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).

koeln und duesseldorf.

it has been a while since i've updated this. so, where were we? monday, 16 june. we were off to the circus. Circus Barelli (apparently the second largest in Germany). it was max and tom's first trip to the circus, and my first trip in years. there were a lot of horses, camels, some acrobats from Russia, jugglers. you know, circus type things. for the exotic factor, they even had a hippo. he pooped all over the place. this seems to be the one lasting memory of the circus for max and tom. on thursday, i watched germany play soccer against portugal. we won. the town was madness. cars driving around honking their horns, waving flags, and singing "deustchland, deutschland." the energy was so very high. this then set us up to play against turkey the next week. friday, i talked with an aupair potential. her name is rachel, and she has decided to come. she seems great, so it is nice to have that worked out. tom also got sick over the weekend with a fever and lots of coughing. you can see the silly photos max and i were taking while he was at the doctor with sabine.

the response to "smile max." then as soon as i took the photo, he would start laughing.

for the weekend, i was off to koeln (cologne) and duesseldorf to meet with crisler, my old rowing coach. he was in germany for two weeks to do some work in connection with his phd. on saturday, we toured around koeln, and then we headed to duesseldorf on sunday morning. i enjoyed both towns, but i think that if i was to live in one, i would prefer duesseldorf. it has a bit more of a modern edge mixed with the old city. one of the largest and most well known cathedrals of germany is in koeln, so we of course looked at that. it was crisler's first europe trip, so it was also his first massive cathedral turned tourist site. we managed to eat german food, drink local beer, watch a soccer game on an outdoor screen, see the main tourist sites and make it back to our towns by sunday evening. however, there were major storms on sunday evening, and all of the trains were delayed. i got home 3 hours later than expected. oof. 166 minutes late to duesseldorf to pick us up. that is a lot of minutes.

dragon boat regatta. pretty cool.

all the above are duesseldorf. all below are koeln.

monday, tom was sick again, so we didn't do a whole lot. we attempted to go to the construction site with our diggers, but he didn't even enjoy that. tuesday, he was doing much better though, and we went to play with mortiz. we played soccer, then did a little swimming, and ended with both families at dinner at the neuenheimer marktplatz (neuenheim market plaza). wednesday was another day with moritz and his family. we grilled out before the germany vs turkey soccer game. it was a big deal here. there are a large number of turkish people living in germany. somewhere between 2 and 3 million people. this was also the quarterfinal that we needed to win to make it to the final...and we did. that was the good news. (so the final was scheduled for sunday against spain.) the not as good news was that all the honking horns, screaming and partying only made it that much more difficult for max to fall asleep. tom didn't even try to go to sleep. it was a battle. he was still sitting awake waiting for sabine and nils to come home after 11.30 that night. he was not happy with me. the good news is that three year olds are pretty quick to forgive, and he was my friend again on thursday. early friday morning i was off to stockholm. really early. at 5.20am.

max wanted to make a video. he always makes me turn my camera screen so he can see himself. he is watching himself make all of these faces. what a ham.

capri wochenende.

nils and sabine took a big step this weekend. they left me, max, and tom at home, while they were away for a few days. brigitte, sabine's sister, came from mannheim to stay with us in case i needed reinforcements. i would say, on the whole, the weekend went very well. the fact that three year olds have no sense of time probably didn't hurt at all. nils and sabine left early thursday morning, so i got the boys ready and took them to kindergarten. i picked them up, prepared lunch, and put them down for a nap. after that, brigitte arrived to play. in the afternoon, we went to the playground. after about 45 minutes, it begin to rain. so instead, we went to the grocery store and did a little shopping. when i think back on it, i'm not sure how we survived 6 months + of winter where we really couldn't play outside. the big accomplishment on thursday was that tom pooped for the first time ever in the potty.

max.max.tom.

