Kerwe!

A few months ago, I posted about our town fest--the one put on by the city.

Like most German towns, we also have a festival that is put together by the local churches--our Kerwe.  I am not sure if the churches are the main sponsors of all Kerwes, or just locally (if any of my German readers want to clear that up for me, I would be grateful!).  In any case, it is a terrifically fun town wide event that brings out pretty much all the residents, and draws people in from nearby towns as well.

Our Kerwe was a couple of weeks ago.  During the week, some vendors come in and set up a few carnival style rides--in our town one of the church parking lots is always covered in a bumper car ride and there are always 5 or 6 other things as well.  Some other outside vendors come in with food.  Then, just about every local club has a spot (most seem to have the SAME spot every year) where they sell some sort of food or rink (or both) as their major fundraiser for the year.  Many have tents with places to sit and some even provide live music.  I LOVE this style of fundraising--where the entire community comes otu and comes together and has fun, and the clubs make some much needed cash to boot.  This is much nicer than random car washes and BINGO games that seem to be the norm in the US (and 1000 times nicer than selling magazines, candy bars or wrapping paper!).

There are some vendor selling crafts as well, an in our town two blocks are set aside for local kids and teens to set up a flea market to sell off old toys, clothes and sporting goods (they don't have garage sales here, so this is a great chance for the kids).  The whole thing takes up about 6 blocks worth of streets (in a cross section) as well as two big paring lots and both of the main churches in town (one hosts an art fair and the other a teen disco).

Even though it was rainy on our weekend, everyone came out.  The party ran late into the night both Saturday and Sunday.  The kids had dinner there on Saturday (while Dave and I were still driving back from Venice) and we all had lunch and snacks on the Sunday.  It is FUN and so nice to get to have fun and contribute to the local clubs at the same time.

Here are some photos of the fest, about one block from our house:

Walking from our house towards the Kerwe

Bumper Cars!

The carnival area

The local brewery brought in their beer truck and clubs were working it and getting to keep proceeds.

The kids flea market

A peak into one of the many food tens

David enjoys "New Wine" and onion tart (both typical fall items here--sort of Germany's version of apple Cider and donuts)

Rio's favourite stand.  The traditional Hungarian Dance Troupe sells a Hungarian fried dough topped with your choice is sweet or savory toppings.  Lots of people love it--the line is always LONG.  

a Sunday afternoon crowd shot--just to show how many people come to this.

FYI--I am heading out of town again and may not be bale to post for the next two weeks.  Please check back after that though--I plan write even if I am not here to post it and get things up as soon as I can afterwards.

--Hadley

Where are you from?

"Where are you from?"

If you have lived most of your life in one area, that seems like a simple question.

Heck, even if you have moved around a bunch within one country it is relatively simple.  When we lived in New Hampered and went on vacation and someone asked where we were from, we answered New Hampshire.  No one questioned that.  If we had said we were from Colorado or Detroit or any of the other places we have lived over the years, and then it came up that we actually resided in New Hampshire--people would have thought we were a bit "off" for saying we were from anywhere other than New Hampshire.

It gets much more complicated when you move to a new country.  With our first vacation to a resort (Walt Disney World) after moving to Germany we ran into this.
"Where are you from?"
"Germany"
"You don't SOUND German" often said very accusingly.

and it goes further

"Well, we're originally from the US, but we live in Germany now" (in fact, now whenever we are asked where we are from, that is the long winded answer we give--and it usually still leads to the exchange below)

"Where in the US"

"We've lived lots of places--5 states just since we were married"

"So, where are you FROM?"

sigh

What do people want?

Some seem to want where we spent the majority of our childhoods.  For Dave that is easy; he lived in Colorado from the time he was born until he was almost 23.
It is a little more complicated for me--though I still think of Colorado as my childhood home.  I lived (mostly) in Texas until I was 8, and spent many summer there even after that.
For our kids, assuming we do not move in the next 6 months (and there are NO plans of that sort), that would be Germany.  Let's go back to that whole, incredulous, "you don't sound German" thing.

