Thursday, April 30, 2009

Spring Break

Poor blog. You're so neglected. I can't even remember the last time I wrote a blog post. That's what happens when you join Facebook... the blog gets lost and forgotten.

This year, Madchen got to experience spring break for the first time. Not because we took her to some tropical spring break destination, but because 2 of her Wisconsin cousins and her Tante (my sister) came to stay with us during their spring break. For Madchen, spring break meant that all of her regular classes (music, gymnastics, and school) were taking a couple weeks off, so she was thankful to have something like her cousins to keep her entertained.

While they were here, we did try to get out of the city for a brief beach excursion (to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware), but unfortunately we experienced no sunshine at all, only torrential rains and near-hurricane force winds. As a result, we never actually saw the ocean (other than from the car as we drove in) despite staying in a hotel only 2 blocks from the beach. THANK GOODNESS I booked a hotel with an indoor pool. It saved us.

The highlight of spring break was celebrating Easter together. My sister and I took her 2 kids (the other son was rock climbing with his Dad in California for the week) to the National Cathedral for an Easter Eve service (Kirk stayed home with Madchen since it was after her bedtime) that was beautiful, albeit long. We left after an hour and a half, and we were only on page 12 of a 25 page bulletin. But when you're a kid, Easter is all about the candy, right? We had an Easter egg hunt in the backyard, which Madchen LOVED.



She especially loved the chocolate eggs. Thankfully the Easter bunny only included a few of those in the hidden eggs. Check out her cheek filled with a bunch of chocolate.



As for all the other candy, she chose to share it with the rest of us. She only likes chocolate, thank you very much.



My sister and her kids spent a fair amount of time just playing tourists visiting all the DC sights. We joined them for a few things, although most include way too much walking for a 2-year old's little legs. Here we were with them at the Washington Monument (they got tickets to take the elevator all the way to to the top... we passed on that one).





Other than that, we spent lots of time at our neighborhood playgrounds. Kids have to be kids, after all, and you can only do sightseeing for so many hours of the day...



A sure sign that summer is just around the corner? POPSICLES!

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Out of touch

I know, I know, the blog has been dormant. Here's a self-portrait (Mädchen insisted I cuddle with Cookie Monster one afternoon) just to prove we're still here.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Triumphant return

We left Basel in March 2007, and we hadn't been back since. So I was thrilled to find out I had a meeting in Basel on April 1. I got in touch with a few friends who told me they had a group going up to the Alps for some late-season skiing from March 26-29, so I got clearance from a very jealous Gretchen to go early and have a few days of fun. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I found out that the meeting would be on April 7 instead. Not only did that mean no trip to the Alps, but it was also questionable whether I could even go at all because I was supposed to leave on April 5 and Gretchen had already planned to be in the Bay Area helping friends move out there and wouldn't be back until the 6th. ARGH!

All's well that ends well...Gretchen agreed to change her plans and get back on the morning of the 6th on a red-eye flight (just another reason why she rocks), and since my meeting started at 10:00am, I figured I could arrive that morning and go straight from the airplane to the meeting. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

At least I used miles to upgrade to business class flying over (we're required to fly economy to Europe for work) and try to catch a couple of hours of sleep, then I changed into my suit in the airplane restroom. Then I was saved by Swiss efficiency--the plane landed in Zurich at 8:05am, I had my bags and was through immigration and customs by 8:20am, I had coffee and pastries by 8:30am, was on a train by 8:45am, arrived at the Basel train station at 9:57am, and walked into my meeting minutes later just as it started. We had an all-day meeting followed by a dinner, but at least we had a couple of hours when I could walk over to Bachmann and get a delicious schoggiweggli:


The next day I moved from my hotel to friends' place nearby. It was cool and overcast, but that didn't slow me down--I had a long shopping list for Gretchen (chocolate) and Mädchen (toys, German childrens' books, colorful Euro clothes) to get through. So I wandered around the shops downtown and stopped for a bratwurst at a stand I used to go to on the Marktplatz:


I was also happy to see that teenage style (Eastern Europe meets suburban wannabe hip-hop) was as bad as ever:


I was also disappointed to know that I wouldn't be there for the big Basel Facebook party (or should I say Mega Party!), which I'm sure our Basel friends on Facebook will be attending this evening:


I try not to nap when I'm jet lagged so that I adjust more quickly, but it simply couldn't be helped that afternoon. Fortunately the nap made me nice and refreshed for a fun evening out with former co-workers (I decided not to try the stuffed rooster):



After sleeping in much too late the next day, I looked out the window and saw a bright blue sky with not a cloud in sight (the thing about Basel was that the weather was often lousy, but when it was nice, it was REALLY nice). So back I went downtown to see old, familiar sights:





I even took the tram back up to our old neighborhood, where I saw our former house:


That evening, I headed over to The Big Finn and Mrs. TBF's place, where friends Liz and Douglas and their daughter, as well as their friend Di, joined us for a delicious Thanksgiving-in-April (or "Kirkey," as they called it in my honor) dinner. Somehow I managed not to take pictures, but a good time seemed to be had by all.

