"du darfst nicht fliegen!"

tuesday afternoon, i almost went paragliding. almost being the key word. you need a little wind for paragliding, and it just didn't happen. max, tom, and i rode our bicycles to the monastery for an ice cream and to play with our diggers. we stopped and watched a few paragliders pack up their parachute deal. (i can only thing of the german word at the moment...maybe i am learning something afterall.) we finished our ice cream and had just selected a good area full of rocks when sabine came walking up with my tennis shoes in her hand. she said i needed to hurry home and grab whatever i needed for paragliding. the guy, martin, had just called and said to be ready in 20 minutes. as i was leaving the driveway to go meet him, max and tom pull back in on their little bicycles. as soon as they realize i am going, they begin yelling, "du darfst nicht fliegen!" you aren't allowed to fly. apparently it only escalated from there. nils came straight from work to watch a show that never happened. nils and sabine finally told the boys that nils would call me and tell me i wasn't allowed to fly. that was the only way they got them to calm down. after that at dinner, max and tom told me i wasn't allowed to fly. i said, okay, i didn't go today. max asked me if we didn't have any batteries. so cute. well, the game plan was to go on wednesday. guess what? no wind. yesterday though, i did close out my bank account and tell the city i am leaving. in germany, everyone has to register with the city as to where they are living. in the afternoon, we met moritz to play. last night, max and i were sitting outside watching a thunderstorm approaching. it was lightening and thundering in the distance. he informed me he was going to get a flashlight so we could see it better. :) i took the boys to kindergarten today, and then i climbed back into the car and started crying. the next few days may all be like this. it is beginning to hit that soon i am really leaving. this afternoon we went to the pool to meet tom's new friend, tim. tom tells me, "alison, ich bin dein freund." alison, you're my friend. it's so cute. tonight we rode bicycles for a bit, but i first managed to make them both mad by stopping a fight over these little orange traffic cones. then they both told me i wasn't allowed to help them put on their shoes. tom yells, "gleich bin ich boese!" this means soon he is going to be mad with me (and not so nice). it was one of those moments where i was trying not to laugh. max was yelling for sabine because he didn't want me to help him put his shoes on. at that point tom had his shoes on, but was coming back inside yelling, "du darfst nicht helfen." you aren't allowed to help. we finally all made it to ride bicycles. no damage lasting longer than 5 minutes was done. when we came back inside, max was pulling a lot of spices out of the drawer in the kitchen and having me smell them. i wish you could see a photo of his face when he is smelling them. his nose wrinkles his nose up and it is so funny. oh yeah, and tom loves to say. das ist nicht funny. or...das ist funny. (this is funny or this is not funny.) last night max had a cookie, and he told me, "du darfst ein bite." you are allowed to have a bite. the mix of english and german has been great lately. tom will tell you: ich speak englisch und german. :) we've come a long way this year.

drachonboot regatta.

