June 2015 – robinchartier

a wet welcome/fires in the sky

Our first morning in Germany. We started our day by checking out the German gear in the hotel gift shop. This kid is begging for lederhosen. I told him he could buy them himself if he wanted them badly enough (they are expensive!)

We headed across the river to the base commissary — a luxury that we don’t have in Bahrain.

Good grief is food cheap when it’s government subsidized. Carter wanted to smuggle a bunch of these ribs home: $2.98 per rack. All the prices had my mouth agape: $1.89 for a box of Cheez-its (instead of $4). My blue corn tortilla chips were under $2 instead of $3, chocolate for .77 cents instead of $3 . . . we definitely aren’t getting enough COLA (cost of living allowance that varies from country to country). Anyway, we bought a boatload of snacks for cheap and then decided to head into the town of Garmisch.

We are surrounded by mountains on every side

The weather is cool and overcast, but it’s great for walking. We did figure out the bus this time and didn’t miss our stop (so yay for that), but had to wait way too long for a bus to come since it was the weekend. Josh snapped a photo of the bus schedule so we’ll be able to time our travel from here on out.

Gorgeous, quaint and all you’d imagine from German-Bavaria.

Lush garden and adorable cottage right downtown. There was a metal sculpture with a water pump style fountain right next to the garden. This group of Indian/Pakistani guys were filling their water bottles from the fountain. I asked Josh if he thought it was meant to be drinking water and he said no, but same as me, figured that it was much cleaner than what would be considered drinking water back home.

Rain clouds gathering. There was a music festival going on and we could hear the orchestra playing — I hope they were under cover at least.

She wanted to try on the hats like her brothers and then decided it was time to dance.

We wandered around town, popping into every outdoor sports store we saw. Since we are coming back in December, our long term goal is to get everyone some sort of shell/jacket that will be waterproof for skiing.

The skies opened up and it was pouring so we ducked into a cafe for hot chocolate and cappuccinos.

We found perfect jackets for the middle two boys. Good for now and later!

My jacket is a new acquisition from our time in Poland. The shopping was so good there. The prices were equal to or better than what we could get online.

Even McDonald’s looks like a Bavarian cottage

We caught the bus and headed back up to base/our resort. We had made special plans for the evening.

Every year, for the summer solstice, over the border in Austria they have the mountain fires. They’ve been doing this annually for a few hundred years. There are people who make designs on the sides of the mountains and then crews that carry the flame to these spots and light all the different fires that make up the image. As you stand below the mountains it’s like playing a game of connect the dots, guessing which image is being created before your eyes.

The very first signs of fire. One up top and one below.

Eating sausage and drinking beer while we wait

We made our way out to the middle of a grassy field to get a good view of the 4 different mountains where the fires were being lit.

See the fires over Caleb’s shoulder?

I can’t do it justice, but here’s the start of a candle!

Behind them are the beginnings of intertwined hearts, a praying angel and a cross. Most of the designs are religious symbols.

We made a new friend, Crystal, when she was assigned to our van for the drive to Austria (only about 25 minutes away).

The finished hearts! We also saw an amazingly detailed crucifix, an angel/cupid with arrow and heart, a church, a chalice and candle and more. At the beginning the weather cooperated, but then the downpour began.

We took cover in the beer tent. Calvin can drink because he’s 16 (and because we bought him a beer).

She’s a big drinker, but we’ve limited her to non-alcoholic apple juice.

A fun, once in a lifetime experience in the Alps! More info about it here.

workin in a salt mine

One of the touristy things to do in Krakow is a visit to the salt mines. It sounds a bit yawn-inducing, but this salt mine is more of an underground city than a hole in the ground. Anything with caves, hiking and climbing are on my kids’ must-do list so we headed out on the morning of day 2. We weren’t sure how much rain we’d be getting that day and figured it would be a good time to be underground and dry.

Walking to the bus. Lots of old beautiful buildings.

We stumbled upon the right bus (a miracle) and Josh figured out the ticket machine and we were off. 45 minutes later we arrived and had a short walk to the entrance of the mine. It was a bit like Disneyland with souvenir booths, food for sale and long lines of tourists.

