My Most Flattering Side

In anticipation of some blog posts about our travels this summer, and my continued efforts to ignore the fact that the shower door needs a thorough descaling with the heavy duty chemicals that will also remove the first couple layers of skin on my hands, I decided to flip through our summer pictures this afternoon.  As I clicked through hundreds of pics on the computer, I was struck by how much influence my teenage daughter has over the content of our vacation pictures, and hence memories.


What I found humorous is how many shots are taken from behind the subject.  I don't know if my daughter read this somewhere, learned it in an art class or just thinks it would make an interesting study of the folks in the picture.  I guess it doesn't really matter because I was amazed at the number of backsides captured in our files.  Just what I wanna see - my big old derriere gracing about a third of our pictures we'll be trotting out in the years ahead, fondly recalling all of the fabulous places we've visited... and how mom's butt keeps creeping closer and closer to the back of her knees.  

Here is my butt, the one on the right, strolling down a street in the Guell Colonia on the outskirts of Barcelona.  It was a bit cool outside because it was overcast, so at least my shawl is covering up part of my rear end.

In this shot, Jason and I are walking along a path in Bavaria near Linderhof Castle.  What's with the white shorts and now white capris?  Note to self - black will make my junk in the trunk look a bit smaller, so start packing those for vacation.

This one is probably my fave backside shot here in front of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris because it's taken from further away and hence my butt doesn't appear quite so large.  And enough already - quit wearing those same damned white capris all summer.  From the front they look flattering, but not so much from the back.  Don't get me started on the Vera Bradley purse I've carted all over Europe.  I need to send a collage of the pics in to the VB corporate office and see if I can get a freebie or two for all of my advertising efforts across the continent.

And here I am, in all my untouched glory aboard the hop on-hop off bus in Paris.  The oldest daughter mentioned that she could get rid of "all those lines" on my face before I posted this pic.  If only it were that easy to erase the turkey neck, marionette folds, crow's feet and undereye bags.  The one good thing I can say about this pic - at least I don't have lipstick on my teeth.  


Hmmm... thus far I've had to choose between butt or face shots.  It seems to me that I need to start standing in profile on all future trips as long as I can remember to suck in my gut.

A Uniform Sort of Wardrobe

Last night I forced myself to finish the last bit of paperwork for the new school, including the fine print that told me to include copies of their passport face pages as well as their visas.  The oldest daughter was still wearing braces in her passport pic while the youngest was sporting a short 'do reminiscent of Dorothy Hamill in the 70s.  

Those were the days - bell bottoms and the Bee Gees.  I had this exact same cut at her age which the youngest was wearing several years ago when her passport pic was taken.  It's a no muss, no fuss style, a sort of modified Prince Valiant.  And of course, both of us were mistaken for little boys and hence the need to grow out said haircut because we were not happy being referred to as "young man".


So after we turned in the stack of paperwork, we hustled over to the place where they were selling school uniforms.  The girls have been a bit intrigued at the thought of wearing uniforms because they've never been in them before.  The good news is that the youngest daughter is in middle school and they only have to purchase the pull over sweater and PE kit, which includes shorts and a Roman t-shirt.  The middle school is divided into houses, kinda like Harry Potter, and she will be a Roman instead of a Saxon, Norman or Viking.  She was a bit disappointed that she doesn't get to be a Viking, but you can't argue with the sorting hat... which in this case was a master list on the wall of the uniform trying-on area.


When all was said and done, we had a stack of skirts, trousers, shirts - the fall/spring AND winter versions - plus pullover sweaters and cardigans required for the high school uniform.  I could have purchased a nice Louis Vuitton bag with the check I had to hand over to the uniform company.  And I would have gotten a lot more wear out of it.  Plus my LV wouldn't need to be hemmed because somebody thinks it's "granny" length.  


I keep looking on the bright side, which is the fact that there shouldn't be any early morning wardrobe drama, with the requisite 3-4 options scattered around the room while I'm yelling upstairs that the bus will arrive any minute and she'll have to walk to school if she misses it because I'm not taking her indecisive patootie to the attendance office and look like an idiot explaining that she's late because she thinks her jeans made her look fat this morning.  There's only so much variety you can create using khaki or navy bottoms with white or light blue tops.  

