Day to day stuff

Monday, 7/3d: The kids and I went downtown to do a little shopping. Mike wanted a World Cup jersey, and Annabelle wants anything related to Diddl Maus. It was hot though and downtown Mannheim is apparently under construction, so we didn't stay for long.

We did stay long enough though for me to lose the kids in Kaufhof! I stopped to pay and they said they were going to go look at something, and the next thing I knew they were gone. I knew they were fine, but after a few minutes I started to feel panicky. After all, none of us were carrying cellphones. They had no money. And they have only limited German skills, so even if I had them paged, were they going to understand the announcement? Finally I did have the cashier put in a call for them: "Zwei kinder, Michael und Annabelle blah blah blah . . . " It worked though, and the next thing I knew, 2 very indignant kids were coming down the escalator demanding to know WHY ON EARTH I hadn't thought to look for them upstairs in the toy department.

That evening, I got a tremendous craving for icecream, so Annabelle and I set off on a little walking tour of Käfertal. Lots of places were closed since it was Monday, but we finally found a little pizzeria, where I was able to get my Spaghetti Eis. Here is the waitress pushing the icecream through the pasta press:



On our way home, we found Eddie's German twin:



Daily photos are here.

Tuesday, 7/4th: I went out for Indian food (yum!) with my friend Sibylle, and then we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping. The kids and I walked back into Käfertal to the pizzeria Annabelle and I had found the night before and grabbed a (relatively) quick bite to eat.

We made it home just in time for the beginning of the Germany-Italy World Cup game. I mostly hunkered in the kitchen and called out occasionally for Annabelle to give me an update. By 10:30 nobody had scored, so I felt it was safe to leave and go see the 4th of July fireworks. We returned just in time to see Germany defeated, which was just crushing. If you had told me a month ago that I would be this depressed over a soccer game, I would have asked you to please share some of whatever wacky drugs you were smoking.

I've got some fireworks photos and videos here.



Wednesday, 7/5th: Hot, hot, and hot! Too hot, in fact, to do much of anything other than turn on the portable A/C and sit in front of it all afternoon, knitting and watching the first season of the BBC version of "The Office." Nothing worth taking a picture of.