We had about an hour before our timed tour with an English speaking guide so we had a lunch of Polish sausage with mustard, water with gas (sparkling water), coffee and ice cream. No $5 churros here. The food was cheap enough that Josh and Calvin went back and ordered seconds. The weather went from warm and sunny to a sudden downpour, but we pulled our chairs in toward the center of the umbrella and ate in the rain. Really fun.

We lined up with our fellow English speakers, got headsets to listen to our guide and started into the mine, 300+ steps down, down, down.

This is from the bottom, looking back up the shaft toward the top. I made the mistake of looking down part way through our descent and started feeling woozy.

We all had earpieces to hear our guide but every time he’d round a corner he’d start breaking up. “this– the end–1857– the men . . .” I missed much of the content, but the most important part is that it’s ALL made up of salt.

Yes, it’s lickable.

Yep, that’s salt too. There are salt sculptures and carvings in every room.

More salt sculptures. These are life sized. I think they are telling the story of how the salt mine came to be. And other rooms demonstrate the method they used for removing the salt from the mines.

The humidity down below creates moisture on the surface of the salt and as it evaporate it creates this cauliflower effect. Some of the rooms have stalactites hanging from the ceilings. The guy said they have to knock them down once each year to keep them from growing too big.

A demonstration of how the early miners had to burn off the methane gas that would collect in pockets — they’d walk around with a torch and crossed fingers waiting for something to blow up.

Salt, salt, more salt.

Tons of underground walking. The tunnels went on forever. Supposedly we walked about 2.5k, but the guide said that was only 1% of the tunnels.

Bob, picking salt off the wall to eat.

One of the kings. Salt.

Hiking down more stairs, further and further into the mine

Bob tasted this water too. I was sure he was going to get some sort of stomach issues from all his wall licking and tasting (though salt is an excellent bacteria killer). The water was super salty too.

They keep the tunnels with the sculptures air conditioned to remove the humidity from the air. This is what happens when they don’t — they “melt.”

Wooden Jesus. Not salt. The miners used to come visit before starting work each day as protection against their dangerous jobs. (I think that’s what the guide said. Don’t quote me on that.)

Wooden Mary (these two are the only 2 wooden sculptures down below). Mary is stomping on the crescent moon, a symbol of the Muslim faith.

The HUGE underground church. Salt stairs, salt floors, salt carvings on every surface. Not salt chandeliers.

Worth every step. It was breathtaking.

Salt nativity

Modern Dome of the Rock behind Mary and Joseph and Jesus headed to Egypt — a bit anachronistic.

Pope John Paul II is beloved in Krakow because he was their priest before he became pope. His image is everywhere.

As low as we go today — 425 feet underground.

After the tour was over, we gathered in the underground restaurant for a meal of Polish favorites: sour soup with sausage, fried cabbage, beets and other yummy things that taste better in Poland than anywhere else. We were told after we exited there would be an elevator to take us back to the surface.

But they didn’t tell us that we would have to walk a mile or more to get to the elevator.

Not a big deal, except the guy leading us was going at a sprinter’s pace and started the walk out by yelling at us in Polish so the entire way out had a much darker feel than the way in. Josh joked that we were probably on our way to “the showers” or that we were going to have to grab picks and work our way out before they’d let us go. Completely insensitive joking, but it felt the same way to me too. Especially with Josh’s parents trying to keep up it felt a bit like they were going for a survival of the fittest approach.

They did actually let us leave eventually and we bussed our way back to Krakow, relaxed a bit before dinner, and then headed into old town again to eat dinner on the square. We ate outside wrapped in blankets, sipping hot mulled wine and laughing as twilight slowly switched over to dark.

We’ve been eating at 8:30 because it’s light out until almost 10!

Another gorgeous night on the square. Love you, Krakow!

Poland to Bavaria

It’s 9pm, still light out, and my kids are running on an expansive stretch of grass with the new friends they just met. Germany is proving to be a delight already. I’m parked in a patio chair on the front “porch” of our hotel room with a cup of coffee, looking at the mountains stretched above me. And I have coffee. A good end to a bumpy day.

