Stadtbibliothek

We now know just where to go when the weather gets bad.... die Stadtbibliothek (city library). It's got hundreds of great children's DVDs, daily holiday activities, a room full of games but also an excellent Fremdsprache section (German for foreigners!) - all our needs have been met! There are 12 inter-connected libraries spread across Essen, where you can order books, collect from one, return to any, book online etc etc The SWAP library group in SA comes close...

Samantha has been invited to join a local bookclub (Frauenleseabend) - which is somewhat terrifying... dissecting a book's plot and discussing characters is challenging enough in one's native tongue... maybe she'll summarise "The Making of Julia Gillard" as a mystery/thriller?

Our Cousins

Katharina and Sofia, our patient and loving German cousins, helped us explore the gi-normous Gruga Park on the weekend. It's a stone's throw from our home and resembles a slightly greener version of Adelaide's parklands including pony ride enclosures, health spas, botanic gardens, tropical glass houses, outdoor amphitheatres, adventure playgrounds, sculpture parks, animal nursery, aviaries, exhibition halls and even a wave pool.

Last weekend at the Gruga there was a 3 day music festival, with Sunday dedicated to children's activities. As you can see from the photos Steph and Mia honed their circus skills and even competed in tandem kangaroo races!! Friday and Saturday evening reminded us of our old apartment in North Adelaide - so close were we to the evening fireworks that the girls woke up thinking Essen was being bombed all over again!!

2,500 Mysterious Yellow Boxes

WOW! Unbelievable! Not only do Germans have automated self cleaning toilets but they have now replaced the local post office with a huge yellow box called The PackStation. We received a note in our letterbox from the postie saying a parcel awaited our collection at a PackStation nearby. So we trotted over to find a huge yellow box next to the pavement with multiple doors of different sizes. We punched in our name, scanned the note's barcode and as if by magic one door suddenly sprang open to reveal our parcel. After picking it up a voice announced, "Your parcel has now been collected. You have no further mail to collect. Good afternoon.", then the door swung shut.

Next door was another smaller PackStation where you could buy boxes, have them weighed and post them all without the aid of a single person. Apparently there are 2,500 similar PackStations all over Germany. Of course directly behind the new glossy Packstation stood a rather decrepid and now defunct 3 storey old Post Office with locked doors and dusty windows....

I wonder how long the machine would hold onto the parcel if we were away? Maybe it's linked into the green recycling CrunchStation just around the corner ....

Ahoi there Sailor!

We've just returned from a great day on the Baldeney See, our local lake. It was created 77 years ago by building a weir across the Ruhr at Werden, so Essen could have some drinking water. There's currently a 10km cycling/jogging track around the perimeter, along with tennis clubs, beach volleyball courts, beach bars, camping grounds and the ostentatious Villa Huegel.

The girls were awarded a Captain's Sailing Certificate by participating in some onboard sailor training sessions. They steered the boat between buoys, learnt how to tie sailor knots and answered questions on the history of the lake (with a little help!), while the parents sat back and enjoyed a leisurely cruise around the lake with complimentary gummi-bears and coffee.

That evening I (Sam) decided to explore our new home on bike. I cycled for over 30min along beautiful forest paths without ever seeing a single home. Eventually the path spat me out over an Autobahn to Dusseldorf, then into a Stadtteil (suburb) - in which I promptly got totally lost. I returned home an hour later, well exercised and much practiced in asking for directions! :)

Week 2

Well it's now Day 8 and Mia was the first to ask "when are we going back to Adelaide?". This comes a little earlier than we'd expected. It may have been a plead for more routine, as we've just visited 5 families in as many days.

Our friends have been so welcoming, filling our shelves, fridges and cupboards with more home-comforts than we could ever have hoped for. Mia restricted her diet to bread and plain pasta today! And Stephanie is supplementing her diet with far too many Haribo gummibaerchen!

We spent half a day at the fascinating Zeche Zollverein (coal mine) Museum. It's an ominous, rectangular red brick building 38m high and twice as long, where coal was once cleaned and sorted. To enter the building you must catch an escalator up to the 5th floor inside a black square tube with fluorescent orange steps called the A14 Kohlenwasche... Inside were 4 floors displaying the Ruhr's history - starting with the woolly mammoth 300M years ago. The displays were brilliant - the girls didnt lose interest with over 3 hours of history! Hubertus of course liked the fact that the museum emphasised the transient nature of the coal and steel industries - merely a firey burst in an otherwise much longer and more complex history.

On Sunday the 18th July we joined 3 million fellow citizens of the Ruhr in a cultural event called Still-Leben ("quiet life") on the A40 Autobahn. The freeway was closed to cars and people were invited to join a breakfast on the longest table in the world - 60km long! We still had traffic jams (Fahrradstau und Fussgaengerstau aber kein Automarmalade!!) afterall it is the most densely populated region in Europe!

Day 1 in Essen

After a hectic scramble to prepare our house for rent and pack our suitcases for 6 months of climatic extremes, we finally took off for Deutschland on Thursday 10th July.

The flight was awful, as expected, so it was nice to be welcomed by family members who woke up at 3:30am to collect us from Frankfurt airport. During the two hour car trip to Essen, fighting slumber, we all had the sense of arriving somewhere very familiar, or as Mia said "it feels just like Adelaide". The first 15min of scenery could have been replayed 8 times over, so little did the rolling hills clad in dense green forests, intermittent farms and immaculate cities, alter. Such consistency and orderliness is comforting when you're putting normal daily routine in check for a while.

Eventually, with ankles resembling an elephants and a great desire to lie down horizontally, we found our new home - a 4 story purple apartment (we have the 4th floor and attic). Both girls were totally enamored with the bright indigo fascade, our name on the letterbox and the beautiful Spielplatz (playground) directly across the road.