Others have flat out said  (when asked, after they prod and prod) that you are "from" where you are "born."  Hmmm.  That makes me from a state that I only lived in for the first two months of my life and have no memory of.  It makes Marika from one she lives in for three months and also has no memory of.  Rio lived in his birth state a whopping 18 months.  He doesn't remember it either.  Somehow I simply cannot feel I am "from" somewhere I have no recollection of living in.  Funny how that works.

Still others want to define where you are from as where your parents live.  That would make me from Mexico--a country I have NEVER lived in.

I am not quite sure why it is so important for some people to pin down where we come from.  For many, myself included, it is basic small talk, something to associate people with, possibly find connections ("hey, I used to live in Detroit!  What area are you in?").  However, a surprisingly large number of people really seem unable to drop the idea and settle on a basic generalized answer and seem compelled to determine an exact "home" for me.  Why?  What does it really matter?  Does it change who I am?  Do you trust me more if  I am from your country/state and less if I am not?  Am I more likable is I am from your area or more interesting if I am not?

A lot of Americans seem to be almost offended that I say I am from Germany--as if in living here and claiming it as my home I am somehow turning my back on the USA and saying I dislike the country of my birth.  It would be like if I were at parent's night at Rio's school and someone asked me whose mother I was and I answered "Rio."  Rio is who I am there for at the moment--it doesn't mean I am denying Marika is also my child.

 I do admit that for ME, at this point in time anyway, Germany is a better fit.  I like living here.  I like the people. I like the health care and the public transit (since I dislike driving and always have). I struggle with the language.  I try.  And I am thrilled to say that on a cruise full of Germans, nearly all seemed genuinely delighted that we associate with Germany.  No one seemed offended that the Americans with the funny accents and poor grammar were claiming Heidelberg as home (and it IS home right now, as much as anything ever has been for my very mobile self).

But that does not mean I do not also love the USA.  I love how easy it is to make friends in the US, and the choices in education, and the regional foods we have (to name but a few).

 We live in a highly mobile and super connected world.  It is not an either or thing, choosing where to live or liking one place at any given point in your life.  One thing about me,  I nearly always find things to love about anywhere I have lived: from rural New Hampshire to Detroit to a ranch in Wyoming, and also Germany.  I have never been anywhere perfect, but I have also never been anywhere without a whole lot of good in it.
Right now, I am lucky enough to be in Germany.

Previously I was lucky enough to live in New Hampshire.  The place with gorgeous trees, tons of great outdoor activities, really nice people and the best community theatre group I have ever encountered.

I could go on and give you a list of great things about everywhere I have lived (and if I wanted to focus on the negative I could give you a list of issues everywhere too--yes, most certainly including Germany).

So, right now--I am from Germany, and happy to be so.  And I am originally from the US and happy to have grown up there.  And in a decade I might be from either of those places, or somewhere else entirely.  And I hope that as my own children, who really are split between cultures grow and go out into the world, they can be allowed to be from wherever they are at, or wherever they identify with, no matter what their accent.

--Hadley

Splendour Day 7: Second Sea Day

It was good to have a sea day and be able to sleep in.  By the time I tumbled out of bed, the congestion and sore throat had gone away (in retrospect, our table near the entrance to the dining room had quite a bit of cigarette smoke blowing by it on the last two nights, as people were lightening up inside before heading out to the smoking area on  the deck just outside--I wonder if the 2 hours of smoke was causing a bit of an allergic reaction?).

Our first activity of the day was attending a Crown and Anchor (past cruisers) loyalty party.  I think this was our second of the cruise (the more you sail, the more parties you get invited to, it seems).  We had a couple dirnks, and chatted with friends we had met onboard, and I ended up being one of four "Magician's Assistants" for the cruise staff member who was putting on a magic show.  Poor guy was really trying, but he is really not very good at it.  It was obvious how the tricks worked (ti felt like watching a kid who is learning and trying but doesn't really have it down yet) and he needed to adjust the flow of the routines too (an example, he handed us all needles, to pop balloons with, BEFORE handing us the balloons and instructions us to inflate them--it is a little hard to hold the needle an inflate the balloon at the same time and there was no reason for this order, other than not thinking things through).  It was an amusing little diversion nonetheless.

