For dinner, we ventured out in the darkest of gray skies in order to try a new local restaurant (I think Todd felt sorry for me for having to stay inside all day). The food was delicious, even the salad. I don't know if I've written about German salads yet, but they certainly deserve to be discussed. German salads tend to look like heaping plates of baby greens with whatever toppings you order. However, underneath the greens, lurk three other "salads"-usually a section of shredded cabbage, shredded carrots, and pickled cucumbers, but the assortment varies. Anyhow, at the place we ate on Tuesday, my salad (which had corn on it - yay! - my first experience of corn in Germany, a place where a cob of corn costs $1.50) had the standard three hidden salads, only this time they were cabbage, legitimate plain cucumbers, and potato salad. This was super exciting. Yeah, I've been that bored...
Wednesday Therese and I went to meet Todd for lunch despite the lingering threat of rain. Mostly I went because I wanted to find a night light, but more about that later. We ate Turkish food and went immediately back home where Therese refused to take a nap. That always leads to a very long afternoon. I talked to my mom about her upcoming trip to visit us and to my dad who was celebrating his birthday in Florence. He assured me that they are enjoying their wine and gelato.
Today I got a little stir-crazy and thought it would be a good idea to drag Therese and Todd to Meersburg to try to find some good wine tastings and to walk around the vineyards and the cute town. The trip was a total bust. We asked the tourism office about wine tastings and they seemed to know exactly where to send us. They were wrong. Maybe they just don't have wine tastings in Germany like they do in the States, but tasting a wine is equivalent to buying a glass... We never found our way through the vineyards, only alongside one. Therese never napped, which led to a major breakdown tonight over putting wipes away. All in all, not our best trip. Oh well.
Despite these dull-drum days, we have seen two new developments: 1) Reese is now afraid of the dark and 2) she has a renewed fear of sticks. The fear of the dark is common, I know, but has proven difficult because she, Todd, and I all share a room. She constantly complains that "It is getting too dark" and wants to keep the lamp on all night. If we turn it off, she wakes up with terrified screams in the middle of the night; if we leave it on, we have a bright light shining all night in our room and I can't sleep. The lesser-seen fear of sticks is uncommon, true, but nonetheless severe. It originally developed in South Bend sometime around April when an evil stick blocked Therese's path unbeknownst to her. She stepped on one end and the other end popped up (or attacked her, depending on whose view you are taking). For about a month after the incident, Reese took great care to never walk near another stick, making us pick her up if the tiniest piece of a branch was around. We slowly reintroduced her to the concept of walking on sticks until she finally forgot about their threat. That is, until this week. One day Therese was walking when part of a stick wrapped itself around her leg so that as she walked, it stayed with her. She couldn't shake it off. We are back to having to explain why leaves are different than sticks and that, when they blow near you, they will not hurt you....again...
Here are pics of our trip to Meersburg:
Reese on the bus
A nice wine-themed fountain
Therese eating another pretzel...
We stopped for coffee and hot chocolate - yum!
A local vineyard
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