Fishing and Hochwacht

Saturday I got up early and biked to a lake, the Pluss see, and tried out my new pole. I was there at 3am and fished for 3 hours. I did get a bite and reeled it in but as soon as I pulled the fish out of the water it wriggled itself off and got away. It was about the size of my hand. There were bigger fish out there, I could see them jumping from time to time, but it was not meant to be on this day.

On Sunday I biked north toward Luitjenburg and on to Hochwacht on the Baltic coast. I biked up and down the coast before heading back. The beach here was very nice. Much less crowded then Timmdorfstrand. On the way back I got pretty tired and stopped to rest on a bench. As I sat there two other bikers came up a side road looking exhausted and said hi (moin moin) as they passed and got onto the bike trail. I thought to myself that they must have been lost and continued on the nice bike trail parallel to the main road. After a few more miles I realized I didn't recognize the route and was off the map, so I angled what I tought was south. After many miles more a giant sea opened up next to me and I saw signs for roads toward Kiel. At that point I figured I was way lost and realized I missed my turnoff and I bet the point where I rested and saw the other bikers come up was it. At this point my legs were burning but I had to turn around and retrace. Finally I got back to that point and sure enough there was the turn I had missed. Then it was a long slow return home in a race before sunset (which fortunately takes a very long time this time of year). I finally got back in as V was putting the kids to bed and my legs are very sore today from the workout.

Siebenschlaefertag

Today, June 27, is a special traditional day here in Germany. It is named after a hibernating door mouse. The saying goes that whatever the weather is like on this day, it will be the same for seven more weeks (obvious parallels with Groundhog Day in the states). It was rainy today, which is a good thing, the plants are very stressed here from lack of water. It has not rained much at all this summer and this is supposed to be one of the wettest parts of Europe!

A new nephew!!!!

I just found out that a baby boy was born to my sister, S, this afternoon (morning their time) 7 lbs 2 Oz. His older brother M was my first nephew and now my kids, T and M, have a second first cousin. Congratulations S and C!

M is off to Kiel

Kieler Woche

Szczecin

My brother is coming to visit in August and we are planning a trip around the Baltic. I previously scouted the route north as far as Denmark and this last weekend I went east to the edge of Poland! I spent Saturday night in the city of Sczcecin and returned on Sunday. ...

Summer Solstice

This was the view of the northern horizon at midnight on the summer solstice. We are far enough north here that a "twilight" passes by in the north between sunset and sunrise.

Home schooling

We've decided to homeschool T in the afternoons after school with a formal homeschooling program (it has to be in addition to the public school because homeschooling only is illegal in Germany). He is taking his placement tests now. This way he can keep up with the curriculum for his age and we'll view the German public school as a way for him to learn German and play with other kids during the day--not much more since it is very apparent now that we can not expect any help from them to teach him German or keep him on his grade level. We also have arranged for him to visit highschool age students three times a week for help with his public school homework.

M has a new bike!

As promised, we took M last Saturday to pick out a bike after payday the Friday before. She got a new pink one with lots of accessories. Now she just needs to learn to ride it. I took her practicing Sunday afternoon. She can keep here balance and pedal and steer around once she gets going but her main trouble is getting going. The bike is a bit on the tall side so it is a little challenge for her to start off, but once she gets it it should work well for her for several years.

Preetz

Sunday it was warm again with not a cloud in the sky so I biked up the road to Preetz. It's funny, I have been down to Eutin several times but never to Preetz. When I got close to town I stopped at a park and got out my map to get oriented. I chatted with an older couple that walked by about where I was on the map and what the name of the park was (all in German!). They seemed to really appreciate me making an effort not to use English. I went to the altstadt but almost everything was closed. evidently Preetz doesn't have permission to open on Sunday during tourist season like Ploen does. There were a few bakeries open so I stopped and got a kaese brot and a cappuchino and sat outside to watch the people walking by. There was a fountain there with some ducks lounging on it and a female duck waddeled over and stared at me intently for some bread. I tossed her some crumbs then a house sparrow, crow and sea gull all glided in on cue and watched me for more. It got hotter on the way back and I drank most of my half liter of water. Almost in Ploen I diverted toward the lake and jumped in. The water was unusually warm and I didn't want to get back out. By the way, it has finally cooled off some and clouds have come in the last 24 hours (Tue-Wed) but for several weeks now it has been very sunny and warm with almost no rain ... and people told me this was the rainiest part of Europe. So far it seems more like southern California! Lack of water stress is evident on the plants in the yards and fields, even in the forest under the trees plants are wilting, but the locals don't seem to be worried. Germans seem to love the sun. Growing up in the south I am used to avoiding the sun. In the summer we seek out the shade to rest in naturally, but here people do the opposite. They sit in sun wherever possible and seem oblivious to their pink sunburns, probably because they are so ubiquitous no one stands out unless you are not sunburned.

English

We are getting low on money (I was paid twice accidentally when I first came and they corrected it by suddenly not paying me for a month), but we wanted to do something for T, so we found a theater that is playing Indiana Jones in English in Hamburg and all went there on Saturday. It was a short walk from the train station and along the way we stopped at a bookstore that has a large English language section. There is a lot of English in advertisements here in Germany, especially hybrid part-English/part-German titles (and most of the music playing over the speakers in stores are American English songs including, rarely, country music). However, in the bookstore it seemed strange to see all those titles in English only. For some reason they had a UK flag up in the section but most of the books were American. They also had kids books that M and T flipped through. We went to the theater and bought tickets, they had assigned seats, then walked around the Rathaus to kill time and went back for the movie to start. The trailers were in German but the movie itself was in non-subtitled English! We had to cover M and T's eyes during a few parts but we all really enjoyed it and made it back to Ploen by a descent hour.