Crown and Anchor members also had the chance to attend a meet and greet with some of the production cast.  Having a bit of a theatre background, we always enjoy these.

We had lunch in the dining room.  On sea days the main dining room opens for lunch and has a wonderful salad bar (as well as a normal menu to order from).  We ran into two of our tablemates on the way and were thrilled to sit with them at lunch.  We were also seated with two other ladies--one of whom talked nearly nonstop throughout the meal.  Oh well, you can't win them all (and the food was good).  

After lunch I headed to the Top Hat lounge to work off the calories by learning the "flash mob" dance--as taught by the production team's dance captain, Wesley.  It was a lot of fun--and the idea is a good one.  We learned this dance and then were all told to be on the pool deck at 4:45.  Shortly after that, the dance captian (in normal clothes) would walk through, tie his shoe and the music would start.  He'd start to dance, be joined by other cast members, an then the rest of is were supposed to filter in at a certain point and be a "flash mob" and surprise the people on deck.

Up on deck, they had a newer game (Rio and Dave saw it on the Legend in May; I had never seen it) called "Copy Cat"  It was a fun and interesting twist on the classic demonstrations that cruise lines have nearly always had going on.  

In this case, the chef, or other crew member, would demonstrate how to make something--and then three contestants had to compete to try to make the same thing, in only 90 seconds (this is how long the chef needed!) and were judged on how well they did.  

The first of three categories was fruit carving.  The ladies were all trying to make a duck out of a pineapple, banana and some blueberries:

I got to compete in the next event--cake decorating.  The chef demonstrated assembling a three layer cake, frosting it, putting frosting in the piping bag and piping little mounds on top, putting a cherry in each mound and then getting almonds around the sides and sprinkled on top--all in 90 seconds!  Yikes!  

I had no idea what my neighbors were making, because I was concentrating so hard on mine.

This competitor (recognize our Quest teammate?) skipped the piping altogether and ended up with a smiley face "Wal-Mart Cake"

And she ended up just throwing on handfuls of things at random (also skipping the piping)

  I was surprised that it WAS possible to throw it all together so fast, and I ended up with something that looked pretty close to the chef's!   YES, I am ridiculously proud of my 90 seconds of cake decorating fame!  Here I am with my prize winning cake:

The final contest was bar tending.  The buys were to make a Sex on the Beach, and put some style and flair into throwing around a (plastic) bottle in the process.  That contest got really silly!

It was a fun contest.  I will have to look for it again in the future--I hope they keep doing it.

It was getting pretty chilly up on deck (did you notice all the jackets on people in the backgrounds of the photos?), and people were heading in to warmer things.  I stayed and enjoyed a line dance class, and then it was time for the "flash mob" which was fun, even though with the cool weather I think everyone on deck was IN the flashmob or with someone in it and knew in advance and was taking photos.  

We went to the farewell show with Comedian/Magician Charlie Frye.  He was actaully talented and rather funny.  It was an enjoyable show.  I am always amazed how more or less the same material can be so totally different depending on who is performing it and how they handle it.

We had a nice farewell dinner with our stalemates, wandered a bit and were disappointed that nothing much was happening in the way of dances or parties for the final night, and then turned in ready to drive home and see the kids on the morrow.

--Hadley

Splendour Day 6: Argostoli, Greece

Argostoli was another half day port (this had to be the most relaxed Med itinerary we had seen, two see days and mostly half day ports--usually Med sailings have many guests running from early morning to late at night day after day in "not to be missed" ports).

We slept in, played morning trivia and were eating lunch when we pulled up to dock in the town.  I guess most people were more than ready to head out by noon, as soon as the gangways opened there was a streaky stream of tourists leaving the ship to go explore.

We were docked up in a bay with nice views all around:

Lots of people we had talked to were planning to go to the beach (there are a couple of nice ones only a short taxi ride away).  With temps in the low 70s and lots of sunshine it was certainly the nicest weather we had had for that all week.  

