Monday, October 24, 2005


This is a cross section of the chunnel. We thought it was just a tunnel that you could drive through but Brandon said it was more like a train for the vehicles...and then regular high speed trains. He said the bus pulled onto this tunnel and then he said it just 'shoots' you through it. Brandon said you could look out the windows and see the fish. He was just kidding me, of course. This photo was taken from another website which said it's copywrite has expired and is for public use now. Posted by Picasa

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Brandon is home from London Central

Football season for Brandon is over.

London Central 24, Bamberg 6.

Brandon made it home from his long trip, arms scratched up and with lots of muscle soreness. He left on Thursday and got home this morning (Sunday) around 0930. They took the English Channel tunnel (Chunnel) on the way there and took a ferry on the way back.

First some info about the English Channel. http://www.answers.com/topic/english-channel

Here is some info about the chunnel.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/wonder/structure/channel.html

Brandon said, and some of you know he does this...he had a bout of travel sickness as he was going through the Chunnel, poor kid. Anyway, he said the chunnel is like a train for your vehicle. You drive on it and then it takes off through a tunnel. He said it really rocked the bus and then he got sick (in the bathroom on the bus). He said you could get off the bus and walk around. He said the chunnel trip took around 30 minutes.

Then when they got to the other side...they started driving on the other side of the road. Brandon said it was pretty neat. He said they saw "Big Ben" (http://www.aboutbritain.com/BigBen.htm) which Brandon said he thought it would be bigger. He said they saw 'one' of Tony Blair's homes and a palace where the Queen got married?? Well, that is what he said.

On the way home they took the ferry over the English Channel. He said it was really big and 'nice', with arcades and perfume shops and restaurants and bars. He did complain about the Euro to Pound exchange rate but didn't mention the Dollar to Pound exchange rate (which is worse!). A page on current rates... http://www.x-rates.com/

Deep Thoughts....by Jack Handey

The perfect gift for the President would be a chocolate handgun. But he's a very busy man, so you'd probably have to run up to him real quick and hand it to him.

The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.

It takes a big man to cry. It takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man.

If you ever fall off the top of a really tall building, you should just go limp, like a dummy. Then somebody may try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.

If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, just let them...'cause MAN, they're gone!!

When a child asks me 'Why does it rain?', I think a funny thing to say is 'Because God is crying.' And when that child asks me why God is crying, I think another funny thing to say is "It's probably because of something you did.

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

If trees could scream, would we still cut them down? We would if they screamed constantly. And for no good reason.

It's sad that a family could be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs.

I can picture in my mind a world without war, without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

I think a good product would be "Baby Duck Hat". It's a fake baby duck, which you strap on top of your head. Then you go swimming underwater until you find a mommy duck and her babies, and you join them. Then, all of a sudden, you stand up out of the water and roar like Godzilla. Man, those ducks really take off! Also, Baby Duck Hat is good for parties.

Probably the earliest flyswatters were nothing more than some sort of striking surface attached to the end of a long stick.

I bet that most of the time, being down in a dungeon was pretty bad, but some days, you look out your little window during a horrible storm, and you think, "man, I'm glad I'm not out in that".

Children need encouragement. If a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess. That way he develops a good, lucky feeling.

Sometimes when I see something hurtling itself across the floor and it lunges at someone and attaches itself to their neck, I stop and say...what is that thing?

It's amazing when you think that there is an entire world all around us we can't even see. I'm speaking, of course, of the world of the invisible scary skeletons.

I think someone should have had the decency to tell me the luncheon was free. To make someone run out with potato salad in his hand, pretending he's throwing up, is not what I call hospitality.

If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that.

The next time I have meat and mashed potatoes, I think I'll put a very large blob of potatoes on my plate with just a little piece of meat. And if someone asks me why I didn't get more meat, I'll just say, "Oh, you mean this?" and pull out a big piece of meat from inside the blob of potatoes, where I've hidden it. Good magic trick, huh?


And my personal favorite...

When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it's not, mmmmmmm, boy.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

3 Different Countries

Well, right now my 3 children are in 3 different countries. Brandon is in Italy today. They left on Thursday. They were supposed to have a 3 hour guided tour of Venice on Friday and then play football in Vicenza today (Saturday) and come home early Sunday morning. I hope they win the game but most of all I hope he will always remember this amazing experience.

Ann-Marie's kindergarten only had 7 children yesterday because everyone was out with a stomach virus. Ann-Marie also had a day of illness this week but is doing much better today. Yesterday at the kindergarten was supposed to be a kite flying day with parents and food and wine as an after school event. We were told to bring a kite and plates if we wanted to eat. When we got there, Ann-Marie wasn't feeling that great and also there was no wind for kite flying. The school had build a fire pit in the childrens outside play area instead of flying kites. But we decided not to stay because Ann-Marie clearly was not feeling well and she uncharacteristically fell asleep in the car on the ride home.

