Adventures in Germany, part 3

To make up for my a) latte-less and b) story-less entry today, I've hunted up another adventure I wrote home about when I lived in Germany. This happened in March/April, after my ill-fated drive to French Ikea as well as my ill-fated morning cigarette adventure in which I was locked out on the balcony for hours:

On Tuesday I did something very stupid.

It was a lovely day, spring was coming, the sun was shining and the flowers were blooming. One of my favourite ways to spend an afternoon was packing Kate up in the car and go for a drive in the breathtaking countryside that I found myself living in Southwest Germany. This day, I thought it would be nice to go for a drive in the nearby mountains of the Black Forest. While it was starting to warm up, it was not really warm enough to walk, so go for a drive we did.  I went up the twisty, narrow road of the mountain until there was snow on the road and then I decided to go back. On the way back, I turned down a different road, just wanting to explore, you know? I got about 100 metres down the steep track before I realized I was on a walking trail, not a motorized vehicle road. In my defence, there were tire tracks on the road and I didn't read German well enough to understand the sign that read, "NUR WANDERWEG FAHRT VERBOTEN" (Walking trail only, driving prohibited).

Unfortunately it was too narrow to turn around so I kept going. I got to the castle ruins near Oberkirch and in front of me there was a grassy knoll that was just a mite too steep for my crappy family VW wagon to get over. I was able to turn back around at this point because the pathway had widened, but the only course of action I had before me was to go back. Ironic when you think about it.  Going up the walking path proved much worse than going down because my descent had caused the spring mud to get churned up and cause deep, sticky ruts in the path. I just could not make it up that hill to the paved road beyond.

Starting to panic just a tiny bit, I decided that I would drive BACKWARDS the way I had come, back towards the castle because the path at this point was too narrow to turn around. I had mountain on one side and complete abyss on the other. All I could see was forest, going down forever.

I calmed my heart and began to drive backwards. But then, and this is where I just want to kill myself over my own stupidity, the path widened JUST ENOUGH that I brilliantly thought I could turn around. Yup. I got stuck in the mud. And I'm not talking like, stuck in that I couldn't go backward or forward because my tires were too deeply immersed in the mud. I'm talking perpen-fucking-dicular to the pathway stuck. Not even kidding.

Nooooo, no, no, no, no, no what the fuck did I just do? I sat in the driver's seat staring at the wall of mountain in front of me and I started to cry. There was no way I was getting out of this one by myself to blithely return home with a cheery, "Hello! How was your day? Guess what happened to me!" I felt like Gretel with a car and a baby in the back seat. I was going to die out here in the Black Forest. I pictured myself surviving on the land and eating bark and I full out began to freak the fuck out. If you have ever met me, you know I would last three hours before perishing in the wild. And what kind of wildlife lives in the Black Forest anyway? Are there bears? Was I going to get eaten? Was Kate going to die a horrible death of starvation and being eaten because her mother was a fucking idiot?

Resigned to my fate, I got out of the car to take a look at what I had done. The front of the car was wedged into mountain. Like, a fucking mountain. What the fuck? The back of the car was deep in mud and resting about three feet from a cliff of oblivion. You could say there was not a lot of wiggle room here. So, I did what any normal human being would do. I tried digging my way out. Ten minutes later, I was sweating, swearing and covered head to foot in mud. And the car was just as stuck as when I started.

So I tried shouting (read: screaming) for help. No dice. Not a soul for miles. Where the fuck was I anyway? Had I fallen into some weird, cursed story where Kate and I were the only two human beings left on the planet? Finally, I got poor, sleeping Kate out of the car and half ran, half stumbled up the path, crying, cursing, and calling for help. She, of course, woke with a start when I shouted and was soon crying and screaming herself. I got about half way up the path when I realized a) I was scaring the crap out of my kid and needed to calm down, b) I was about a kilometre from the castle ruins where there were always people at the café so it wasn't like the car would be forever stuck in the mud and I would die in the woods of the Black Forest, clinging to my child and c) I was going the wrong way on the path if I wanted to go to the castle.

So, cooler heads do prevail in these situations and I turned around, heading for the ruins, instead of the lodge I'd seen further up the path (which turned out only to be a resting/eating area for hikers anyway) and managed to get Kate talking about her little friend Manny and how we would play with him just as soon as we got home and how Daddy would be at home waiting for us and how everything was going to be JUST FINE. We arrived at the castle about 15 minutes later, Kate on my shoulders chatting away about how she was going to hug and kiss Manny and how the car was STUCK and how FINE everything would be, "Fine, Mama! Mama HANDS! Dirty!"

I would like to describe to you the looks of horror on the faces of the patrons and the employees of the café that is nestled into the side of the mountain near the Shauenburg Ruines of Oberkirch when I arrived, sweating, covered in mud with a toddler on my shoulders, but I don't think I'm quite up for the task.