on saturday, the 3rd annual heidelberger drachonbootcup took place. it is a regatta for dragon boats. interesting. i saw one in june when i was in duesseldorf, so i was excited to give it a try. i think it is more of a social sport than anything. i can't remember if i explained it last time, or if you read it, so....it is a big boat, a bit like paddling in a giant canoe. up to 20 people fit in the boat (they allowed you to have either 16 or 18 on saturday), there is one more up front to keep a beat on a drum, and one standing at the back to steer the boat. people wear strange costumes and the races are only 300 meters long. our boat raced three times, but we had too many people, so i was only in the first race. i thought i was going to be in the third, but some guy asked at the last minute if i would mind trading with him. it was the final, and i decided that i would feel bad if we lost by just a little bit, and i didn't trade with a guy who was certainly stronger than me. nils said this was such a girl approach. possibly, but i'll just tell myself it is a team player approach. the team i was on, was made up of about 18 big german guys and only 4 girls that turned into two by the end of the day. it was fun to be in a different group from normal. there were a few people that i knew from rowing, but i don't really know where the rest of them have been hiding the entire year. one team was called the hot dogs and had masks that looked like a dog, another was dressed like bees and the drummer like a flower, another was wearing plastic armor with a helmet like they were from troy. we had white tshirts that had our sponsor's name on them. after the races finished, everyone gathered at a big tent, people were singing, having a beer, and i think receiving awards. we took a team photo at one point in the day...i'll see if i can get my hands on that. oh yeah, and our team took 2nd. not bad considering there was no practicing involved. after the regatta, i met ricardo and natsuki. ana is gone. ahmet is gone. tzu-ning just came back on sunday from taiwan. it is summer holiday, and everyone is scattered about. we had dinner and then went downtown in heidelberg. i saw a few of the guys from my team that day. considering i was close to mute on saturday (what do i really say when there are multiple people all talking at the same time who all know each other and are talking about things that happened prior to saturday or talking about drachonboot technique?), i wasn't sure if they would know who i was or not. i settled for smiling and waving. i decided it best to avoid any attempt at conversation. i think it was a good plan, and they knew who i was. on sunday evening, i went with sabine and nils to Schloss in Flamen in Schwetzingen. that means castle in flames. it was an outdoor Mozart concert with fireworks at the end. there were quite a lot of people. the newspaper today said 11000. that was my first classical concert, and first opera, and it was really nice. i was totally underdressed compared to the grannies sitting around me, but no one seemed to care. my favorite part was definitely the fireworks accompanied by the music. nils also picked fabulous seats. 5 rows back, and directly in the middle. the rain even waited until the last 5 minutes to begin. perfect timing. yesterday, the boys and i went swimming. they are so funny these days. they are telling so many stories and making these great facial expressions and using their hands. time is quickly winding down. 8 days really. tomorrow i think i am going paragliding. i'm really excited. we are playing with friends this week, and i need to get to some packing things up so i can figure out what must be shipped. i'll let you know how the paragliding goes.

oesterreich.