The other thing that gets a lot of recommendations online is to rent a car or scooter and explore the entire island.  Apparently you can drive all the way around it in only a couple of hours and it is very scenic--this is where the movie Captain Corelli's Mandolin was filmed.  

We were taking the lazy way out and only planned to wander around the immediate port area a bit on foot.  We headed out and turned left off the dock (it was clear from on board that there was nothing really to the right) and enjoyed a short walk into town.  

There were many bright, airy shops with decent prices.  Nothing crowded or dark--it was very pleasant to browse.  If you were looking for touristy types of souvenirs (t-shirts, pot cards, trinkets, etc) this would be the best port to shop in by far.  Local made honey is also something sold everywhere.

  I am not much of a shopper, so all I bought were two post cards which we then took to a cafe to fill out while having a drink.  The drinks came with small snacks--much like in Italy (but smaller and not as good):

After our drinks, we headed back towards the ocean and strolled for a while down the really nicely done seaside promenade:

It was a VERY pleasant walkway with pretty views out across the bay.  After an hour or so of walking, we were heading back in the direction of the ship and it occurred to us that we could pick up cold drinks from one of the stores and sit with them on one of the shaded benches along the walkway and that would actually be more pleasant and less costly than sitting at another inland cafe.  Three Euros later I had an ICE cold Coke and Dave had an equally cold Hard Lemonade and we did just that.

There were benches every 20 or so meters along the entire walkway.

Mmm, a Coke and a view!

So, we wiled away some more time, and then mosied back towards the ship (getting some nice photos of her along the way).

All in all it was a pleasant port.  Clean and with very nice people--easy to walk into town an those who took taxis to the beaches all said the taxis were reasonably price and the beaches were fabulous.  It's too bad for Argostoli that it comes right after Mykonos on the itinerary, almost anything does pale by comparison the the postcard perfection of Mykonos.  

We spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool and playing trivia games.

That night's show was by a group called Viva Voce.  It was a group of four men (from four countries) singing and doing some basic choreography.  They were all talented--no doubt.  But, they lacked charisma (small talk and jokes between number fell totally flat, for example), and the selection of songs did not flow well at all.  There was a mix of opera, pop, and film selections, which could work if the themes went together, or the rhythms flowed into one another or soothing--but from what we saw, they did not.  We left after about 20 minutes (having wisely sat in the back this time).

Dinner was good, but I was starting to come down with a cold an turned in right afterwards, rather than attending the 70s dance party in the Centrum, so I have nothing more to report on the ship from day 6.

--Hadley

Splendour Day 5: Mykonos, Greece

Our initial plan for Mykonos had been to take a self guided walking tour that we found online:

http://www.tomsportguides.com/Mykonos-08-01-2011.pdf

With that in the plans, and Dave's back still slowing him down mightily, we decided it would be best to set our alarms and plan on being off the ship on the early side of things for this short port day (also a tender port).  We also guessed (correctly) that there would be fewer early morning crowds than at our first stop--with people worn out from long outings in Kusadasi the day before.

So, by about 8:30 we were fed and boarding the tender (a bigger, port owned tender--no lifeboats in Mykonos).  I sat in the open area in back and enjoyed taking some photos of the ship.

Here is a shot that shows the size of the tenders

Mykonos is one of those ports where the tender drops you off RIGHT in town.  It is always so easy when you are where you want to be right from the get go :)  There was another (larger) ship in port (might have been the Norwegian Jade--though I am no longer sure of which ships were where), and they were docked about 3 kilometers from town.  We were glad we did not have to deal with that.

Here on some photos of the area in the immediate vicinity of the tender dock:

It quickly became apparent that when Tom's Port Guide said the distances were short!  Everything was clearly very close and there was no real danger of missing things or getting totally lost.  So, we happily put the PDF away and just wandered at leisure.  The shops were not open yet, and very few tourists were out and about and for that first hour the little streets were just MAGICAL.  We had the nicest hour and were so happy we got out early.  I am about to inundate you with a bunch of photos--everything I looked at just begged to be photographed.