I Really HATE Transatlantic Flights

We're home yet again.  This morning our flight landed at Heathrow from Texas and we were back in the 'burbs of London around 8:00 am.  We had a good time on our visit, but it's wonderful to be a family of four once more.  I told my husband to make sure he ran off the strippers before we arrived.  As usual, they left without sprucing up the place by swiping a dustrag across furniture surfaces or running a couple loads of dirty clothes.  I'd give the ladies a serious tip if they would get the limescale off the shower door... the big bucks rather than just a single or two in their thongs.


I have blogging to do for our Paris trip and Mediterranean cruise plus the visit to Texas, but I probably won't get around to that until the girls return to school.  Between now and the start of classes on Aug. 24, we've got a lot of last minute things to tick off the master to-do list.  


One of the first things on my to-do list today was emailing the property management folks here in England to take care of the little flying demons (aka wasps) that have taken up residence in one of the second story vents at the rear of the house.  This is just an invitation for them to fly in and sting us, which happened about an hour after we arrived.  At least I was the victim of the sting since the girls, in their sleep deprived states, would have gone all big-eyed crazy if it had been one of them.  Welcome home!


And then there's my right hip, acting all stupid by aching so that no position is comfortable other than sitting upright in a chair.  My mother, the worry wart, figures it's deep vein thrombosis.  DVT is high falootin' verbiage for a blood clot.  The trick is that DVT usually appears in the lower leg/calf area rather than hip, often caused by long flights.  But let's look on the bright side.  Maybe I just wrenched the hip wrestling some of the six suitcases into the minivan in Texas, out at the airport departure drop off, onto the platform to be weighed by the oh-so-surly ladies at the airline baggage drop counter, off the luggage carousel here in London, onto the luggage cart to meet the car service or into the house once we arrived home.  That's a lot of wrestling.  Or maybe my hip is just irritated from sitting on an airplane for almost 11 of the past 24 hours.  Just what you want to develop in your 40s, a bit of rheumatism or bursitis.  Maybe I can throw in a bit of goiter or gout just for fun.


Tomorrow I'm finishing up the stack of annoying paperwork for the new school so I can make a trip over there Thursday to turn it in just under the Friday deadline to avoid a slap on the wrist.  Plus there are the annoying emails I've been receiving the past couple weeks warning me of the dire consequences I'll face if (GASP!) the zillion forms documenting important info like their date of birth and our address aren't presented posthaste.  


Now I need to go do something really productive like empty out one of the suitcases or wash a load of towels since these good-for-nothing British strippers don't know how to clean up after themselves.  All on my gimp hip.

There's No Place Like Home

Of course, "home" these days is England instead of Texas.  After 10 days in Spain and on our cruise around the eastern Mediterranean that followed on the heels of a trip to Paris, I'm doing a one day turnaround.  Today I've washed umpteen loads of clothes and ironed so Annie and I can pack for two weeks in Texas.  Tomorrow morning at 7, we load up with the Huertas to hit the road to Heathrow where we'll wing our way to Texas.  


We've visited a lot of amazing places during the month of July.  We'll wrap up our summer travel seeing friends and family in the hill country.  I'll get back to more regular blogging once we return home.


Here we are with Annie's Boerne friend Claire and her mother Dana as we prepared for embarkation at the port of Barcelona on July 16.  By the end of the trip, the girls were desperately sleep deprived from all their socializing, Dana had acquired a whole host of blisters on her feet and I had earned the nickname Travel Nazi.

File it under "Miscellaneous Munich"

A week from today I'll be in Paris.  And then the week after that I'll be on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean.  Therefore, I need to wrap up the last little bits of blogging about our Munich trip.

The above picture was taken in the shell grotto of the Residenz Palace.  This is an excerpt from Rick Steves' Germany book explaining it.


The "shell grotto" at Munich's Residenz palace is an inspirational story of reconstruction. This artificial grotto was an exercise in man controlling nature — a celebration of humanism, which was in vogue when it was built in the 1550s. This strange structure is made from Bavarian freshwater shells, with Mercury (the pre-Christian god of trade and business) overseeing the action, and red wine spurting from the mermaid's breasts and dripping from Medusa's head in the courtyard. The palace and the grotto were demolished by WWII bombs. After the war, people had no money to contribute to the reconstruction — but they could gather shells. All the shells in today's reconstructed grotto were donated by small-town Bavarians.


