Freinsheim, September 2009

(Wow, it has been almost a year since my last post. So much traveling, so little documentation. *sigh*)

Every year, the club my husband belongs to arranges an outing to taste the wares of one of the vintners in our region. This wine-tasting evening has never really appealed to me because 1. I don't drink, and 2. it doesn't seem very child-friendly (= ready-made excuse to skip out). Hannah gets dragged to enough club-related events throughout the year that I feel she (& I) can safely give this one a miss.

This year, though, someone in the club suggested a Weinwanderung, which is sort of like a pub crawl, only walking along dirt roads in the vineyards from wine tent to wine tent.



John promised that there would be food and cake and other kids there, so once I agreed to go, Hannah was pretty much forced into going. I bribed her with a Happy Meal before we even got in the van to ensure her good behavior, but that only stopped her from complaining aloud. The waves of surliness rolling off her made me glad when she found another seat, away from me. But in just under an hour, we were in Freinsheim, which is near the more famous town of Bad Dürkheim on the Weinstrasse, or German Wine Route, which traverses the second largest wine-producing region in Germany.

As we were to learn, Freinsheim is relatively well-known among the Germans for this wine festival, but I was still shocked at the crowds we found on arrival.



When we go on a regular Wanderung up in the woods where we live, it is usually on a holiday, and so we expect to see lots of people, but it was even more crowded than that on the Weinwanderung, on a regular Saturday. People like their wine, I guess.

Another draw was the absolutely gorgeous weather that day. Stupid me, I neglected to use my moisturizer with suncreen that morning, so I ended up with a pink forehead. But I have to admit, having enough sunshine here in late September to get a touch of sunburn is like finding 50 bucks in an old pair of jeans--serendipity!

Moving on, it was nice to mosey through the vineyards, stopping to snap a few photos of the scenery,







or eat some grapes,







or get some food (cake and coffee in this photo),



or have a drink or 3,



or in this other group's case, have a picnic.



There was even a self-powered ride that Hannah decided she was too big for.



More likely, she didn't want to fling herself out of it. Yikes!



Funny story: this is where I briefly lost Hannah. We had already lost another member of our group--who actually ditched us, as it turned out, but we didn't know that at the time--so I was panicking when I couldn't find her. We were waiting for the other children to finish the ride, and suddenly I didn't see Hannah anywhere, not behind the ride or around the tents or across the road nomming on the grapes. I whipped out my cell phone and hoped she hadn't turned her phone off. Turns out she was sitting at her father's feet on the grass, *who I had been standing next to while scanning the crowds for my precious baby*. D'oh!



We also spotted a couple of items we couldn't quite explain, not being natives. Maybe they didn't know either, though.

Mutant duck advertising...?



Giant head representing...?(If I had known that John would need 10 minutes to buy a glass of wine, I would have gone up and read the inscription on this thing.)



Thankfully, I was able to enlarge the photo to read the name of this thing, because my google-fu had been powerless against my misspelled note, jotted in my Palm on Saturday. The location is called the Oschelskopf ("Oschel Head" or "Head of the Oschel", and I have no idea who, what, or where Oschel is), so the statue is named after that, but the locals apparently sometimes call it the "Elvis of Oschelskopf."

After we had done all of the above out in the fields, one of the club members led us on a tour of the town. The old city wall is still intact, so we followed it all the way around, which I think is about a kilometer long. It didn't take too terribly long, and the town was so charming. The path took us through narrow alleys,



covered walkways,



and once through a house.



Every turn brought a new, interesting sight:











Hannah really enjoyed the Wanderung, but when it came time for the tour of the town, she had had all she could take. Too bad for her that there was nowhere else for her to go, because the van wasn't scheduled to return for another hour at that point.

But as you can see from this photo of John, most of us had a great time.



For the rest of our pictures, see our photo set at Flickr.

Another Day, Another Tip

I am too busy to post, and will be for about another month, so I decided to leave you with a tip for driving in Italy:

GASOLIO, despite its name, does NOT mean gasoline. It means DIESEL. If you put gasolio in your gasoline engine, your car will not go, and it will cost you 200 Euros for a tow and to siphon out the diesel, plus 50 Euros to refill the tank with gasoline. *If* you are lucky and the diesel has not seriously damaged your engine.

You will thank me for this tip.