last wednesday, i got to spend the day with family friends from mocksville. the fullers were in town. carli, morgan, john, and anike. john is an architect i used to work for, and my sister used to babysit for the two girls. they are so big now. 8 and 11, i think. they are in germany to visit family and decided to make a stop in heidelberg. we did the typical tourist thing and walked through the old town and ate at a german restaurant. it was great to see them, and strangely enough, i fly home before they do. on thursday, we were off to goldegg, austria (oesterreich) to visit friends of sabine and nils. sabine and the boys and i left around 10.45 on thursday morning. we reached our destination at 8pm. it is 5 hour drive, so probably 6 hours with two 3 year olds. in case you're terrible at math, it took us 9 hours. the morning got off to a good start when we left the house and max and tom were screaming because they wanted me to sit in the back seat with them. after that wound down, we were stopping at the bakery, and sabine realized she had forgotten her wallet. so we cam back home. then we were finally off. it rained more or less the entire way, and it was more or less a traffic jam the entire way. tom was having one crisis after the next, and doing plenty of whining with an ehhh ehhh ehhh noise. then we stopped to eat something and sabine accidentally threw the car keys in the garbage. we had to laugh. it perfectly fit how the day was going. around 7.5 hours in, max and tom were both screaming and kicking seats, and i have to say, i can't really blame them. however, i arrived with a headache. within 2 minutes of arrival they were friends with constantine (10) and phillip (8) (sons of the family we visited) and were running around playing. exactly what they needed. we had dinner, hung out a bit, and went to bed. friday morning we were playing outside. they have a really awesome treehouse. i was slightly too big for it, max and tom were slightly too small. nils and the dad from the other family arrived friday afternoon. we all took a walk to the playground, soccer field, and lake. it was july 18th. i had long pants, short sleeves, a zip up hoodie, and a fleece. sometimes i forget it is summer. i'm going to melt when i get back to north carolina. saturday we went fishing. well, more like constantine went fishing. we drove through some gorgeous parts of austria. we wound up at a place with fishing ponds, a few pigs, llamas, and people with such a thick austrian accent that i couldn't understand a word they said. max was very cute and really wanted to help with the fishing. it took a long time to catch a fish, but max was so excited when they did. (tom was busy digging in the sandbox at the playground.) he would touch it and then scream and laugh. then within about 5 minutes, constantine caught another. after we are all finished fishing, tom wants to go fishing. we told him he could help eat the fish. when we got home, constantine was so cute, and he prepared the fish for the grill. then he made a fire, and cooked his fish. they were good. tom was excited to eat fish. he spit in back in my hand within half a second though. not for him. saturday evening we went to eat dinner at a place where they cook steak on an open fire. it was delicious. sunday we drove home. it took the normal 6 hours. thankfully. sunday night, max and tom graduated to big boy beds. nils, sabine, and i put them together when we got home. they are blue and elevated with a spot for playing underneath. tom's has a wheel like a ship, and max's has a little shelf where they can pretend it is a shop. once this weekend, someone asked max if he needed a straw, he replied, "nein, ich bin schon ein big boy." no, i'm already a big boy. they are seeming more and more grown up. max doesn't want to hold your hand anymore when walking. phillip was riding a bike down the hill at the house in austria and wearing a helmet like a little stuntman. max decided to try as well. i was surprised, but he did it several times and was quite good at it. no crashes. on that note though, the life of a three year old was fairly tough yesterday. tom was screaming like it was his job. "no" is not really a word he is interested in hearing lately. when they returned from kindergarten he wanted chocolate candies that we didn't have. sabine told him that after naptime we had to go shopping, and he could pick some out. well, after nap time, we were off to ikea. at ikea, they have a play area for kids. we went in to look around to see if the boys wanted to play there while sabine shopped. they have a train. tom was sold. one problem: you have to have a certain kind of ID which sabine lost a few weeks ago. so, tom couldn't stay. tom was screaming and crying when he found this out. for the duration of the rest of the trip to ikea he was crying, screaming, and randomly throwing his body on the floor throughout the store. we left ikea, and we drove to the grocery store. you would think that the fact he is on his way to get chocolate candies would calm him down. it worked for a few minutes. there was a firetruck outside that you can ride. tom is a negotiator to the maximum. sabine says if there is no crying in the store, they can ride when we leave. okay, deal. then he discovered some little toy at the grocery store. when sabine tells him no, we can't buy everything we see, we got a repeat of the show put on in ikea. i think everyone in the grocery store stared at us at some point. this one lady had a baby with her that was probably 8 or 10 months old. i'm sure she was thinking, man, what have i gotten myself into? we finally make it out of the store, and i'm sure sabine had only about half the things she planned to buy. we pass the firetruck on the way to the car. the screaming definitely didn't stop when he found out he wasn't allowed to ride. we drive across the street to the gas station. tom has unbuckled his seat. sabine told tom if he didn't calm down, he wasn't allowed to ride home with us. after that, taking him out of the car, having a chat, and pulling off the street once after we left the gas station to remind him he could climb out if he didn't stop screaming, he quieted down. he also decided he didn't want the chocolate that he was so intent upon earlier. he has really great endurance. this episode lasted a while. the good news was that max didn't feel the need to cry yesterday. i appreciate it when only one is screaming at a time. around 8pm, all was good again, and he and max were playing under their new beds and telling sabine and i stories and laughing so hard, they couldn't eat their dinner. i think every three year old has these days. the good news: we grow out of them. however, i think that in the process, it leaves some very tired grownups.

mein geburtstag.