on friday, we went to kindergarten, ate lunch, took nap, then we rode on the bergbahn (mountain train). first we took the bus to town, and then we walked to the bergbahn which we rode of the mountain. max and tom love this thing. on the way back down, we stopped at the castle with our diggers for a little while. within 5 minutes of tom adamently denying he needed to pee pee, his pants were soaked, and we had to change everything down to his socks. after we left the castle, we had to walk back through town, across the bridge and wait at the bus stop. max and tom have days where sometimes only i am allowed to help, sometimes only sabine, sometimes only nils...this weekend was my turn. for a while, i had tom on my shoulders and max in my arms because they refused to walk anymore, and they refused to let brigitte help them. please keep in mind, that i also had two little green diggers tied to my backpack that were bobbing up and down with every step. we were a sight. the bus was the most crowded i have ever seen it in my life. i was about to give up and walk to 20 minutes home with tom on my shoulders, but people saw a girl with a kid and made room for me. i barely squeezed in the front door. people were really so very nice, and when a seat opened up at the stop about 200 meters before ours, about 6 people offered me the seat. all in english. they heard me speaking english with tom. so they were either all dying for a chance to practice their english, or they didn't notice tom was speaking to me in german and i understood. those two diggers tied to my backpack didn't make squeezing in and out of that bus one bit easier.

max checking out the view from the mountain top.

in the new bergbahn.

i think you need all three of the photos to really appreciate this.

see those diggers?

a normal day in the life of max and tom. tom is pushing max. look at max's face. i broke up the brawl a few minutes later. no worries.

max at the castle.

saturday morning, we were off to the market to do a little shopping and play at the playground. we had an orangina and then walked to the river to watch the rowing boats and run around for a little while. this guy that i know from rowing (he coaches the high schoolers) asked if max and tom were my kids...i'm not sure if he was serious or not. we came home and played for a while, and tom swore again that he didn't need to pee pee. five minutes later, it looked like someone had emptied one of the great lakes onto the living room floor. that day, i attempted to put the boys down for nap a bit early. disaster. they also told me everytime they went to bed that i had to sleep on the sofa in their room. i was so tired, i fell asleep everytime. all of you who know me well probably aren't a bit surprised by that. in the afternoon, the weather was fairly decent, and we decided to take a paddle boat on the river (tretboot). max and tom, of course, found it very important that they drive the boat. it is quite difficult to use a paddle boat with a 3 year old sitting on your life. it is slightly (only slightly) easier to paddle with a 3 year old standing between your legs. we even saw my friend thomas out rowing, and max and tom both yelled "hallo thomas" to him. after that, we went to eat ice cream which is always okay with me. we even managed to go by the monastery and look at the animals for a bit. saturday before bed time, i asked tom to please push his train to the bathroom to brush his teeth. then i asked again. his reply, "erst bitte sagen." first, say please. hahaha. i asked him again. after hearing "erst, bitte sagen" about five times, i explained that i told him please, and this is the same thing. so, he finally makes his way to the bathroom, where we now have only one little potty. (the other is downstairs for max to use occasionally.) they normally sit on them when brushing their teeth. max was tired and getting upset because he wanted to sit on the little potty. tom looks right at him and says, "too late." i really had to turn around so they didn't see me laughing. they are catching on to the english thing.

drinking orangina at the market.

trying to wake up from nap time and go for a boat ride.max.tom. max.

tom.

tom and brigitte. it isn't focused, but i love it.an alison, alison, alison moment with tom (and thomas the train).

petting the calves.

driving the tractor.

sunday morning, there was a sort of a street fair/party in heidelberg. lucky for us, there were a lot of things going on at the monastery down the hill. however, it didn't begin until 11, so we first played in the sandbox a bit. max and tom had their faces painted. tom was eine katze (a cat), and max was ein krokodil (crocodile). they also had a bounce castle, but that wasn't so exciting as the haybales that were stacked for climbing . there were a lot of kids there, and we saw several friends from kindergarten. we had a bratwurst for lunch, and then made our way home. tom decided he wasn't taking a nap yesterday, but it worked out alright because nils and sabine arrived home shortly after that and were happy to find someone awake. in the morning, i told max and tom that mommy and daddy are coming home today. tom's response: they are finished eating. (in english.) haha. it is very true that almost every other time i stay with max and tom, sabine and nils are gone to eat dinner. tom was so tired yesterday evening, and i was holding him. however, i really had to use the bathroom...that didn't go over very well. when i put him down, he was screaming and screaming. nils picked him up, but he was already so worked up he was just screaming meine alison meine alison. nils asked me if i've ever had a boy this attached to me? no. haha. thank you nils for reminding me of that. on second thought though, maybe there was one. he was also three years old.

tom the cat.

max the crocodile. look at that ferocious snap of the teeth.

at the top of the haystack.

max rode like a pro.

today we are going to attempt going to the circus, and this upcoming weekend i'm meeting a friend/old rowing coach in cologne. brigitte remembered to bring her camera along all weekend, so those are all of the photos you see, and for a change, i'm in some of them this time. and see, i look the same.