Athens & Delphi, Greece
March 15-18, 2007

We left Katie and Ashley with Niki and flew to Athens for the long weekend. There was a holiday on the Thursday and under Hungarian rules they add a holiday for the Friday, but this day must be replaced by working on the previous Saturday. Strange practice, as I don't think it would fly in the U.S. Making a Saturday a mandatory work day (Banks, governments, etc.), for religious or whatever reason, seems weird. But it works for me! While we were evaluating which flights to purchase when we originally booked these tickets we debated taking a direct flight or saving $50 and making a connection through Munich, arriving at the same time. We opted for the cost savings, and of course, that meant we had mechanical difficulties in Budapest, forcing us to arrive late and miss our connecting flight to Athens. Fortunately they do have a few flights out of Munich each day, but we still arrived into Athens three hours later than we had planned. You know what they say about best laid plans... and we had some rearranging to do since we arrived later. We had hoped to go right to the Acropolis and take a tour, but it was closing as we got there. Instead, we found a cheap hotel to check into right at the bottom of the hill leading up to the Acropolis. We did take the chance at this point to climb onto the rock structure outside of the Acropolis (Areios Pagos, Mars Hill) on which Paul preached to the People of Athens, warning them about the "Unknown God" (Acts 17:15-34). The issue was that the people were so concerned about offending one of their many Gods (known and unknown), that they erected temples/statues/idols/etc. to "Unknown Gods" as the catch-all, basically ensuring that any and every god gets some attention and some gift. Paul said in Acts 17 "God that made the world and all things therein...dwelleth not in temples made with hands...neither is worshiped with mens' hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." (Acts 17:24-25). At that point in time, and as we learned when we got to Delphi (as they requested wisdom from the Oracle at the Temple of Apollo), the people were so caught up in trying to ensure the favor of their many gods, leaving gold, silver, and other precious things as tributes, most never came to understand the real Godly offenses they were creating in doing so. Added to the history of the hill was the view and standing on the rock overlooking the city and up to the Acropolis was magnificent.
We made our way back down on the opposite side of the hill from where we walked up and we walked the streets of Placa and Kolonaki, the tourist/historical and restaurant districts of Athens. We walked and walked and walked, and looked for a good restaruant to eat, only to find that there is no dinner seating anywhere until 9 PM (the restaurants do not even open!). That just wouldn't work for us, so we found a little souvlaki place and had some delicious chicken and pork souvlaki, then went back to our dive of a hotel room (ie, the shower IS the entire bathroom so the room is soaked when done taking a shower). On our way back, walking past the Parliament, we ran into the "changing of the guard". They walk from Parliament to the tomb of the unknown soldier, a block or so away, and change out guard duty of the tomb. This was quite a site as it had the Greek guards do this VERY amusingly choreographed number. I quite expected a "jazz hands" at the end, but, sadly, ended up disappointed!
The next morning, after flooding the bathroom and part of our hotel room with water from the "shower", we headed out to meet the bus for our tour to Delphi. We went on a fabulous tour to this highly historical city about 2 1/2 hours away. Our tour guide filled us with historical facts and mythological tales of days long past.
Once in Delphi we went through the museum first and then walked through the old city. The central part of this area, being the ruins of Apollo's Temple where the Oracle resided and graced others with her "gift" once a month. People came from far and wide to receive revelation from the oracle, who was more than likely receiving drug induced visions (opium was a common "crop" in the area). Even non-Greeks came, including Croesus, the ruler of Lydia (part of Turkey today) who consulted the Oracle whether he should attack Persia (across the river) and was supposedly told "if you cross the river, you will destroy a great Empire". Assuming that meant the Persian empire, he attacked. Unfortunately for him (and his people), it was his own "great" empire that fell instead. Another thing we learned that, conveniently, the more gold/riches that you "donated" to the Oracle, the more likely you would receive a response.
Around the temple were many treasuries filled with offerings to the god, Apollo. There was a large ampitheatre, and although our tour guide told us it was too far to go before we had to meet the bus, we climbed up the mountain to the stadium.... which was really cool. We rushed down to meet our group, which was already on the bus waiting for us to leave for lunch (I'm sure they got over it). The bus took us into town were the group ate at a hotel, and Aaron and I walked around the town center and found another souvlaki place. We ate really, really yummy gyros, and searched the town for a little store that would be open in the middle of the day so we could buy a picture of Delphi (to add to our collection of pictures). It seems that everything is closed from about 12-3, so we didn't quite find the picture we were looking for. We did, however, find one shop that opened right before we needed to leave where we bought a small picture and a couple of bracelets for the girls.