so, i'm officially 23 years old. it sounds strangely old. i remember when i used to think...in 2000, i will be 15 years old. last saturday was my birthday. i woke up to presents from nils, sabine, and the boys and some singing of happy birthday. in the middle of the day, i took it easy and enjoyed the beautiful weather. in the evening, i played with max and tom and we made my birthday cake. it was delicious. i was impressed with us. it was chocolate with a peanut butter layer between and with chocolate frosting. i decided the germans needed a real american cake. none of this cake covered with fruit. a few of my friends from the states called to wish a happy birthday...one of them called while i was sleeping. apparently i answered, had a conversation, and went back to sleep. i don't remember it at all. oops. i feel bad about that one. on sunday morning, i went with the boys to the zoo, so that sabine would have some peace while she was getting things ready for sunday evening. on sunday evening, i had a german birthday party. nils and sabine let me invite over my friends for grilling. some friends from rowing and from german class were here, and sabine surprised me by inviting other people as well. isabel, peter, and moritz came. the peters, (the neighbors from down the street with 6 year old twins also came - all 6 of them), and sabine's sister brigitte. my friends finally saw where i live and met the family that i've been with the whole year...and the family finally saw the friends i've made. max turned on the charm, but tom was having a rough night. there were too many new people around for him. later in the night when some people started leaving, he was a bit more comfortable. one time max when racing down the driveway, and i chased him and picked him up to carry him in because he had on socks and his underpants/undershirt. he was laughing and then he suddenly uses his favorite choice word learned in kindergarten. he starts laughing and puts on the million dollar smile that is going to get him both into and out of a lot of trouble in the future. i stopped, we had a little chat, and several of my friends turned around to watch and laugh (they kept commenting on what a little mother i was). whenever max, tom, or mortiz needed anything they would say alison, alison, alison. it was cute. i got some birthday presents, ate bratwurst, and hung out with my friends - it was a good night. sabine gave a little speech about how it had been a great 11 months, then nils said i needed to give one in german. i politely declined...in german. i think that evening was really the first time he heard me use german. sabine occasionally hears it when i am speaking with the friends of max and tom, but nils tends not to be around at those times. at home, i speak only english. he said he was glad to see a return on his investment of putting me in class for three months. haha. the week was a fairly normal one, and i can't even remember now exactly what we did. friday afternoon, we tried our first tennis lesson. we aren't andre agassi (or maybe i should say boris becker) just yet, and they preferred the slide in the corner to the lesson, but hopefully that will improve with time. max started running a fever friday afternoon which didn't particularly help things. friday evening was the strassenfest (street party). all the neighbors gathered to grill out and hang out. it was really nice even though the weather wasn't perfect. it was clear that max didn't feel well when he asked to go to bed at 9pm. tom, on the other hand, was in top shape. he was having a really great night and kept everyone laughing until he went to bed around 11 pm. he kept telling me, "ich bin grumpy" (i am grumpy), and then he would start laughing. we did a lot of playing, he ate a lot of potato chips, and we took some silly photos. saturday, i did a bit of tourist shopping and bought a few tshirts, paintings, and a cookbook. later in the afternoon, i went for a run. then saturday evening was the schlossbeleuchtung. the castle lightening. the actual lighting of the castle is fairly lame. they shoot of one firework, and then there are red lights on the castle for about 5 minutes. when that is finally complete, they have a good fireworks show. since i didn't get my july 4th fireworks fix, i definitely wanted to go. my friend, ahmet, went along with me, and then we met our other friends in town. yesterday, i ate lunch with my german teacher, ana. she leaves for the states for two months on saturday. this means, yesterday was the last time that i will see her until who knows when. time is quickly winding down. i can't quite believe it. i'm beginning to get sad as i realize i am doing certain things and seeing certain people for the last time. a year is so long and so short all at the same time. these are all birthday party photos. i'll let you guess who is a rower and who comes from german class:

marieke und andy.

jess (the other american) und katha.

julie, ahmet, natsuki, me.

ricardo, ahmet, natsuki.

me and tom.

max.

anna-lena und steffi.

hannah (1/2 of the other set of twins on the street.)

stockholm.

