An ideal vacation in Hesse (your itinerary)

There is so much to do in Germany, and even in the state of Hesse alone. A family could make a very enjoyable vacation out of a fair-weather trip to Hesse, and even without a car. The first thing you will want to do is download two crucial apps for your visit without a car: the DB Navigator app and the RMV app. (Search the Play Store for "RMV Hesse". It is the RMV Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund app that pops up.) Although it is not necessary, I recommend tying a credit card to both of these apps as soon as you can to facilitate ticket purchases. The next thing you will want to do is to buy a portable cell phone charger so that when you purchase e-tickets on RMV, your battery doesn't die on you and cost you a 60 Euro fine for not having a ticket for the train or bus. (That never happened to me, but over the course of two years, I saw several people get ticketed or get kicked off the train or bus.)

I got to know Hesse a good bit, so here are my recommendations for a family vacation there without a car:

1) Day 1: Travel. Red-eye flight from the U.S. to Frankfurt. Immediately upon arrival, withdraw at least 200 Euros in cash, because Hesse (and Germany in general) is very much a cash economy.

You may have one or more of these expressions on your face during and after a long day of travel to Germany.

2) Day 2: Romer Plaza. Use the RMV app to direct you to the right train from the airport to your AirBnB near Romer Plaza. Don't go to sleep! Leave your luggage at the AirBnB and go visit Romer plaza. Grab a cup of coffee at ConditCouture, and if you're up for it, enjoy a piece of cake. Sit outside if the weather is nice and enjoy the view.

After you've rested a bit at the cafe, visit the cathedral, its museum (including the second location), and the architecture of the "New Old Town". It is absolutely lovely. There are dozens of restaurants near the area. I recommend finding a place for schnitzel, which is German comfort food at its best. After lunch, I recommend either a stroll across the bridge to the Design museum, or a visit to the Goethe House for a good picture of life in the 1800s for the wealthy in Germany. I suggest that you do NOT visit the Schirn Museum on your most tired day! Get to bed early, but try to stay awake until at least 8:00 p.m. so that the rest of your trip is enjoyable.

Inside the cathedral is a photo that shows the destruction surrounding it following the bombings of WWII.
It is worth the visit just to see that photo.

3) Day 3: City change and Wiesbaden visit. On your first full day in Germany, leave Frankfurt and get a place to stay in Mainz for the next 4 nights. Check the RMV app to find the most efficient route. The train is easy enough, but will probably require a transfer. This short trip is a good way to learn how to navigate the public transportation system. If you mess up, it should not be a giant mistake.

After you check in to your "new home" for the next 4 nights, get back to the bus or train station and take a trip to Wiesbaden. The things to visit there include: Kochbrunnen, a well from the hot springs the town is named after, the Protestant Church, the Landeshauptmuseum, and a good place to eat, such as Hans im Gluck or Lovt & Liebe. If you did not get schnitzel in Frankfurt, or if you desire another evening of German cuisine, I recommend Paulaner's in Wiesbaden. It is a small chain and they are very family friendly. If you are there in the summer, visit Ciao Ciao for some of the best ice cream (ever!). There is also the Casino (kurhaus), if that is of interest to you. It did not fit my family, so we never visited it. These activities should easily fill up the rest of your afternoon.

A beautiful July day in Wiesbaden

4) Day 4: Rhein River Cruise. You can take a Rhein River Cruise from Mainz, and I highly recommend it. Overall, this will be a nice relaxing day, which will probably be welcome after those first 3 days full of aggressive travel and little rest. Bring water! It is possible to do a round-trip cruise, but I don't recommend it because you will be on a boat for about 8 (or more!) hours, and the afternoon will be just about the exact same as the morning. Instead, I recommend that you get tickets departing from Mainz, and get off at St. Goar (not to be confused with St. Goarshausen). Have a radler (beer with lemonade) on the cruise. At St. Goar, you will take a short walk to visit Burg Rheinfels, which is a nice castle to visit while in Germany. They are friendly, the upkeep is good, and the kitchen is downright fascinating (because it is a a medieval kitchen--imagine having to cook in it!). After your boat ride and your castle visit, take the train back to Mainz. It is an easy, beautiful train ride that doesn't require a transfer. If you want a convenient, low maintenance dinner, try Mosch Mosch. It's sort of like the Noodles & Co. in the U.S.