Another parent-teacher meeting

On Friday we went to the school in the morning to meet with T's teacher, as per her request. She was saying that he wasn't doing well, still hadn't learned enough German, needed to work harder and so on or he would be held back next year (again already!). She said she has her own students to teach and can't spend time teaching T also. A particularly awkward moment came up when she said he drew a picture in art class of fighting in WWII complete with Nazis and swastikas (which are illegal in Germany)!, and wanted to know why he drew this. We tried our best to explain that he didn't mean anything by it and wasn't aware of how sensitive Germans were about WWII. She had a list of things she wanted us to do, most of it was fair enough, signing off on his homework, making sure his pencil case was in his school bag, ... teach him German cursive this summer (how would we do that? we don't know German cursive). However, at one point the teacher asked me how long we would be here and she seemed to be very surprised when I said 4-5 years (I've encountered this before, people only expect us to be here from ~6 months to a year at most). It is becoming clearer to us that the school has been taking the path of least resistance/convenience with T, moving him down in grades and just tolerating him until we leave, which they apparently expected to happen after about a year. Also, there are very few students that are not local Germans so the school is not used to dealing with kids new to the country. Obviously V and I will have to work harder to make up for this. We discussed finding a high-schooler that we could pay to help T with his homework (in German) after school (also a suggestion of his teacher) and arranging times for him to go visit other kids at their houses so he would be encouraged to use and learn more German that way also, and we need to do some kind of home schooling to keep him up to grade level and not let him fall behind.

Schwerin

I bought a ticket the day before so we could all travel to Hamburg to watch the new Indiana Jones movie in English; T really wants to see it. However, V found out later the same day that the theater had stopped playing it two days before. Since we already had the ticket, and could
also travel with it in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Pomerania) we hopped the train heading for former East Germany. We went through Luebeck to a station in Bad Kleinen. This made a new eastern record for V and the kids, 11 degrees 28'3" E. On the former communist side the landscape was flatter with a seemingly constant wind, larger fields and sparser towns, the buildings looked more run down and neglected in general and one feature that really stood
out to us both was the old guard towers at the train stations we passed. From Bad Kleinen it is a short connection to the state capital, Schwerin, which has a famous castle I had heard about and wanted to see. We hopped on the next train and someone came to check our tickets. It turned out our ticket couldn't be used for the train we were on (IC rather than regional). In retrospect it was a very nice clean train and the people were very quiet, so something was amiss. But the purser let us get off at the next stop, which happened to be our destination. We ate lunch at the station then headed out. Schwerin has a nice altstadt (old town), dotted around town were painted rhinos(?), and the castle is striking when you first come around a corner and see it.
It is very large, has gilt gold statues and towers and is on its own small island. Some of the smaller towers have the Slavic style "onion" shape that reminds you of the Russian Kremlin.
It happened that there was a festival going on just in front of the castle island, they played music and the kids got to run around at look at the booths that were set up. They had a spring cable high jump trampoline set up for the kids and M and T went straight for it. They got to bounce 20 feet up in the air for a while and enjoyed it. Then we went to the castle which is a working state administration building, and they just happened to be having an open house that day. We walked right in with the crowd. They handed out bags and posters and pins to us and a stringed quartet was playing music. We went inside the castle and wandered from room to room for a while, then we all were winding down and started back. We made a quick photo op with a herd of painted rhinos in front of a museum and I picked up a business card of a man selling fossils that T liked. We made it back to the train station and grabbed some supper, then got on the correct train back to Bad Kleinen for our connection. This was a crowded regional train rather then the IC train. About half way the train pulled off onto a side track and stopped. From time to time the engine made strange noises and/or they made announcements in German over the intercom, which we could guess at the meaning of by the groaning it set off in the other passengers. We were there for hours as other trains passed us back and fourth on the main track. Finally just as the sun was setting it started back up and we made it to the station. Then our connecting train was delayed. After it came, it was supposed to go all the way past Ploen to Kiel, but they made an announcement that it would divert to Hamburg instead. We got off in Luebeck and had to wait an hour for the last train to Kiel for the night. We caught it after midnight and finally made it to Ploen around 1 am. Thanks goodness we made the last train and didn't have to spend the night at the station in Luebeck.

In retrospect I think we have defined the approximate limit we can travel for day trips and be able to reliably return on the train system. To explore further we should plan for overnight stays.

Haffkrug

On Saturday I got up early, bought a "state" ticket for the next day (we planned to watch a movie in Hamburg Sunday) and biked all the way to Haffkrug on the Baltic coast to the north of Luebeck. Finally I am in shape enough to make it to the coast without killing myself (after 4 months of exercise). I went swimming before it got crowded and biked south along the coast for a ways stopping to eat brunch at a bakery then headed back after going as far as Timmendorfer Strand (20 miles, 33km total!). For lunch I grabbed a Doener Kebab and I made it as far back as Eutin (12.5 miles, 20 km) before I was completely exhausted. They were having some kind of road rally in Eutin. Many of the roads were blocked off with crowds and judges watching from the sides as old fashioned cars with numbered stickers on their sides whipped around the track. I watched that for a while then bought a ticket and rode the train the rest of the way home.