early friday morning on 27 june, i was off to stockholm. the taxi picked me up, took me to the train/bus station, i took a bus for two hours, caught the plane, waited at the airport for my friend gosia (gosia lives in poland, but we met during our first month of german class. it was exciting to see her for the first time since the end of september), then we took a bus into stockholm. it was a long affair, but that is the price you pay for flying with the discount airlines. so, finally in stockholm. then we had to find the place we were staying. this is where the story gets interesting. we decided to couch surf in stockholm. this was something i had never heard of, but gosia had done this a few times, and she said it worked out very well. the basic idea is that there is a website for couchsurfers. through this couch surfing, you can arrange to stay on people's sofas, extra mattresses, floor, etc during your trip. they tend to do the same when they travel. it is great in the fact that it is free, and you get to meet people who are really residents of the city. in some ways it is a bit inconvenient because you must really take the host's schedule into consideration, sometimes you land with an awkward host, or one that doesn't really have a grade-a standard of cleanliness. our first host, on friday and saturday evening, was enrico. he's not swedish. he's italian. well it turns out that he had to work on friday, so he told us where to meet him. he said take the metro to the slussen stop, and then ask about mosebacke, "it's pretty famous in stockholm." well, we asked, and people sent us there. one problem. it is a square, and we didn't realize there were about 3 different places with the name of Mosebacke. we ask a guy that works at one, and he says no one named enrico works there. hmm, what do we do. we sat on a bench in the square, and sent enrico a message. he said, i'm at work at the bistro. we ask, what bistro? because they said no one named enrico works there. his reply: the place outside that serves food. um thanks, i know the definition of bistro. after we finally locate him around 4pm or so, he tells us he has to work until 1am, and that we should come back then. one problem. we have luggage. we head back to the main train station and put our things in one of the lockers. next problem: the lockers close at 10 pm. so in the time our things were in the locker, we wondered all over gamla stan (the old town). it is from the 12oos and 1300s, i believe, with incredible narrow roads and charming shops and houses. more or less, tourist location one-oh-one. we picked our things up a few minutes before 10, and then tried to think of something to do on a friday evening at 10 pm with luggage. we walked around for a while, then we found a small coffee shop sort of place, and had a drink. that got us to 11.15. next move? back to the place where enrico works. it was a huge outdoor terrace/bar that overlooked stockholm. it was really a cool place, and we looked like totally nerds with our luggage. we sucked it up though, found an empty table and threw our bags under it, then tried to blend in for the rest of the evening. apparently every place seems to set their own age as well for purchasing. my swedish is more or less nonexistent, but this particular place seemed to be twenty years old. i got carded. i'll be twenty-three tomorrow. 1.45am: enrico is finally finished with work. we leave to go to his house. he lived somewhere close to the end of the world. it took almost 30 minutes to get there. we went home and went to sleep. he isn't really much of an early riser. imagine a 27-ish year old guy who is in a rockband and bartends. the next day, gosia and i made it back to the city around 2 pm. at 3 pm, we took an art tour of the metro. it sounds a bit strange, but stockholm has 100 metro stops, and 90 of them are decorated with art. some of them are pretty good. we spent most of the day after that walking around sodermalm, the home of mosebacke and the southern area of the city. it is a neat place, and it also contains two of the highest points in the city. we walked to these and looked out over the city. one was a huge rock face, and there were people cooking out and hanging out all over the place enjoying the nice weather. then we went to dinner. enrico told us he was meeting his friends, so we met him for that. they were at a place that serves garlic shots and garlic beer. as we were walking by discussing how terrible that sounded, he waved. gosia and i decided to be brave and try it. it was a once in a lifetime kind of thing. that is really all i have to say about it. it wasn't so horrible as i thought it would be, but i don't plan on having it again. then we went to mosebacke and met more of enrico's friends, then he took us somewhere else. it was fun, but i was getting pretty tired. the crazy thing is, when we were on our way home at 3 or 4 am, the sun was already up. that was a strange feeling.

metro art.

as you can imagine, sunday wasn't the most productive sightseeing day. it had a late start. that is what i mean about respecting the host's schedule. i couldn't really wake up and be moving about at my early morning hours. both mornings i was awake for a while waiting for gosia and enrico to awake. on sunday, we switched to a new host. we stayed with roberto, another italian, on sunday and monday night. at the moment, i can't tell you what we did sunday afternoon, but i'm sure it included eating ice cream while we sat around with our luggage for a bit and wrote postcards. i was glad for a relaxed evening. we met roberto. he is really so nice, and a student in stockholm. we helped helped him make pizza for dinner, and then several of the international students from his hallway gathered to watch the final game of the EM2008 between germany and spain. there was one german girl and one spanish guy. that made things more interesting. considering germany lost, maybe i'm glad i wasn't in germany on sunday evening. on monday, we were up and out fairly early. thank goodness. we took a ferry boat to one of the 14 islands that makes up stockholm, and we checked out the vasa and nordic museums, some gardens, and went to the tower of city hall (where they have the nobel prize dinner). the vasa museum contains a ship that sunk in the 1600s after sailing for 25 minutes. it was under water off the coast of stockholm for 333 years, and then they pulled it up in the 1960s, and have preserved it. it is fairly impressive. i thought it may be a guy sort of thing to see, but i liked it. monday evening, some of roberto's italian friends were grilling because many of them were leaving for the summer. we went to that as well. people were very nice about including us in whatever they were doing, and in a week or two roberto happens to be traveling to gosia's town in poland, and he will stay with her. he is also one of the cleanest guys i have ever met in my life. nice change from enrico. the interesting questions of the week were: and how do you two know each other? (gosia and i), and how do you know enrico/roberto? watching people's faces as we explained it was fun.