I talked to the bartender and she found a nice little, old lady who spoke passable English and when she heard my story, she repeated it to everyone there (much to my equal parts relief and horror) and a man came forward and said he had a Jeep and would pull me out. He didn't speak much English, but he, Kate and I walked together back to the car. He taught me "Eine moment, Bitte" for when I was too out of breathe to keep our quick pace going and generally was very jokey and encouraging to me, which was sweet and quite calming. He said, "Don't worry, it's ok and be happy! Be happy! Alles klar" He also said, "Ah, so this, this is Schwarzwald, Black Forest. You know, like Hansel and Gretel, you are lost in the Schwarzwald. Welcome to the Black Forest!!" and guffawed loudly, but good-naturedly. How the fuck did he know I was thinking about Gretel?

He stopped short when he saw my car wedged between a rock and hard place, turned and just LOOKED at me. No words needed. The older couple who had interpreted for me in the first place came up the path and helped communicate to me that the man would now run back to the castle and call the towing company. No Jeep was getting me out of this one. They also just looked at the car to me and back to the car. No words needed.

I thought it was a translating mistake, but he really did run back, after a few jokes about getting the army or maybe the marines to come help me. The older couple continued up the path after saying goodbye and maybe it was just a trick of the echoes in the mountains, but I'm pretty sure they were laughing hysterically at me as they walked on. So I waited by the car, which Kate was now safely ensconced in and I smoked. I was leaning on the car, smoking, in fact, when another hiker came by with her dog. Where were all these walkers when I was screaming for help and envisioning dying in the woods with my innocent daughter?

She started speaking German to me and I asked if she spoke English and she said, "No, well, a little, yes, you know, this is not for cars, only walkers, you must drive up the hill to the road and go that way, this is only for walking, not driving"

Thank you. Very. Fucking. Much.

I smiled sweetly, laughed and said, "Oh ja, I realize this NOW, unfortunately too late, ha ha ha!"

The irony was my car was stuck only about 200 meters from the road I was originally on, but damned if I could get to it. After waiting for about twenty minutes, that lovely man actually came back for me with two more men (one from the towing company) and they managed to pull me out with the help of the tow truck. I tried to explain how I was trying to get back to the paved road above, but the car just COULD NOT make it up the hill because of the mud. My German is still quite bad, but at that point, it was basically non-existent, so I will blame the next part on them not understanding and not on the fact that they are men. I will charitably say that they simply did not understand what I was trying to explain because they then took turns acting the exactly the way men act in a situation like that by trying several times to make it up the hill anyway. It took a few defeated attempts but they finally resigned themselves to driving both the towing vehicle and my car BACKWARDS one kilometer to the castle before we were able to turn around, race up one last steep hill and onto blessed asphalt.

Our friend Marco is now calling me Gretel and saying "Welcome to the Black Forest Gretel!" and laughing loudly at me every chance he gets.

Yes, I do wonder why these things always happen to me...

Adventures in Germany, part 2

This happened in March, after we'd lived in Germany for about two months: 

The door to our balcony has a lever on the side that flips up to lock the door and flips down to unlock the door. The entire door shifts down when it's locked so it's quite secure. We leave it unlocked all the time as we are on the second floor and no one can break in. I went out for a smoke this morning first thing, before even having breakfast, which is not something I normally do. However, for whatever reason, I grabbed my coat this morning, one cigarette from my pack and went outside to smoke it. Kate was already up, colouring and  watching cartoons so I figured my minor deviation from the morning routine would not be noticed. 

Before we moved to Germany, Kate never watched TV. It would be on and she wouldn't even look at it. She preferred to play with her toys while we watched our own shows. I think it has something to do with all the German cartoons, but our darling daughter is now addicted to the box. 

Anyway, as soon as she realized where I was she stood at the door, asking to be let out, but of course I shook my head and said no. She seemed to accept this and wandered back to the living room and I went back to reading the magazine I had. Suddenly, I heard a thunk! And I froze.

No, no, no, she did not just do that, did she? Oh yes she had. Without me noticing, Kate had returned to the kitchen and had flipped the lever up, locking me outside and herself inside. This happened at 8:45 in the morning. I tried desperately with much crying and swearing to coax her to pull the bar down and she almost did it twice, but she gave up both times. She just did not have the strength to push it into place to unlock the door. I was stuck. And I panicked. I screamed, I shouted, I coaxed, I cried, I begged Kate to try again.  Please baby, try again. She would not. While the lever was apparently fascinating five minutes before, it was of absolutely no interest to her now.

Fortunately, I had our only cellphone on me, but who on earth would I call? Brad didn't have a phone and I didn't have many people I could call. Our fellow expats were away on a trip so they couldn't come. And it was not even 9:00 am. That is practically dawn to Europeans. 

My best bet was Sonja, the girlfriend of one of Brad's co-workers, Marco. They were a great couple that we had quickly become friends with but Sonja worked late nights as a server at a local bar and she likely wouldn't appreciate an early morning phone call from a stupid woman she barely knew who had managed to get locked out on the balcony by her toddler. I waited until 9:30 and the entire time I was having anxiety attacks about what Kate might get into while she was unattended by her fabulously responsible mother. 

When I finally reached Sonja, it was 9:45 and I'd been out there for an hour, alternately sobbing over my predicament and pounding on the door in the hopes that a sound thumping would dislodge the damn German engineering. No luck. 