Jake and I watched an amazing movie last night. Life is Beautiful, an Italian movie. We watched the English dubbed over version. It was perfectly brilliant and produced a huge variety of emotions. It is a love story and a comedy and it is in the setting of the Holocaust. This movie is really brilliant. It was made in 1997 and one of the best movies I have seen in years.
Here is a link about the movie. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118799/

I have been researching and trying to plan our next trip to France already. I can't wait to go to Paris and the Louvre and see the other famous sights of Paris. Here is a good website that I have been looking at. http://www.parisinfo.com/en/ It is the city website, the English version of it.

One thing that is so great about being in Europe...is that I am re-learning European History...at least little bits of it. Or maybe I am learning it for the first time. And I actually enjoy it. I used to think that I hated 'history' ...at least in high school I did. I was always a science person, not history. But in college when I took an Art History class I discovered how interesting it was and that through art I could enjoy history. Now I just want knowledge for knowledge sake. I can't get enough!

Monday, October 10, 2005

Our latest trip.....Strasbourg FRANCE !

And on the way home we went to the Frankenstein Castle in Germany.

Well, we drove to France this past Saturday. Strasbourg http://strasbourgfr.ags.myareaguide.com/ France is near the border of Germany. You can read all about it from the link... but the city has the European Court of Human Rights and it hosts the "Council of Europe" established in 1945. There is a major Cathedral called Cathedral Notre Dame (not the one in Paris that you are thinking of). However, this beautiful building took more than 300 years to build and was started in 1015....partially burned down and then more was completed in 1245. Then it was almost complete in the 1300's sometime, I think. Here is a link to a page with history and photos of the Cathedral.

http://www.strasbourg.com/strasbourg/us/visiter/monuments/78.html

Below you will see our photos of our trip and of the Cathedral. We stayed one night in a hotel and it took us about 3 and a half hours to get there and a half tank of gas. If we didn't make the side trip to the Frankenstein castle, we could have driven to France and back on a full tank of gas. Which by the way if you are wondering...gas on post $2.71 per gallon and off post about $6 per gallon....I think. Well it is 1.31 Euro per liter...so it is roughly 4 liters per gallon and then you change the Euro to dollar and we think it is about 6 dollars per gallon. So we stopped at the Army base in Darmstadt and filled up on our way home. Darmstadt is very near the Frankenstein castle.

Driving on the autobahn in Germany is getting better...as far as, I think we are getting used to it. We have found it works well if I navigate and Jake drives. Which is a big switch for us...usually I navigate AND drive! hehehe, just a little joke...sort of.

We stayed at an Ibis hotel, which is a chain http://www.ibishotel.com/ibis/index.html. We didn't have reservations, decided just to 'wing it' and that worked out well for us. The hotel was situated near a mall and near a McDonalds and the hotel had a restaurant attached to it. With a little extra...our hotel room came with a buffet breakfast (choice of cereal, sliced meats and cheese and some plums, juices, coffee and of course croissants!).

Our dinner that night, was a total of about 50 Euro. Jake had the lamb dish and I had the fish. Ann-Marie had a burger (no bun) and fries. But we were not at one of these wonderful gourmet French restaurants with multi-course meals, that you read about. It was just as well, because we had a tired little kid with us and we needed to eat and get out of there.

We also had a bite at McDonalds when we first got into town. So, yes, we had 'french' fries, in France. But they don't call them that. LOL At McDonalds Jake ordered a "Royal with cheese" (no quarter pounders...metric system) and I had the McSummer burger which had some unusual (to me) sauce on it and some tasty cheese and tomatoes. Sorry to bore you with the minuta of our day but I thought some might be interested to know the differences.

Here is Jake in what we call his "German disguise' hat. I don't know why we say that because we've had people say that they knew we were American because of the hat. But he wears it sometimes when we are out and about. He thinks it makes him fit in. But we never see anyone else wearing a hat.  Posted by Picasa

On our way to France, Ann-Marie plays with the 'finger poppets' that I bought to entertain her. There was a king and queen, a prince and princess...a dragon and a wise owl and of course a jester poppet. After so long of a distance, I'd give her a new one to play with and would play with her from the front seat too. Posted by Picasa

Inside our hotel room. Notice the gnome? He is a natural born traveler. Posted by Picasa

This is our hotel view from the street. We stayed at a hotel Ibis, a chain. We lucked into it because we were in a panic to find a parking spot and get off the streets with the car (we were dangerous because of our ignorance of the area). So Jake quickly pulled into a parking garage, took a ticket and parked the car. We said, 'ok, we'll just find a hotel on foot." and wouldn't you know it, we came out of the parking garage and discovered that we were parked UNDER a hotel. Luckily they had a room and understood our French. This is what I said... "Bonjour, Je' voudrais un chambre, si vous plait" and the guy behind the counter said, "speak english?" We smiled and said, "YES!" in unison. But he did understand me, he said. Jake probably could have done better but I was anxious to give it a try so I spoke first. There were a few people that spoke English, but not all. And we were anxious to practice our French, anyway. Surprisingly, they understood us and when we didn't understand them, or they didn't understand us...(like one time at dinner that night) we were still able to make it work using motions or a type of charades.

Here is Ann-Marie on a small carosel ride. It cost 2 Euro. Ann-Marie chose a horse to ride. Posted by Picasa

Here is Jake in front of the cathedral. There are cobblestone streets everywhere and notice the wonderful detail of the cathedral behind him. And if you haven't noticed, he's pretty handsome too. :) Posted by Picasa

Here we are in front of one of the cathedral doors after we walked through the cathedral. I know it is after because Ann-Marie is holding the puppy purse that we bought her as a bribe to be good. Posted by Picasa

The cathedral is huge. I found out later that you can walk up the stairs for a wonderful panoramic view of the city. The cathedral is very large and only this small portion could fit in the photo and because of other buildings, etc you couldn't take the photo with the whole cathedral showing up. But it was absolutely gorgeous. We were able to bribe Ann-Marie into being very good and quiet so that we could walk through it. We got her a puppy purse afterward at one of the many tourist shops nearby. Posted by Picasa

This photo shows just a small portion of the outside detail of the cathedral. It was very intricate. Posted by Picasa

This is a huge astronomical clock. At 12:30 every day there is a spectacular show, apparently. But we did not see it. This was inside the cathedral. On the wall on the far left (outside of the photo) there was a wall dedicated to the American soldiers that gave their lives to liberate the city, dated 1944-1945. It was written in French and in English. It was touching to see this for us. Posted by Picasa

Here Jake and Ann-Marie are standing in front of the Hotel Cathedral, not our hotel but it is directly across from the cathedral. I don't have a clue where the people parked because the entire area is a pedestrian (or train) only area. Ann-Marie was showing her belly, as you can see. Lovely. Posted by Picasa

There were quite a few street performers. This man was playing an organ grinder and the front of it had a little moving show (those three wooden men). The man was smiling and notice he is wearing a 'batman' hat. This was just outside of the cathedral, notice how crowded it is around there. It seemed like there were people EVERYWHERE we went.  Posted by Picasa

Here is the carosel. Posted by Picasa

Carosel fun for Daddy and Ann-Marie. I don't "do" carosels anymore. Nothing that goes in circles. Posted by Picasa

Daddy and Ann-Marie ride the carosel in Strasbourg, France. This was situated amongst the city streets, surrounded by outdoor cafes and shopping areas....just like the other one was. We found these as we walked along between the hotel and the cathedral. Posted by Picasa

Ann-Marie's little bed at the hotel. (((See the gnome?))) The hotel was small, but clean and had what we required. No big fancy amenities but it didn't really matter to us. We had a great location and great view. Most hotels are paid per person, per night. So the cost might be printed as 35 Euro or something, but you have to know that it is per person. Ann-Marie was no extra cost. Posted by Picasa

This is our view of the street below. Just pass the electric train is the canal. Posted by Picasa

Here is Ann-Marie in our hotel room. I thought this picture was cool because you can see my reflection in the glass behind her. We had the window open and that glass is the window.  Posted by Picasa

This was a pretty church at the end of our walk that night. Posted by Picasa

During our walk along the canal, we saw several tour boats go by. Mommy and Ann-Marie made fools of ourselves by running along the canal to 'race' the boats. Fools, yes, but, hey, it ran off some energy before dinner. In this photo Ann-Marie had stopped to look for chestnuts (which are everywhere!!). Posted by Picasa

This is the photo that Jake has named "View from a trash can". We tried to set the timer on the camera so that all of us could be in the photo together. Just before the photo was taken Ann-Marie ran out of the 'shot' so that she could see the picture on the digital camera screen. The camera was balancing precariously on the edge of a trash can, so we were hoping she would not end up pushing the camera into the trash. I was trying hard to keep smiling and you can see that Jake is trying but also has a 'oh crap' expression on his face. Posted by Picasa

This canal ran along side of our hotel. We went to try to have dinner at about 6pm at the hotel restaurant...only to find out that they do not open until 7:30pm...so we took a long walk along the canal until the restaurant was open.  Posted by Picasa

A swan at the canal seen during our evening walk. Posted by Picasa

View of the Cathedral in the morning light. Posted by Picasa

Morning view from our window as the sun is coming up in France. Posted by Picasa