It started out brilliantly. Our last morning in Krakow we went to get our morning basket of raspberries. The huge baskets, the size of my hand and more than 2 inches deep, are about $3.25. And perfectly ripe cherries are only about $1.80/pound. We can eat like kings here.

If we lived here I’d eat raspberries every day that they were in season.

Then to round out our breakfast we stopped for ice cream. Everyone in Krakow eats ice cream all day long. We would see kids on their way to school eating cones, lines of kids after school, and adults walking down the street, feasting on multiple flavors at all hours of the day.

The flavors vary based on the shop and the day. Today was orange and chocolate, black currant, mint, and raspberry. The strangest one we tried was pink grapefruit — it wasn’t even sweet. Just tart like an actual grapefruit.

Then we headed to the park that encircles the Old Town and found a bench.

Living it up.

It’s actually this green there, (#nofilter) but I did crop out the dead rat that was lying on the edge of the grass about 10 feet away. The kids ran and chased the pigeons while I treasured my remaining raspberries. I’ve been reminding the kids all week that Germany isn’t going to be the extravagant party that Poland has been. Where else can you get double scoops of ice cream for less than $2?

And then to top it off, we stopped for pastries at the shop across the street where a cappuccino and huge pastry cost less than 3 dollars. No sharing required. Everyone got to pick their own. Rationing starts tonight.

We walk through the wedding dress district to get to and from our apartment each day. It makes for lots of “Say Yes to the Dress” jokes. Good grief, my eyes are puffy! I guess the coffee hadn’t kicked in yet.

Killing time at the airport, waiting for our flight to Munich. I thanked God a million times over that they belonged to me instead of the kid that kept jumping on all the chairs and running back and forth in front of me. I had a burning desire to stick my arm out and clothesline him as he kept jostling me while I was trying to read, but since I was reading a Christian book about “loving the world” I thought that might not be taking the book’s message to heart. But I thought ugly thoughts about the mom who was letting him run all over like a crazy person, including permitting him to climb down the up escalator as we were all trying to go up it on the way out of the airport. Some people . . .

More green. Germany looks like Poland from the air.

I like looking at clouds, but not flying through them. Calvin said our descent was bumpy (and it was), but I was mostly able to ignore it and read my book. Yay me.

We land in Munich and head to the train station. I hadn’t done my detailed research on which train number/time/platform we needed so it took a bit of guesswork. We deduced that we should take the commuter train to the main train station and then figure out where to go from there.

God bless kind Germans. We had 4 different people help us along the way, three of them without even asking (we must have looked lost!). Two people on the train looked up the connection times for us on their phones as we rode into the city (Josh and I were sitting separately), one man pointed us in the right direction as we were looking for the regional train platforms and another saved us from sitting in part of the train that was going to be disconnected and headed in a different direction 1/2 way through our journey.

Heading to our train. A team effort!

The trains are fast, quiet and clean, but it was still a long day. We left Krakow around 11 am and didn’t arrive in Garmish until 7 hours later.

The view was beautiful all along the way.

Camille was popping back and forth from one side of the train to the other (and driving me crazy in the process) as she was pointing out mountains! cows! geese! green! I’m happy she was so excited, but I wanted her to quit jumping off the auto-folding seats (that would flip up with a bang) as she ran from window to window.

Getting closer to the mountains. We are staying at the base of the tallest mountain in Germany, Zugspitze.

We’re not in Bahrain anymore, Dorothy. Babies drinking beer on the train. Meanwhile, back at home, no one can drink anything during the day and alcohol is especially forbidden for the month. It’s like night and day.

We arrived in Garmish only to find that the cabs were all too small for us (I had read there would be minivan cabs that could take up to 8 people, but no.) and the nice Germans all must live in Munich because the surly cabdriver who we asked about a ride ignored us and drove off. Josh spent a few minutes figuring out the map and which bus we should take (it turned out to be one on the other side of the street) and after waiting 5 minutes that felt like 30 the bus arrived and we boarded along with a man who was carrying 10 foot long wooden skis that almost wouldn’t fit inside the bus. I’m not sure what his deal was, but he was in some sort of official costume/uniform and his skis looked like they were from the 1800s with leather buckles . . . I was just happy we weren’t the only nutters dragging excess weight onto the bus.