the vasa.

on tuesday morning, we left roberto and traveled to olov, our first actual swede of the whole trip. i missed the italians. he was a nice guy, but a bit strange/socially awkward. he has had almost 100 couch surfers stay with him in the last year. madness. i would get tired of always having extra people at my house. we quickly put our things at olov's, and then we met roberto again. he went along with us on a 3 hour cruise through stockholm's archipelego. it consists of over 24,000 islands. while we were on the boat in the archipelego, we saw a very strange looking man. he wasn't exactly thin or fit, and he was wearing very short red and black plaid shorts that were rather snug, a black t-shirt with no arms, red boots, tattoos overall, one of the worst haircuts i've ever seen, swedish flags painted on his nails, at least 15 earrings per ear, etc. you get the idea. we couldn't help but laugh/smile. then we went with roberto to lunch to finally eat some swedish food and told him goodbye. it started raining about that time, but we made our way to the modern art museum and architecture museum. architecture museum was interesting, but the only good thing at the modern art museum (in my opinion) was a huge block of glass pieces stuck together with ketchup. i always get myself into trouble because i want to touch everything. someone needs to make more interactive art. we killed a bit more time, then returned to olov's around 9pm or so. he had mentioned the two german girls staying with him were not very talkative, so we tried to be polite and hang out with him for a bit. awwwkward. we left again around 11 to go see tower/fountain at sergels torg (another spot in the city) that lights up at "night." we ran into the two german girls on our way out, and they went along with us. they were really nice.

archipelago.

sergels torg.

on wednesday morning, gosia was off to return to poland. my flight left about 6 hours later than hers. so i took a tour of the city hall. they have a golden room. with 17 million mosaic pieces. crazy. then i wondered around a bit, sent a few pippi longstocking postcards, and was off to the train station to gather my things. i also bought a new book to read during all the time i would be waiting or in transit. i bought the book. the guy at the shop asked me something in swedish. i gave him a confused look. he asked again. then i said, sorry, i don't speak swedish. he laughed, apologized and asked me in english. at other points during the 5 days, people would speak to me in swedish and ask for directions and such. haha. fine with me. especially since the "where are you from?" question tends to be a conversation stopper when i answer the united states. as i was waiting to board my plane, guess who walks us behind me? yep, the guy from the boat trip. i noticed him because this little girl that was about 7 or 8 was intently staring. he looked exactly the same except now he had on a floor length black leather trench coat. let's just say, i didn't think i would ever bump into him again in my life. i kind of hope that was the last time.

city hall.

oh yeah...summer in stockholm means you have to wear either long pants of long sleeves. maybe both. it is really popular there to wear leggings with dresses. it didn't take me long to decide this is due to the fact that you will freeze to death if you only wear the summer dress. it also is never completely dark in stockholm in the summer time. it is strange and amazing. sweden seems to be plagued with a terrible case of mosquitos as well. i came home with at least 10 bites. the swedish people as a whole are very attractive. great eyes, high cheekbones, perfect complexion. i would say they do a fair amount of fake-baking, though i can't say i really blame them since it never seems to hit above 75*F or so. we ate ice cream everyday. in the gamla stan, old town, there are ice cream places all about where they make their own cones. as soon as i smell that, i'm sold. everyone speaks english amazingly well. it is difficult to believe they don't begin learning until 8 or 9 years old.

gamla stan.

all-in-all, it was a great trip. i would recommend stockholm to anyone. i don't think i could ever live there though. the weather just isn't warm enough. yesterday, max asked me at least 5 times if it was my birthday and if there are a lot of kids coming for the party. while i was gone, sabine and nils told them my birthday was soon. also, yesterday i was hanging up my pants to dry, and max asked what i was doing. i told him washing my clothes. he asked me if my pants were full with poop. hahaha. does that tell you how well potty training is going? tomorrow is my 23rd birthday. i'm making cake with max and tom. then sunday evening, we are having a birthday party. that is my life. i'll be back stateside in one short month. time is a strange thing.

12.30 in the middle of the night.

a storm is rolling in.

the above photos are mostly from gamla stan (the old town).