Kate spent that hour crying at the door to be let out to join me, playing with the curtain by putting it on her head and saying 'Hat!', sitting in front of the door with her feet up on the glass of the door, playing peekaboo and, finally, getting her shoes, like THAT was the reason that I wouldn't let her come out with me. She went into the living room to put her shoes on and when she succeeded,  she gave me a big smile and lifted one foot and then the other to show me. When I still uncompromisingly would not let her out, she gave up and went to the living room with her shoes still on, sat on the couch and watched cartoons. She had a lovely time, while I sat on a plastic chair and cried. 

Thankfully Sonja's grasp of English was good enough that it was possible to even explain the problem, and she called Marco, who told Brad (without explaining why) that he needed to return home immediately. Poor Brad flew home, imagining the worst only to find his furious, embarrassed wife locked outside and Kate happily watching German SpongeBob.   

To make it even worse, Kate has been saying fuck loudly every time she gets mad today. She's also been telling Brad, complete with fake crying, how mummy cried today. Then she loudly says Fuck!

 And before you EVEN start, I know I should quit smoking.  I'm pretty sure, someone, somewhere, is about to give me the mother of the year award. Oh and they are calling me Rapunzel now.  

Adventures in Germany, Part 1

After yesterday's rather heavy post, I thought I'd share some of my European Adventures to give you a laugh.

In 2008, Brad, Kate and I moved to southwest Germany. We lived for 16 months in Stadelhofen, a small village in the Black Forest of Germany. We were about 20 minutes from the French city of Strasbourg, which is part of the Alsace region in France and it has almost as much German influence as French. Strasbourg was the border city Marie Antoinette travelled through on her way to Versailles. This is my story about the first time I visited Strasbourg.

On Tuesday I went to France. By myself. Well, with Kate of course. One of the other Canadians came by in the morning to say hi and we were chatting and she said they have an Ikea in Strasbourg and I thought to myself, 'Oh yeah? I need a broom and some garbage cans, I might end up going there' I mean, Ikea is the same everywhere, right? So after she left, I googled the store  and voila! I got the address and a map. Looking at the driving directions I thought to myself, ah, not so hard, just a right, left, straight, straight, right left, straight, no problem, I can totally do this. So I started off and I drove around Stadelhofen (where I live), then to Apperweir, on to  Zusenhofen, and halfway to Ulm, for about 30 minutes trying to find the B28 to Strasbourg because, of course, right off the bat, the instructions were not correct. Anyway, I finally found the highway and I made it to France, which is only about 20 minutes away. So I get on this enormously huge 401-entering-Toronto-esque type highway in France and I'm thinking, Oh God, I will never find my way home, I should turn around right now, but stupid me, I kept going. I followed my directions and found that they were not that bad and that the signs on the roads kind of  jived with what was in my instructions, so I followed them and holy mother of God, after about ten nail-biting minutes on the highway, including two exits and another highway I made it to Ikea. Parked, immediately had a cigarette. Contemplated turning right around and going back before I forgot how to get back. No, no, I'll just follow the instructions in reverse, it'll be fine, after all , I made it here, didn't I? And what woman can really resist a beautiful, shiny, blue and yellow Ikea, just beckoning to her? Not me, that's for sure.

Well, I shopped for about twenty minutes, the whole time close to tears, thinking, stupid stupid stupid. Should have waited until Brad was with me, then at least we'd lost together, or I should have printed instructions on how to get BACK, but no, had to go off half-cocked. I bought a dustpan with a brush, a laundry hamper and a stool for Kate. Briefly thought about gathering enough courage to ask a stranger 'Parlez vous anglais?' and then beg for instructions on how to get back to Germany. Decided against it. Got back to the car, drove around Strasbourg for about 15 minutes, getting more and more panicky when I realized I had no idea how to get back on the huge highway that I'd just been on, but in the opposite direction. After passing Ikea several times and realizing that I was just going in circles, I finally swallowed my pride and parked again, went in again (and the whole time I have Kate, so I'm hauling her around) and after about ten minutes of glancing shyly at a young couple and trying to pump up enough courage to use my French, I finally asked them if they spoke English. THANK GOD they did. They started to help me, but an older German gentleman heard and also spoke English, so he instructed me how to get home and I got home in about 35 minutes. Just like that. Ironically, I was on the right highway the first time I left Ikea and chickened out, I just had to go further. Scary as hell, seriously, but I am kind of proud of myself. We had dinner at Brad's friend's house that night and his wife said I was very cool, that she has many girlfriends that would not go to the Ikea in Strasbourg because the highway is too complicated and scary. I did not explain to her that I didn't know any better.

I've come to the conclusion that not only should Google maps tell you HOW to get to a place, they should RATE the route. Like, give it a 1-10 rating, 1 being straight there, no highways or turning and 10 being the craziest, busiest highways and many exits and turns. e.i. 10 being the nail-biting, cigarette-yearning, twisting-hair, most scary-ass thing you have ever done.

You may be asking, what was Kate doing while I was freaking out? She was sleeping. Like a baby you might say. Traitor.