Novice bus riders that we are, we assumed the bus would stop at the scheduled stops — nope, in true German efficiency, it blew right by where we needed to get off. Whoops. So we got off at the next stop (after finding the STOP button) and then had to cross the street and wait for another bus to come back the other way.

She was a trooper. Nothing to eat since breakfast except 1/2 a sandwich on the airplane. Though every time I say things like that, I think of all the people who went to Auschwitz crammed in cattle cars with no food or water for 4 days or more at a time and think, “Wow, we are soft.” Josh says I’m not allowed to play the Auschwitz card anymore after I used it when he was crabby that the suite we booked has two beds in one room and a pullout sofa in the other so if we want to be by ourselves we have to sleep on the couch. Hey, I’m just saying . . . it seems shallow to be mad about a lack of privacy on vacation when we could be stacked like cordwood without food or water, but I’ll let it go.

Let part 2 of our vacation begin!

Raindrops keep falling on my head

Our first morning in Krakow. We set out to explore and before we even reached the town square the rain began. Good thing we came prepared!

It started to pour and everyone ran for cover under the Cloth Hall — a long building that is open in the center with shops and stalls. We wandered through looking at the various handicrafts and then headed across to the other side of the square to St. Mary’s church.

We were there at the opening and grabbed seats near the front to wait for the main event to be unveiled. This piece is a famous work of art by a woodcarver from way back when (too lazy to google) and his triptych is opened by a nun every morning.

They charged tickets for admission and then wanted people to pay a separate charge to take photographs. That annoyed me so I just snapped a quick freebie photo.

Ta dah! I was surprised to see that the sculpture was multi-colored, with tons of gold. I pictured natural wooden figures, but I should have known from the style of the church that they’d be over the top.

The theme for today was rain. Every time I was inside, the rain would stop. As soon as I’d step outside, I’d feel drops start up again. I guess I’ve been a little too vocal about my love of rain. Nature was listening and decided to deliver it all today.

Since the rain had gotten pretty heavy and it was about time for lunch, we brought Josh’s parents to the place we ate the night before. Hearty, homestyle Polish food: spicy goulash (an ugly name for beef stew), fried cabbage, and the biggest pork cutlet in town. Literally. It hung over both sides of my giant dinner plate. It was like the loaves and fishes — as much as we ate, there was still more. We finally packed it up and brought the rest home to eat later.

Time to walk off all that food — she’s leading the way.

Let’s go!

Next up on the schedule was St. Francis church with its special stained glass windows that Mom wanted to see.

As we sat and looked at the altar and the windows we noticed that the people coming to visit the church looked extra dressed up and some were carrying flowers. Carter came up with big eyes and said, “We need to get out of here before the service starts.” On his second church of the day, I’m sure he thought that once it started we’d be stuck for its entirety. Great thinking, kid.

Carter and I booked it out of there and retreated to the back of the church while the more religious in our party were reluctant to leave. From the back we could watch the entrance to the church and saw that most of those entering (coming out of the heavy rain) looked dressed for a wedding.

And here comes the bride!

Once the bride walked down the aisle we were desperate to leave (they were way up front and we could barely see them) so in between texts to Josh: “We aren’t staying for the entire service, are we?!?” we took selfies as a form of entertainment.

After leaving St. Francis we headed toward Wawel Castle where they happened to be having a renaissance fair this weekend.

Races on the grass below the castle tower.

It was a pretty miserable day for a renaissance fair. The rain was coming down pretty steadily and everything was wet, dark and cold. I figured it was a pretty accurate representation of how things were in the real Middle Ages. Less flutes and harps and more standing around under thin tents, shivering, coughing and dying. If it had been nice out, we would have stopped to make flower crowns, but I wanted to keep moving.

But my kids are suckers for weapons of any kind. The wooden bows, arrows and swords were too much to resist.

My little warriors.

From there we headed up into the castle and bought tickets to climb the tower. Inside was warm and dry.

