented to her as "Sesame Pasta." Since then, we've shared this simple meal for lunch more than I care to admit. If you'll allow me a brief foray into the world of culinary blogging, I will present to you the best lunch ever:

Pasta, Tahini, Soy Sauce, Maple Syrup

1. Boil pasta and drain
2. Add enough tahini to lightly coat
3. Add soy sauce and maple syrup to taste

It's easier than boxed macaroni and cheese! I always think about adding sesame seeds, grated carrot, or some sort of herb, but I'm always so hungry that I stop here -

- and set two plates on the table for Mowgli and Baloo.