Thursday, June 2, 2011

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.