Eiffel Pretty

To finally end that story of our Easter Sunday in Paris, here are some of my favorite pictures from the hours we spent at the Champ de Mars. It was another magical event when all the adults and kids could have a great time.

The playground was a big hit - lots of kids were wearing their Easter Sunday best, and their parents either played happily with them or fell asleep on benches:

Part of the fun of these carousels is that the outer children can joust for rings, gathering them onto little sticks. This guy helping Daisy scoot the rings onto her stick was so jovial, even though I'm sure he must have been doing this (or cranking the wheel to turn the carousel) all day long.

The Eiffel tower is such an iconic background, and the sky kept changing with the light wind and the setting sun, so I literally could not stop taking pictures.

We played on the grass...

...had crepes for dinner (and dessert)...

...watched the sun set...

...waited for the tower to turn orange and for the lights to twinkle...

...and didn't want to leave.

We all six walked across the Seine to the Trocadero fountain, and by the time we got there the sky was finally black. Even though it was so late, Chris and I were reluctant to end our last night in Paris, so we ended up walking along the river all the way back to our hotel, which we later calculated was 3.5 miles, soaking up the bohemian crowd gathering along the banks and the reflected light on the water. It was after midnight before we went to bed!

Les Papilles

After meeting up with Luke, Jenny, and Jack at the Luxembourg Gardens, we walked a few blocks to Les Papilles (Taste Buds) for dinner. This restaurant is known for serving a single menu, different each night: you show up and say, "Yes, I'd like the full dinner." I knew that I would like whatever "gourmet terroir cuisine" they set in front of me. 

It was fun to catch up with the Whitakers. It's nothing like the baths in Baden-Baden, but we were still preparing ourselves for another adventure together!

Jenny provided some enthralling electronic games for the kids. I think they ended up impressing the other diners with how well they behaved (which is a nice way of saying that we received some glares when we first entered).

The first course, a sweet potato soup, was my favorite. I would love to try making it at home, but it won't be anywhere close to what this was:

What, doesn't that look like soup? Well, just ladle some of this creamy delight over it, then - voila!

Next came lemony filets of fish on a thick bed of mashed potatoes.

The third course surprised me, but what surprised me more was how much I liked it. What surprised me even more was how much Daisy liked it!

"Please save some bleu cheese for me,
Daisy!"

Finally, we dug into a cup of pineapple panna cotta with a sort of foamed caramel topping. I could have done without the pineapple pieces, personally. Yup, Daisy liked dessert, too. All four courses were a hit for our daughter, who must have abnormal papilles for a 3-yr-old.

I also adored the food here, but it's hard for me to separate my love of the flavors from the adventure I felt in anticipating each new dish. Whatever the reasons were, I cherished our dinner here and would love to go back!

In the Garden

I knew that I would like getting to know Hanna when I saw her, dancing without inhibition in torn jeans in our "Mommy and Me" ballet class we do with our daughters. After I visited her house and saw her giant harp sitting in the living room, I knew that I wanted to be friends forever.

Hanna grew up in Muelheim - actually, her grandfather was a director at the institute where Chris now works - and her parents still live in the house where she grew up.  As a young teenager, she organized an extended visit to Los Angeles, staying for six weeks with a family there and improving her English. Now, she helps run a language institute with her family and she speaks a handful of languages fluently. Hanna grew up without a television and calls her parents by their first names.

In English, the area behind a house is referred to as a backyard: there's no promises about the concrete to soil ratio. In German, that same area is always called a garden. Of course, people are not required to weed or seek relaxation there, but something in the word choice must influence the way that space is seen, even on a subconscious level. When Hanna invited me over to her parents' garden, I was excited both to see a German Garden and to meet her parents. You always understand so much more about a person when you meet her parents.

I should not have been surprised when, upon my arrival, Hanna's mother began unhanging the framed artwork filling her walls, introducing herself to me by explaining, "I went through a phase of painting my dreams..." The whole family offers great character studies for your next novel.

On my most recent visit to the garden, I brought my camera. Daisy and Thea romped over the stream, through the trees, and took turns on the tree swing. I hope for as many more visits as our short months here allow! Here are some scenes from "the garden:"

Preferred dishes of the family, made in Bavaria

Sit, stay a while, reflect...

Fun surprises dot the garden

Daisy and I were invited to stay for a delicious lunch.
Isn't the scene idyllic?

To make my infatuation with Hanna's family even more clear, I should also mention that, before I left the garden that day, I was invited to a poetry reading in English at their house the following night. I went, and it was as beautiful and meaningful as I expected it to be...as most things are, if you expect them to be.

"I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch..."

My mom always shakes her head whenever the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing brand comes up. She reminds me of how uncool they once were, back when they were selling fishing and hunting clothes to bearded men. Its marketing department somehow (well, with very revealing photos) totally revamped the company's image and it seems to be headed toward eternal trendiness in the teenage/young adult crowd.

Even though there aren't any A and F stores in Germany, the sheer popularity of the brand name has been imported. When I heard that my friend's daughters were wishing for something from the store, I volunteered to shop for them while I was in California.

A couple of days ago, I presented the girls with a couple of hoodies still saturated with the scent of the men's cologne that fills the store.

They fit! They look cute! It was like "Christmas reloaded," my friend said.

The best part of this experience was that the youngest was apparently sharing the exciting news via text message with her friends. She was having a hard time convincing one boy that it was authentic, since he said very authoritatively that there are only two store locations in the world! Oh, the rumors that surround childhood. I remember a friend informing me that a couple needed to make love 7 times before a baby was made.