Back in Athens, we again walked the streets of Kolonaki for a really long time, waiting for our reservation at Sea Satin at 9PM. We were the only ones in the restaurant, and by 9:30 we were done and headed back to our hotel. I don't think I could live there just because of the meal schedule (10AM breakfast, 3PM lunch, 9PM dinner).
In our original plan for the weekend, we had hoped to take on Saturday a 3 island tour of some of the Greek islands, like Hydra... but since our plane was late on Thursday and we still hadn't taken a tour of the Acropolis and seen some of the other sights in Athens we decided to have a more relaxed day and stick close to town. We checked out of Hotel Cheap-o and used some of our Starwood points to spend our last day and night in the nicest hotel in town, the Grande Bretagne, right on Syntagma square and in front of the Parliament. They let us check in early and we were upgraded to a suite and found our room to easily be the nicest we had ever stayed in. The two crystal chandeliers, and the butler that met us at our room to orient us with the ammenities was a first time experience for me. Plus all of the complimentary chocolates and marzipan didn't hurt either.
We ate breakfast on Saturday at a great little place in Placa whose roots were in the dairy business. I ate the yummiest thing I'd ever had. My friend, Shannon McNutt (who used to live in Athens) recommeded to me to order yogurt with honey and walnuts if I ever saw it on a menu. I didn't think I would, though, since I don't like walnuts. When I saw it offered here, I decided to get it anyway, and it changed my life forever. It was the best way I've ever eaten yogurt... even the walnuts tasted good. I'm sure the homemade yogurt had a lot to do with the delicious-ness, but I was very, very happy.
We spent the rest of the morning at the National Archeological Museum, and saw amazing old, old Greek ruins. Some of the marble from the Parthenon we had seen in the British Museum.... the infamous Elgin Marble. We learned in London how Lord Elgin was "given" (Greeks would say "stole") many of the relics/items from the Acropolis and other areas around Athens. Much of what was not taken ended up in this museum. We were able to see the Mask of Agamemnon (the commander in chief of the Greeks during the Trojan war) and the bronze statue of Poseidon. It really was a fasinating museum.
From there we walked to the Acropolis and found a personal tour guide who took us on a tour for over an hour and filled us with all sorts of interesting historical facts, and architectual information. We were disappointed to see so much scaffolding on the Parthenon, but found out it has been there since the early 1990's, so we didn't feel too badly, or that we arrived during an unlucky "remodeling" year. Supposedly it will be under restoration for many more years as well.
After our tour, and walking through the Acropolis Museum, we walked down to the Agorra (marketplace) and walked along the Panatheanic Way that led up to the Parthenon. We walked out into Monastiraki and found the Flea Market and a nice cafe to get ... what else??? more souvlaki! I found some nice "Gucci" sunglasses from one of the MANY nice sunglass salesmen. We were stopped by numerous DVD sellers (all carrying the new movie "300" on top). We ate an early dinner which served American cuisine (we had eaten souvlaki already for 4 meals, so we didn't feel bad about this). It was nice to eat American... and not souvlaki for a change. We wanted to spend some time in our beautiful hotel room, so we retired early and watched a bootlegged "Ghost Rider" that we'd been suckered into buying (they just kept coming up to us over and over...once we purchased one we could honestly tell the guys we already had one!).
Sunday morning we took a tram up to Mount Lycabettus, which is the highest point in Athens and where the St. George church is located. It had a phenomenal view of the city, and the Mediterranean. It was quite a hike just to get to the cable car (We couldn't help but think about the hike up Corcovado in Rio to get to the Christ the Redeemer statue there, although once we saw the building for the cable car we realized that the Corcovado hike was 100 times worse!).
As we headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags before heading to the airport we tried, with no success, to find more yogurt with honey and walnuts. Disappointedly, we got our bags and started walking to the Metro to take us to the airport. I realized that the only thing that would make me feel better was getting a "Prada" purse from one of the friendly street salesmen. Aaron, being the kind husband that he was, agreed to my request and we found a cute white summer bag (that we got for 20 euro instead of the 45 euro rip-off asking price).
As a result of the last minute detour, and getting on the metro going the wrong way for one stop, we missed the train to the airport and had to wait 20 minutes for the next one, which turned into 30. Once we finally got to the aiport we had 35 minutes before our plane was leaving. We RAN, but our check-in for Lufthansa was on the opposite side of the terminal from the metro station where we got off. With 31 minutes before our plane took off (1 minute before they closed our flight) Aaron was able to get us to the front of the line and we miraculously made the flight. Thank goodness we only had one backpack with us that we carried on. We were starting to have flashbacks from missing our flight in Romania.
We had a wonderful weekend in Greece; it was enough to wet our appetite for another trip there... maybe to the islands, like Santorini, next time!