Stockholm 2008: Day 2

After a good night’s sleep and a not-too early start, we bought 3-day transit passes and headed into the center of Stockholm on the subway. We got off at Kungsträdgården and walked around a bit in that area and along the waterfront.

Hannah tried out being a Viking.



It was a bit windy, so Hannah took the opportunity to “parachute” by catching some wind with her jacket.



Then we headed over to the Historiska Museet (historical museum), just in time for it to start raining.



We didn’t make it there the other time we were in Stockholm, and John wanted to see their exhibit on Vikings. He wasn’t disappointed.



Hannah was surprisingly patient, I guess because she knew that we’d be heading to Gröna Lund (amusement park) next and that they don’t even open until noon. I left John and Hannah with the Vikings and looked around upstairs in the Medieval and Baroque areas, but I wasn’t that impressed. I guess I have lost the taste for looted churches; it felt like a crypt in there.

Hannah came and found me and we tried the Gold Room next. As the name implies, it was a room full of golden artifacts. Hannah really liked it and even read some of the signs on the displays. There was a video running in a side room, but she declared that bo-ring, so she mostly stuck by me. By the time John made it to the Gold Room, we had looked at every coin and read every sign and were ready to try something else.

Something else was the temporary exhibit for children on bread.



There were a ton of bread-items made out of felt on display, the most delectable of which was this “cake”.



After buying a few things in the gift shop, we were finally ready to be amused. We hopped on the historical tram over to the island of Djurgården for an afternoon of fun at Gröna Lund.



Gröna Lund is basically split into two parts, or as Hannah put it, the baby side and the fun side. We—or more accurately, John and Hannah—bypassed the baby side and went right for the rides, starting with a roller coaster and moving on to this swing carousel.



Then they hit the swinging Viking ship.



Here’s the one that would be more my speed:



And here is the after-effect of the Viking ship:



I like to call this photo “Gonna vom”. I think I neglected to mention that after bypassing the baby side, we ate a greasy amusement park lunch—“Mexican” food for John, “pizza” for Hannah, and a hot dog for me, and yes, the quotation marks are there for a reason—so the mad dash for the rides was poor judgment, in hindsight.

While we waited for the gorge to subside, we amused ourselves by deciding which balloon at the top of this heap it would be most difficult for the vendor to reach, and therefore which balloon we should demand from her.



Despite her queasy stomach, Hannah ran off to the indoor ride behind us rather than face the possibility of being accosted by these costumed freaks.



When asked why she was so afraid of them, she declared that she wasn’t afraid, she just hated them. Oh, ok. She insisted they were mice, while I found them more monkey-like. I think this sign backs me up:



Then John and Hannah climbed the moving stairs to go into the fun house.



They rode the bumper cars, then we headed back over to the bigger rides. Here, we prepare ourselves for the ride that goes through a witch’s house:





They rode a less-vom-inducing version of the Viking ride, the magic carpet ride.



I entertained myself while they were being flung about by watching the ships pass by.



Then while they were on the “blue train” ride, which is sort of a mini-haunted house ride, I checked out the decor visible from the queue:



Wow! That pteradactyl’s enormous breasts sure are scary! If I were her, I would sue my plastic surgeon.



Ah, this is more like it—the toothpick of the damnnnned!

Hannah managed to avoid being accosted by these fluorescent gorillas by being on a ride while they danced by to the annoying tunes of the ghetto-blaster being pushed by the magician? genie? accompanying them.



Here John and Hannah are in the midst of being hoisted up for a spinning, twirling, and generally puke-inducing ride that they had previously dismissed as being too much.





John had to take another time-out after that one.

I finally convinced them to move over to the baby side since the fun side was making them so sick. I coughed up for a single ticket for my all-time favorite ride: teacups!



Then I sent John and Hannah into Pettson and Findus’s house.



They are popular characters in a series of Swedish children’s books.



We wrapped up with a couple of slow, gentle rides, like old-timey cars:



and flying elephants:



This was a common sight in the park:



People were able to trade in their toddlers for chocolate! Ha ha, just kidding. These 2-kilo bars were prizes at the various games of chance. We didn’t bother with them because 1. we’re cheap, 2. we couldn’t carry it on the plane, and 3. we couldn’t eat it in 3 days before getting on the plane.

Then we hopped back on the old-timey tram, where I snuck a photo of this cute little change purse thingy the conductor was wearing. So old-fashioned, so cute!



Then we bought some groceries and went back to the hotel for dinner. The end.