Anyway, I was sharing with their father the "mountain man" history of Abercrombie and how it didn't used to be so popular. He reminisced about a time when Jägermeister, the digestif, would never be brought to a party, that people used to agree that it was gross. Now, their marketing campaign is so successful that it's sold in little 100 mL bottles next to gum in the check-out lines at the store, picked up by young and old alike.

And it was my turn to admit to him that I had brought back a few of those newly trendy bottles to the US for stocking stuffers last month. Between these stories and my recent initiation into Mad Men, I'm really taking a second look at the advertising industry.

Visitors

Paper Chain for Chris' Return

As Chris is flying across the US (interviewing at Cornell, celebrating Thanksgiving in CA, then interviewing at Notre Dame and Emory), Daisy and I have the challenge of staying sane and happy for 15 days alone at home.

Naturally, we were both completely overjoyed to have visitors this past weekend! My high school friend and fellow band member Sara now lives in Dublin with her husband as he's doing a post-doc. They scheduled their trip to coincide with the Christmas markets, and we enjoyed two whole days dedicated to shopping for wooden decorations, drinking hot wine, and sampling fried foods and bakery treats.

Here are a few snapshots of our merrymaking:

Cologne Cathedral - with a little snow on the Gothic peaks!

Reibekuchen: Fried potato pancakes
served with applesauce

Glühwein!

Watching some Lindt milk chocolate being produced
and packaged at Cologne's Chocolate Museum

Dusseldorf's Gehry buildings

I didn't take enough pictures at Dusseldorf, but we had a great day. Thanks for coming, Sara and Jon!

Munich, Close-Up

When we first moved here, I didn't really get it: I figured that everyone else back home already knew what I was learning for the first time; I thought that taking pictures in public was just plain embarrassing; I naively imagined that I would always remember the little details of our time in Europe. My first blog posts seem like hastily scribbled postcards: "Here we are in Salzburg, it was fun - you should have tasted this cake!" I've grown in my appreciation of blogging since then, but the fact remains that Munich has never had a proper treatment on Over the Ocean. Perhaps this, my third visit, will provide the opportunity?

Marienplatz, the main square of Munich

Honestly, it seems too overwhelming, and not quite sincere, since documenting history was not even where my mind was this time around. It would be like me visiting Madison, Wisconsin next week and then spending a blog post discussing the city's developers and founders instead of the fun time I had revisiting a city that I had already spent years in. Ridiculous.

Instead, I present to you a smattering of images from my visit last weekend. It's kind of like the blind man touching just the ear of an elephant, but it's a nice ear.

After our five hour train ride to Munich, Daisy and I made a beeline to one of my favorite places in the city, the Viktualienmarkt. It sits on the same location as the old medieval market did for the salt traders traveling west from Salzburg. I spent a memorable morning here on Fat Tuesday last year, when I joined costumed spectators watching "The Dance of the Market Women." (There was lots of beer, whooping, and the lifting of skirts.) On normal days, it's a sprawling outdoor market offering top notch produce, specialties like cheese, honey, and spices, and handicrafts. The market women behave themselves, but it's still a lively place to be. The famous Soup Kitchen was our first stop; it's always impossible to decide on what to get when faced with the long list of homemade creations. Then, I just let Daisy walk around while I successfully stifled the urge to hide my camera and took some pictures.

Pumpkin-Chicken Stew at Münchner Suppenküche

This woman makes colorful, seasonal wreaths that would
sorely tempt me if I lived here

Why not decorate your home with hops? Apparently, they are calming and insect-repelling.
I saw these garlands strewn over restaurant windows a couple of times.

The market is permanently attended by numerous figures on fountains.
I love it when citizens quietly "dress up" city statues!

...but maybe not when the Oktoberfest crowd decides to dress up city statues...

While meandering through the city with Amberly and her family, we had a series of nice moments:

1) A sprightly elderly lady began talking with us (because she liked Daisy and because Susan is a conversation-starter), and she basically demanded that we follow her into a private-looking entrance behind some shops. It turned out to be a former palace, which we wouldn't have known about without her local know-how. As we thanked her and waved goodbye, she gave Daisy a chocolate bar.

Preysing Palais

2) Daisy needed to use a coffee shop's bathroom, and when we came out, the girls behind the counter offered her a free "kid's cappuccino," which is steamed milk with her choice of syrup (chocolate). It's just one more example of how she rakes in those goodies.

3) We had a nice lunch at the Hirschgarten (Deer Garden), the largest biergarten in Bavaria, where we could ironically both eat and feed deer.

Amberly with her liter

During the rest of our visit, Daisy and I went to the Deutsches Museum, which is a science and industry collection similar to the Smithsonian. It would have been way more fun with Chris...

We loved the hands-on, recreated mines. 

Wright brothers' Type A (1909)

I also brought Daisy back to the Frauenkirche, the twin Gothic onion domes of which you can see in the picture at the top. The tall domes were about the only part of the church that survived WWII. It's also where the current pope served as archbishop from 1977-1982.

Testing out the legendary "Devil's Footprint" in the Frauenkirche

And that's it! That was the first stage of our Bavarian adventure. Here's just one more picture to throw in that doesn't fit any category:

With Daisy, if something happens once it becomes a fact of life. The new rule is that whenever we go in a restaurant, she needs orange juice with a straw. Luckily, Germans are crazy about juice, so it's pretty much guaranteed to be on the menu. Whew.