By the time I got back to my friends' place, I realized I needed to be up at the crack of dawn the next morning (Good Friday) to get on an early train to the airport (United wouldn't assign me a seat ahead of time, so I wanted to make sure I got there early enough to get an aisle seat since I get intense claustrophobia otherwise). Good thing I didn't stop for coffee, because the doors were basically closing as I slipped onto the train. Getting there left me with a couple of hours to kill in the Zurich Airport, but it's one of the nicer airports you'll find, so all I needed was my iPod and some strong coffee and I was perfectly fine.


After several days of Swiss efficiency, it felt like home to be back on an airline where the entertainment system was broken the whole way back, only to arrive at an airport (Dulles) where going through immigration took close to 45 minutes and baggage claim is about as orderly as what you would expect to find in a Latin American capital city. God bless America!

As much as I wish I could have had more time there, and I wish Gretchen and Mädchen could have joined me (money and time didn't allow it), it was great to be back. It didn't feel weird--from the moment I arrived, I felt like I had never left. And it was great to see friends who I hadn't seen in a couple of years. As much as it made me nostalgic, though, I don't dwell on it--life was good then, but it's good now, too. I just hope to have another chance to go back again soon with my girls...

Saturday, April 11, 2009

All the news that's fit to print

I just got back from a great few days back in Basel (about which more later). One of the things that always gets me is how different the nature of the news is here and there. Not that I can actually read the news there since it's in German, but I generally can figure out enough to get the gist. Here, it is not uncommon for murders in DC to either go unreported or, perhaps, to get a short paragraph somewhere in the middle of the Metro section. By contrast, here are some of the items I came across in the various free local papers (which, I realize, are probably not of the same journalistic quality as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung or even the Basler Zeitung):
  • Someone burned a couple of sofas on Basel streets in the middle of the night

  • City gardeners are upset by the increasing use of disposable charcoal grills

  • Since the weather was so nice last weekend, 20,000 tons of garbage was collected in Basel

  • There was an update on the status of naked hiking

  • The Basel Zoo now has a walkway that allows visitors to see the giraffes at eye-level

  • Swiss butchers are being hard-hit by the crisis in the automobile industry because of weakened demand for leather (in Switzerland it's all about the cows)
Actually, as much as there was lots of such frivolity, the biggest news by far seemed to be the earthquake in Italy, whereas Gretchen said it hardly made a ripple in the news here. And best of all, I didn't see a single thing in the news there about the evil UNC winning the basketball national championship...

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Mr. Mom

We are in the midst of a very momentous occasion. Since Mädchen was born almost three years ago, Gretchen has never been away for the weekend on her own--not once. Until now, that is.

It's not that she hasn't wanted to go away, or that I haven't wanted her to, but circumstances just turned out that way. First, Mädchen refused to ever take a bottle. As a result, while Gretchen was nursing it wasn't an option for her to go away and leave me to give her bottles. Then, once she stopped nursing and started drinking milk from a cup, she went through an extremely intense Mommy-attachment phase. Not that she didn't like to be with me, but for any time longer than an hour or two away from Gretchen, she would be inconsolably hysterical. Once she got over that, she had a long stretch where she woke up at least once every single night, and she would only let Gretchen go to her. That phase finally passed about six months ago, so she probably could have gone away but the opportunity just never came up.

One of Gretchen's closest friends (whose kids are some of Mädchen's best friends, and who is basically responsible for introducing the two of us) is moving out to California. Since Gretchen knew it would be really tough for her friend to get three kids (two of whom are toddlers) through Dulles Airport and keep them entertained on the long flight to San Francisco, Gretchen decided to help them out and fly out with them. She won't have much time in the Bay Area, unfortunately--she's going to turn around and fly back tomorrow night. Still, I think it will be liberating for her (and she already has another trip planned).

As for me, I get a real taste of what Gretchen goes through every day--making sure Mädchen is dressed and fed, dealing with her two-year-old mood swings, keeping her entertained, cleaning the house, etc. It's only been a half-day so far, and Mädchen has been in a great mood, but I'm already exhausted!

As for Gretchen (who just sent me a picture on my cellphone that she took of the blue California sky from the Bay Bridge), I know her excitement about being away by herself is tempered by having to say goodbye to one of her oldest and closest friends. It's going to be a rough goodbye tomorrow night...

1996:


2008:


Mädchen and her good friend: