Germany Trip - Day 2

Saturday May 16th - Amsterdam is beautiful!

Flying in we got to see a long sandy beach, a huge shipping port with what looked like lochs, tons of wind turbines in the ocean and even several baseball diamonds. Anna got to see another airplane in the sky flying near us over Ireland, she thought that was neat.

the Amsterdam airport is HUGE. We should land in Berlin at 11:20 am. Emma and Daddy slept on the flight to Berlin while James and I read The Graveyard Book (very good read, but terrible beginning). we purchased a camera battery charger in the Amsterdam airport for $130! ouch. That was expensive.

Claudia was waiting for us right off the plane. It is really good to see her. We went to the car rentals but the carl taht wwe got was supposed to seat 6 plus luggage, but would only fit 5 and no luggage. So there were no 7-9 seaters in Berlin available. She ended up getting us a 5 seater with a jump seat and we really squished in it. On Monday there will be a bigger car available and we will change for a 7 seater. It was really helpful to have Claudia to translate for that experience. It would have been a good test of my rusty German.

Emma near one of the neat old houses on our walk. We didn't take a pic of Claudia's family house...oops

We went straight out to the country to Riewend, to Claudia's family weekend house. It was a really old one built at the turn of the century that they have restored. interesting they did a ton of structural things like taking out the floors and ceilings and putting in steel beams. Quite a remodeling project. Christine had a really nice lunch prepared for us, Emma wouldn't touch it. The entire day she ate mostly chocolate. The kids were so tired we couldn't push too hard. Once they have a good sleep it will be better.

After lunch we went on a really nice walk through the village, near their lake and into the woods a little. It was so beautiful with amazing old buildings, very small town. We had dinner that night which was excellent. Barbeque sausage, chicken, pork, salad and broetchen. yummy. At the house we met Christine's sister, Connie and Daniel's fiancee, Tina. We had a wonderful time. The kids played in the dirt outside and got really dirty. So I put them all in the tub. Christine helped me out and seemed to really like having a little one to bathe, as she clucked sweet things at Anna in German while she was in the tub. We left around 8:15pm and they were all asleep before we left the village.

Germany Trip - Off to not a good start

I kept a journal of our trip to Germany and thought I would share it here.

5/15/09 3pm

Remember the medication next time and blanket. That is what is really weighing on my mind right now. Emma was sick again this week so I took her to the doctor Tuesday and she has allergy induced wheezing. So she waw put back on 2 different inhalers. We went again to the Dr this morning and we were to continue one inhaler every 4 hours and the other 2xs per day. So I forgot and left the every 4 hour inhaler on the kitchen counter. We also forgot Anna's blanket, Emma's camera battery, both camera battery chargers and almost a binki. If I hadn't had one in my coat pocket that I didn't know about, we would have been in trouble. So, we are not off to a good start. We also only got to the gate 10 minutes before take off. I am quite upset and feel that if I had a chance to walk through the house before we left I wouldn't have forgotten anything. Carl put too much on my before leaving. On to newark to see if we can get an inhaler. I brought a knitting project to knit a baby boy blanket so maybe I can get some of that done for Anna. I feel terrible.

I did wake the kids up at 4:15am this morning to start to get them adjusted to the time change and hopefully we can get them to sleep from Newark to Amsterdam. We have a red eye flight.

Fiasco continued...So once I realized that we forgot the inhaler I asked Jamie Lynch, which dropped us off at the airport to go get ours and mail it to us in Berlin. So once she got to the UPS store, she needed a phone number for Claudia - which I don't have, also it wouldn't be there until Monday and it would be $140 to send it. So I told Jamie thank you and to not worry about it. Then I called the Dr (Kristina) to ask her if she could email a Rx to me and I would fill it in Germany. So when we landed in Newark she told me she couldn't email it, but could fax it. So I started asking the flight attendant if there was a pharmacy at the airport. Everyone told us no. then I continued to ask people at the airport off the plane. Everyone still told us no. The Spirit kept telling me to ask everyone, finally the 10th (or so) person I asked said there was a pharmacy in the airport in Gate C91.

3,650 miles to go to Amsterdam

Unfortunately we had to go back through security and Kristina was going to leave the clinic in 10 minutes and we needed a fax #. She tried to call the airport, everyone was rude to her and told her that there was no pharmacy at the airport. So I called Karina (saves the day again!) and got her fax #, had Kristina send it to Karina, then when I finally got to the elusive pharmacy I could have Karina fax it to them to fill the Rx. So finally I got thru security and went to find the pharmacy if it even existed. IT WAS THERE! I got the Rx, now to find a camera battery, charger, and maybe I'll stay up all night and knit for Anna. Hmm...