Everywhere was sparkling clean--probably barbecue shop keepers even mop the streets in front of their stores in these early hours!

A local fisherman working on his nets

And then, suddenly, we came around a bend and into an open area, and there were famous windmills!  It was such a nice way to get there, too.  There were excursions and taxi arriving to a parking lot back behind and kind of rushing by with cameras before hopping back in susses and cabs to run off somewhere else--but they all seemed so rushed and also had missed all that magic we had had the pleasure of strolling through for the past hour.  We were so happy we had done it our way.

I think I stood balanced on a broken piece of wall for about 10 minutes waiting to get this shot with (almost) no one in it.  I should be able to crop that person out if I decide to hand this one on the wall.

And, the views were really nice looking the other way as well, once we got our fill of the windmills:

After about a half hour exploring around the windmills, (plus the hour or so walking through town), Dave's back needed a bit of a rest.  We thought those cafes right on the water (in the shot above) looked pleasant and headed down to have a seat and a drink.  As it turned out, the cafes were not open yet, but we found a nice step to sit on, with a wall behind to lean back, and enjoyed watching the waves crash in for a bit.

After a bit of a rest, we started wandering back through town.  It was still lovely with the shops open and tourist filling the streets--but we remained very happy that we had gotten out early.  We had two things we were looking for: a pharmacy so we could buy more ibueprofen for Dave's back (he had taken his last that morning) and a cafe whose chairs looked comfortable to him and were not out in the walking areas where we would be jostled.  And while we looked, we took more photos!

And right across from this gorgeous bougainvillea, we found our cafe.  It had a nice big terrace set back off of the main street and reasonable chairs.  Prices were about teh same as anywhere not IN the walkways in town, a little steep (especially compared to Split and Kusadasi) but not terrible by any stretch.  I think we paid about 15 Euro for an iced coffee, a cola and a glass of (good) wine.  

Notice all those empty chairs???  The only thing we did not like at this cafe, not the cafe's fault, was the group of four who came about ten minutes later and sat RIGHT next to us, even with all that space (that in and of itself was okay).  One man kept leaning VERY far back into his chair and literally pushing into me.  Sometimes he ignored it, and at other times he turned to glare at me as if I were in his way.  I eventually got up and changed seats--it was so annoying.  They were also just very loud in general--I had to wonder if they were already drunk at 11:00 in the morning.  

Isn't the little Greek Coke cute?

So, after our break (we lingered for quite a while--the rude people drank their beers quickly and left), we meandered a bit more through many of the same streets, found the pharmacy and then took the tender back to the ship for a late lunch and leisurely afternoon.

This is such a long post, that I feel I should keep the comments about on board things to a minimum for this day.  

We had our second full production show, "Dancin' Thru the Movies" which we liked better than the first.  The costumes and music were better, performance quality about the same.  Here is a photo of the very "old school" cruise director talking before the show and a shot from the show itself:

There was a Michael Jackson dance class that evening which was fun and not something we had seen offered before.  We had a nice dinner, and then headed off the The Quest.  A fun and slightly rowdy scavenger hunt type game (okay, more than slightly on some ships, but with Bill from teh 50s as cruise director slightly fits!).  For the first time in a long time, no male in MY family had to dress like a girl!  Ha!  We had a fun (and international) team which included two sets of newlyweds and the Germans that we so enjoyed at lunch on the first sea day, and came in second place.

The Quest was followed by the "White Party" up on deck--in what was some of the warmest and least windy weather we had had all week. That was a GREAT time and we danced until about 1:00 a.m. (okay, Dave had to sit out and rest his back often--I danced nearly the whole time though)

Glow in the dark glasses at the white party

Officers demonstrating a line dance

And then the officers left and the cruise staff took their jobs back

You really haven't lived until you have danced Gangnam style in a pool at midnight with someone you've never met while floating around between Greek islands

and gotten more and more people to join in.  

Up next, Argostoli, Greece.

--Hadley