Snowman
February 26, 2007

Although Budapest winters are supposed to be severe (relatively speaking), this is the first day all season that it snowed and stayed long enough to build a snowman. Since we haven't been skiing this year yet, Katie was very worried that she wouldn't be able to play in the snow "while I am four years old!" Fortunately, a couple of days later she got her chance!

Cologne & Bonn & Trier, Germany / Maastricht, Netherlands
February 21-24, 2007

On Wednesday afternoon Heather and I decided to take a couple of days off and go skiing. Unfortunately this spur of the moment idea had already been well planned out by the rest of the Europeans and we could not find a single resort that had space to accomodate us. So instead we got in the car Wednesday night and started driving towards Cologne and Bonn, Germany. On the way we decided to also visit Maastricht, Netherlands as well as Trier, Germany and to stop by and visit some friends that live near Ramstein Air Force Base. We drove the first night as far as Linz and stayed in a comfortable Landzeit room that had 5 beds! The next morning we drove to Bonn and drove by the old American Embassy where I used to work. Things are very different now. They have torn down the library, movie theatre, the American Cafe (Burgers and Baskin-Robbins ice-cream) and the American grocery store that were across from the neighborhood of embassy apartments. It's a little sad, but since the German capital moved from Bonn to Berlin, obviously there was little need for these (although it took them a while as it looks like they were just recently demolished and they were there in 2000 when we last visited, although vacant). The neighborhood has been sold back to Germans now. We had a hard time getting across the river. Our GPS was guiding us to the address I remember of the embassy and we were driving along the Eastern side of the Rhein River when it told us to get on a Ferry boat. We decided it was easier to drive to the next closest bridge.
From Bonn we drove to Cologne (Koeln) and visited the Cologne Cathedral, the second tallest Gothic structure in the world (second to the steeple of the Ulm Munster, also in Germany, although not nearly as impressive since it is mostly just the steeple that provides its claim to fame). Although construction began in the early 13th century, it took over 600 years to complete, finally finished in 1880. At the time it was the tallest building in the world, until four years later when the Washington Monument was built.
Only about an hour from Cologne is Maastricht, in the Netherlands and a small medievel town. It sits right at the Belgium and German borders so its history has been probably more heavily influenced by those countries than by the Dutch. It was the site of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty which effectively formed the European Community/Union in 1992. We found a nice hotel to sleep for the night in the middle of the town. The weather was still very nice so we took a short evening stroll. Since it was Thursday night, like many European cities, this meant that the shops stay open until later into the evening, so the town was still very busy. We decided to leave the stroller in the hotel room and allow Ashley to walk, which was probably a mistake. As many who read this blog will notice, most of the pictures of Ashley have her strapped securely in her stoller, as that is the only way to contain her. During our walk through the town she had a mind of her own and didn't want to have anything to do with us. At one point she just decided to sit down in the middle of a store entrance and suck on her lollipop, oblivious to the fact that we were tired and wanted to get back to our accomodations and go to sleep.
We woke up the next morning and toured the city some more. I particularly enjoyed getting out before anyone else was up and before the city awoke, walking the deserted cobblestone streets, taking in the medievel scenery around us. We ended up getting lost in the maze of buildings split by the cobblestone walkways (at some point everything starts to appear the same) until we finally arrived at a recognizable point of the town and found our way back to our hotel. We checked out and headed for Trier.
We drove through Belgium and Luxembourge, stopping for a bit in Luxembourge capital. We hadn't planned on going through this city, so we didn't research anything prior to our visit, and thus didn't really know what to see. But I must admit that the gorge that separates the two sides of the city is beautiful to drive across and we look forward to making a more deliberate trip back to the city in the future.
We arrived in Trier by about midday and really had an enjoyable time meandering the old town. It claims to be the oldest city in Germany and the Porta Negra (The Black Gate), built around 200 AD, is the largest Roman city gate North of the Alps and guarding what was the Northern point of the Roman city of Augusta Treverorum (City of Augustus in the Land of the Treveri). The city has an interesting walking district, particularly the path from the Porta Negra to the Trier Cathedral to the Trier Townhall. I found it interesting that throughout the city are giant replicas of Constantine's foot. We spotted four or five of these scattered throught the city. I am not exactly sure why they would have so many, but Katie at least enjoyed playing on one of them. The weather was great, even

JUST warm enough to warrant eating some gelato and although the cities Roman influences were obvious, the bratwursts were great.
From Trier we drove another hour to visit Chrissi Richards and her family who live in a small German town (Jettenbach) just outside of Ramstein Air Force Base. We spent the afternoon with them and Katie and Ashley had a terrific time playing with Chrissi's three girls, Rosie (6), Vanessa (4), and Caroline (3). Rosie told us that she was going to call Katie "Katelyn" because Katie is a little girl's name. They were having so much fun together we decided to just spend the night with the Richards before making the 8 1/2 hour drive back on Saturday morning. We thought about stopping in Heidelberg and visiting the castle there on our way home, but at this point it had started raining so we figured we would save that visit for another trip.

International Fair
AISB February 2007

Katie's school presents an international festival each year. The school has 50+ different nationalities represented and in both of the pre-K classes, 15 are represented (out of 23 kids). So Katie gets great exposure to different cultures and languages from all over the globe. She is always telling us how to say something in "Hungarian" or "Dutch"... she thinks she is fluent in many languages. The funny thing is, she really does sound like she is talking in a foreign language... it doesn't just sounds like gibberish.