Krakow is a gorgeous city

All the wet revelers below. Hope their mead is keeping them warm!

A view of the cathedral from the tower

After the tower we left the castle (by way of the Dragon’s Lair, an underground tunnel that goes under the old wall) and headed back up toward the main square.

It may be rainy, but there’s never a bad time for gelato. Pear, brazil nut, coconut, cherry and coffee. All fantastic.

After drying off and warming up we walked to get dinner at Chata (meaning cottage in Polish). More amazing food. Sauerkraut soup with ribs, potato pancakes with gravy, pierogi, fried cabbage with kielbasa, and hot spiced wine.

Perfect for a rainy night!

Arriving, on a jet plane . . .

Hello, Saudi Arabia!

If I could have a superpower, it would be the ability to fall asleep on an airplane. I’m always so jealous of those people with eye masks and travel pillows who are snoozing before we even take off. They dream the entire way and wake as if the journey took minutes, rather than hours. It’s the next best thing to being able to genie myself there (that would actually be the better superpower to have). Meanwhile I twist and turn and pull up my knees and perch my feet on the seat back pocket and can never get comfortable. I hear every creak and shudder of the plane and wonder if the techs were slack on the maintenance records. I watch the cartoon airplane creep slowly across the map on my screen, certain that the pilot is flying extra slowly this time. 4am, the longest hour of the night.

I thought by sharing seats with these two little people, that I’d have more room to spread out. I miscalculated the amount of thrashing girlie does in her sleep. I got about 20 minutes of “sleep” all night.

My fellow knitter. Started before we boarded the plane, finishing up in the Frankfurt airport (because he knit though all the yarn that he brought). I’m looking for a yarn store here in Krakow to hook him up.

Flying in over Krakow on one of the smoothest flights ever (my favorite kind). Green!!

As we descended, this amazing wet stuff suddenly appeared on our windows. Rain!!

Waiting for our luggage in the teeny Krakow terminal.

What our group photos usually look like. All that’s missing is a crazy face on Camille and one kid with closed eyes.

We had a driver pick us up at the airport since we needed 2 cars for the 6 of us. Europeans really don’t do minivans or SUVs. On the way to town our driver told us all about Krakow — it was like having a guide. He dropped us off near old town with a map and a restaurant recommendation and he took our luggage to our apartment for us. We wandered a bit, but since we hadn’t eaten a real meal in over 24 hours, we decided to go eat an early lunch and get out of the rain. (I had cleared our kitchen of groceries in anticipation of leaving, but the night we left was the first day of Ramadan and there are no restaurants or food easily available during the day so we were scrounging for scraps).

Polish cuisine is amazing. Camille had Devil’s goulash — a spicy beef stew full of meat and vegetables. And the entire pot of it was $4.

Chicken cutlets and home fries. A mixed salad of coleslaw and pickled red cabbage. And Josh’s $2 beer.

Spiced pork, vegetables with a cheese sauce and home fries. We ate until we were about to burst and still had food left over. We also ordered drinks for everyone and the bill for 6 was still under $50 (and that was with 4 people ordering higher end items off the menu — Josh ordered 1/2 a roast duck meal so his was $9).

The moment before the tears began — Camille gets soaked by her puddle jumping brother.

More exploring of the old city

After lunch, I thought I might never eat again, but we saw a guy carrying a flat of Nutella and followed him to this small shack on a street corner and had to try what he was selling. They are pastry towers that have been brushed with butter and sugar and are filled with the sweets of your choice: Nutella, coconut, nuts, etc. It’s an amazing cross between a cinnamon roll and a churro (crispy sweet on the outside, warm and doughy on the inside).

They disappeared quickly.

From there we scoped out the local mall, purchased our Krakow Starbucks mug for our collection and then went to our apartment to wait for Josh’s parents to arrive. While we were waiting we all fell asleep and I crashed until dinner. I probably could have or would have slept all night, but I’m glad Josh dragged me out because we ate amazing Italian-style pizza. Arugula, ham, and parmesan on a crispy thin crust. Bacon and fresh tomato, and a third that I can’t remember, but was equally delicious. Krakow is shaping up to be a food lover’s paradise!