A relaxing day

Sunday May 22^nd

Today was a nice relaxing kind of day.  We all slept late and had a nice German breakfast of different types of fresh rolls with butter and jelly and cold cuts.  We were planning to go hiking in a forest about an hour away, but it was just going to be too hot for extended hiking.  So we hung around the house for a while in the morning.  The girls played on the iPad and Karin and I just sat and had an extended coffee time.  We eventually decided to get moving, but Luzie had a lot of homework to do, so she had to stay home to do homework, including studying for an English vocabulary quiz! 

The rest of us headed off to Schloss Schwetzingen which is in a town very near to Walldorf (just about 15 minutes away).  Vreni has become very attached to Katie, probably because it is like having a big sister who actually pays attention to you, so she was happy to have Katie to herself for this activity.  She will speak in English to Katie and no one else. The palace is not a castle like we saw up the river from Heidelburg, and is not ancient, but is more a contemporary of Versailles.  We walked through the gardens for a couple of hours and marveled at the expense that was poured into the gardens and all the structures within the gardens. It was really clear that the royalty just had too much money and no idea how to spend it usefully. 

These gardens are laid out to mimic gardens from many other traditions, like a French garden and an English garden region.  It is strange to walk from one to the next and see what is there.  In one rgion there is a Turkish garden with a fake mosque in the middle of it. The English gardens had a “fabricated ruin” of a Temple of Mercury.  There was a Temple to Juno in the French garden and a Temple to Apollo on top of a fake Roman ruin with even a fabricated cave!  There was a Romanseque bath house and fountains with squirting bird statues.  Katie hates it when they mix Greek and Roman gods in the same garden- “Just pick one and stick with it!” she shouts.

Katie and Vreni had fun together in the gardens and enjoyed posing as statues, taking their won photos and looking for animals.  Katie thought even the carp in the pond were cute! After we fnished with the gardens we had ice cream  Katie had peppermint and I had pineapple – very delicious!

In the afternoon we returned home, had a lunch of sausages and rolls, and then went to the pool together. The pool is a community pool financed by all the tax money that Walldorf receives from SAP.  There is a huge outdoor region with a big baby pool region and playground, a mini-golf and two big pools. One is shallower and had a slide.  The other is a 50 meter pool and had diving blocks that we could play on.  The entire 50 m pool was too deep to stand, but had a small ledge around the edge on which you could stand.  We played a lot in the deep end, all of us in turn diving off the blocks to see how far we could go underwater, and all jumping off in a big cannonball contest.  Te girls went off with Roland to try the slide, but pronounced it too slow.  The pools have just been redone, and the new slide is much slower than the old slide.  Karin told Luzie to write to the Burgermeister in the Rathous to complain!

Once all the pool renovations are done there will also be a nice lake in which you can swim and lots of green areas with trees and shade around the pools.  The inside area is also being redone with a brand new indoor pool with slides that curve around outside the building and then back into the indoor pool. There will also be wonderful new saunas, some with a view of the lake so you can look out on the frozen lake in the winter from the nice warm sauna.

When we finished swimming we all showered and headed out for a dinner in the big town of Walldorf.  There was quite a decision process on which restaurant we wanted to ea in, but we finalized on a nice heavy German meal at a restaurant where we could sit outside.  We walked into town, which is only a ten minute walk from here.  The girls went on the bikes and ripstick and just met us at the restaurant.  They could park their vehicles right next to the outdoor seating, order and then pop back up to ride during the wait for the meal.

Four of us opted for currywurst and pommes, which is a big red sausage with a heavy skin served in a mildly spicy red sauce.  Pommes is French fries.  Karin remembers trying to order pommes at McDonalds when she first came to the US and getting frustrated when they didn’t understand her. No one ever told her that it was called “French fries” in English.  Vreni opted for “chicken nuggets mit pommes” and Roland had a schnitzel cordon bleu.  It was all excellent.

Once the girls ate, they were free to leave the table again to walk around town and they went to get ice cream together while we remained at the table talking. We were talking sports and comparing other national interests.  Soccer is king by far in German with Formula One racing in distant second place in spectator sports, followed by team handball.  Roland and Karin both root for FC Bayern, which is based out of Munich as they both grew up in that region.

The girls came back with tales of their ice cream. Katie had Spaghetti Ice in which vanilla ice cream is extruded into spaghetti like shapes and topped with strawberry sauce and coconut flakes! After all this excitement all that remained was for the girls to ride home and get ready for bed since they all go to school tomorrow!