I'm just in awe, that Germans gathered all of the shells to have something this old and unique reconstructed.  The Residenz Palace was very interesting and I could have spent a lot longer strolling through the maze of rooms.  I didn't even bother with an audio guide because the youngest child has a tendency to race through it all.  There were many things I saw and wondered about, but I'm afraid I'll have to just return one day to fully appreciate it.

I had to include this picture because she looks like such a sweet and innocent teenager.  Uh, yeah... this was snapped after I told her to quit throwing gang signs here in the palace hall called the antiquarium that was filled with 16th and 17th century frescoes as well as statuary.  Her little sister was photographing said throwing of gang signs and I figured the CCTV folks watching on their monitors might not appreciate her humor.

Get a load of this doorway!  It was inside the palace and it really dwarfs all three of them.  I've discovered I'm a big fan of intricate plasterwork that has been gilded, handpainted ceiling frescoes and patterned marble floors with artistic inlays, so maybe I could get some of that included in my next house.

Aren't these just darling?  I found them in a Christmas shop in Salzburg.  They are handpainted eggs you hang on Christmas trees.  Some of them are even decorated with stitching.  Love 'em!


I don't have a picture for this last little bit of Munich blurb, but I wish I did.  It would have been a group shot, though these people weren't all traveling together.  I'm talking about all of the folks on the tours that got on my nerves.  Obviously I don't need to sign on for any of those package tours because I would probably be thrown into jail in a foreign country for doing something heinous like slapping the back of the guy's head that was wearing the Texas Tech shirt because he took off his shoes and propped his feet up HIGH on the front bar of the bus since he was in the first seat on the upper deck.  Every time I looked forward, I had a clear shot of his big ugly feet to mar my views of the Bavarian countryside.  Dude, it's not your recliner back in Texas so let's show a bit of decorum.


The older Filipino couple were working this whole tag team approach.  He was loudly jabbering on his phone while the tour guide was trying to give his little spiel, so the guide stopped and asked him to end the call so the rest of us could hear what we had paid for.  At first the tour guide tried the old teacher trick, the stop talking and stare so that everyone else in the class/on the bus also stares and thus shames you into shutting your mouth.  Good idea, but it didn't work on Filipino man and we all got to hear his conversation really well since he was clueless and had to be asked to cease and desist.  And of course the worst part was that he was talking in his native language so it's not like we were getting to hear something interesting.


After he knocked it off, his wife kicked in with her bag of candy.  I swear it took her 30 minutes to wrestle open a crinkly plastic bag full of candy.  Every time it would stop making all that racket and you would think wow, she finally got it open, she would crank up the bag wrestling again.  THEN the sucking commenced for the next 30 minutes.  That must have been some really tasty hard candy because she was making these sounds like her taste buds had been burned off her tongue or she had permanently clogged sinuses and couldn't seem to taste the flavor unless she made this sucking noise loud enough to rattle the bus windows.  I kept hoping thinking she might choke on it. 


Finally, there were the ladies from Missouri that all figured out they were from the same city and had to tell each other the story of their lives on the ride back from Dachau.  Geesh, the rest of us don't care about the drama of your sister kicking you out because you turned up your nose about living on the south side of town, which obviously wasn't the place to be.  And do you have to talk loud enough for all of us around you to be subjected to your ongoing prattle about life back home?  There was no need for me to worry about the manners or behavior of our daughters while traveling in Europe.  There seemed to be lots of other adult travelers taking up their slack.

How do you say burrito in German?

I just had to take the following pic when we were in Germany last week.  Jason and Callie were checking out the menu.  You can't help but wonder how authentic the Mexican food would be in this Munich restaurant named "Taco Libre".

I thought it was a cute play on words with the accompanying artwork of a dog as a masked luchador, kinda like Jack Black on all fours in the movie "Nacho Libre".  Rather than run the risk of getting salmonella from some sizzling steak fajitas, we opted to have an early supper at the Augustiner Keller.

Since my husband believes travel guru Rick Steves can do no wrong, we headed to Rick's favored place that the local Munchners prefer instead of the crowded and touristy Hofbrauhaus.  There is a big biergarten underneath the trees out front and to the side of the restaurant.  The walls of the restaurant were covered with traditional Bavarian wood carvings as well as light fixtures and there were a lot of stag heads scattered around the room.  


Our waiter spoke no English, so we ordered with the tried and true point to what you want on the menu, smile and shake your head in the affirmative.  The husband had sausages, the teenager had sirloin steak smothered in onions, the younger one had schnitzel and I had spaetzle.  What we all found interesting at the tables surrounding us were adults decked out in lederhosen and dirndls enjoying a beer... at 2:00 in the afternoon on a workday.  I think Europeans have this whole work-life balance down pat.  Prost!

Munich, Day 6

We spent Friday morning, our last full day in Munich, touring the Dachau concentration camp.  I knew it would be a somber way to end our vacation, but I felt it was important to expose the girls to what happened here during World War II.  It also held special significance to me because of Russ Anderson.  He was the grandfather of a set of twins in my 5th grade reading classes several years ago.  Every year when I taught literature circles with the common setting of World War II, Mr. Anderson and his wife Betty would come in to share their footlocker program with the kids.


Mr. Anderson was a 16-year-old teen living in the Midwest when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.  He always recounted hearing President Roosevelt's famous "day that will live in infamy" speech on the radio to my students.  He had all sorts of interesting hands-on artifacts from this era that the kids oohed and aahed over, including military jackets and hats from the war.  It was a real honor to the students who were selected to come up during his presentation to model them.


To make a long story short, Mr. Anderson enlisted a couple years into the war and served in Europe.  He was with the American military that liberated the Dachau concentration camp outside Munich.  He never shared this with the students because it's hard to condense such a horrific aspect of the war into a 45 minute presentation, trying to explain the inexplicable hatred that was heaped upon certain people to innocent 5th graders.  In talking with the Andersons while not in the presence of students, I remember Mr. Anderson telling me that it was the most pitiful sight he had ever seen.  He recalled giving a hideously thin survivor some food on liberation day, which he inhaled and then perished because his starved body was unable to handle it.

Here is the entrance gate to the concentration camp with the infamous phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei", which translates to work making you free.  This concentration camp was established in 1933 right after Hitler came to power and immediately became the site to house enemies of the Fuhrer, both religious and political.  It served as the model for the concentration camp system for the next dozen years. 

This is the famous remembrance sculpture that is on display at the camp.

This is a pic looking from the camp admissions and bunker area across the roll call area to the rows of barracks, over twenty in all.  These are replicas since the originals were torn down in the 60s.

This picture was taken behind the replica barracks.  You can see the foundations for the rest of the barracks all lined up in a row.  It was a beautiful day and very peaceful, considering the anguish and sorrow of its past.

The word "BRAUSEBAD" above the door translates to showers.  The "showers" at Dachau served as the model for extermination camps like Auschwitz, where the victims were herded into rooms on the pretext of getting clean.  In reality, deadly gases were released into the rooms to kill them.  In a strange twist, the camp that established this heinous system of killing never actually used gas chambers to kill its inhabitants.

You can see the person in the bottom right of my picture taking her own picture of the faux shower head in the gas chamber.  It's a sad reminder that the Nazi extermination camps ran like a well-oiled machine.  

Obviously this picture doesn't need any explanations.  I gave our youngest daughter the PG version of the concentration camps, but didn't gloss over the purpose for the ovens.  We recalled how my mother had her old pug Winston cremated and thus it softened the significance of what really happened here.

Scattered around the perimeter of the camp were a few existing guard towers.  And the barbed wire fence that was electrified, oftentimes serving as a means of suicide for the occupants that could no longer hold out under the numbing mental and physical tortures they suffered.

I found this American quote on a display board in the museum that talked about the liberation of the camp in April 1945.  Mr. Anderson was 20 when he witnessed man's inhumanity to man and it was something he was loathe to talk about 60+ years later.

During the course of the war, Mr. Anderson began smoking to calm his nerves.  Conveniently enough, the military provided cigarettes as part of their daily rations.  Mr. Anderson was suffering from emphysema when I met him and he always warned the students about the ill-effects of smoking.  Unfortunately, Mr. Anderson took a downturn due to surgical complications and passed away last summer.  This blog post is dedicated to him, may he rest in peace, and all of the other American troops that witnessed the barbarism and horrors of World War II to ensure our freedom.