* Cultural note: If you go into Mosch Mosch, and many other restaurants in Germany, you will sit close to people you don't know. When you sit, greet them with "Hallo" or "Guten Tag" or "Guten Abend". When you leave, depart with a "Tschuss" or "Schon Tag" or "Auf Wiedersehen". That is what is polite.

Really. The Rhein River Cruise is fabulous.

FABULOUS.

5) Day 5: Mainz. Mainz has become one of my favorite cities. The things to visit there include: The Dom (cathedral), The Gutenberg Museum, The Schiff Museum (Museum of Ancient Seafaring), the Roman amphitheater, the incredibly blue Chagall windows at St. Stephen's Church, and the Isis and Magna Mater museum, which is underneath a small shopping mall, but really is a must-see because of its uniqueness. There are also other Roman ruins all around Mainz that could be of interest, depending on your time and energy levels.

Three of my favorite windows ever.

6) Day 6: Rudesheim Romantik Tour. This is a great day-long tour that gives you a different view of the Rhein River. Take the train from Mainz to Rudesheim, and follow the crowd to the ticket office for the Rudesheim Romantik Tour. It involves hiking, so bring sunscreen and water. It also involves 2 gondola rides, so I don't recommend it for small children, since the rides are open. But it is a nice day that will show you some beautiful views, some interesting architecture, and some really nice vineyards. Return to Mainz for your last night there. I hope you will be sad to be leaving.

A small part of the hike on the Rudesheim Romantik Tour. Beautiful. This was taken in August.

7) Day 7: Return trip to Frankfurt. Take the train back to Frankfurt, and deposit your luggage at your next sleeping place, once again near Romer Plaza. Visit the Schirn Museum and the Design Museum or Goethe House (whichever you didn't on Day 2). The Schirn Museum is world-renown and deserves your wakeful attention. I recommend checking the exhibitions on their website before taking your children, as some exhibitions may not be appropriate for children or youth. Also note that the Schirn Museum has a great play area for your young kids.

Did I ever mention in this blog how much I love the Schirn Museum? Nothing I could say about it would do its exhibitions justice. Go visit it.

8) Day 8: Return trip to the U.S. Take a morning flight home. Leave in the morning to get there in the afternoon.

The In Between

All of those posts about my/our travel with my sister STILL don't cover everything we did together. In between all of that, we also went to Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Burg Eltz, and Opelbad (an outdoor swimming pool with a schnelle slide and a nice view of Wiesbaden).  We also had a birthday, got a mohawk, went to a birthday party, went to a festival, and just in general had a really enjoyable month.

I finally got to go to Wiesbaden when the Protestant church was open. St. Stephen's church in Mainz is still high among my favorites, and Römer plaza is always lovely, especially on a bright day.  I was disappointed with Burg Eltz for a few reasons: it was far away and a pain to get to, you weren't allowed to take pictures inside, and you only got to see about a third of the castle, if that.  The birthday party that Livvy attended was an invite from a friend in her class, where I learned that in Germany, you only invite the kids who you want to come, not everybody in the class, which makes my life much easier when the twins' birthday comes around.  The swimming pool was fabulous and has made me want to visit other similar pools nearby.  Alex is adorable in his mohawk, yet at the same time, getting to be such a boy, as opposed to a little boy.  Soon he will be 7!  The festival we attended was the German-American Friendship Fest, which we had attended last year.  So for me, that really hit home that we have been here a year (now more).  That was a pretty big milestone for me.

Summer is going by so quickly! But I'm happy with the sights I've seen so far and what I have planned (or tentatively planned). It's been a good year, and I'm anticipating more goodness. God willing. He has certainly blessed us so far!

Can't wait until my friends Nikki and Riley come next week!! But I do hope it cools down a little bit. It's been in the mid-nineties for a few weeks now, with no air conditioning (except for me at work and the window unit we put in our bedroom)! Ugh! So much for the weather being milder than Pennsylvania!

Birthday girl turned 2!

I told Michelle this is one of my favorites, and she said something to the effect of, "Too bad it's cracked."

I told her to take a closer look.  This is the window in the Mainz Cathedral.

Our little buddy had been asking for a haircut for a while.

Think he likes it?

St. Stephen's Church in Mainz.  I need to bring my monopod the next time I come.

The Protestant Church in Wiesbaden.  

Stained glass at the church in Wiesbaden.

Finding our rhythm

I walked 19 miles yesterday. I hadn't set out to do that, but one thing led to another and there I was, walking and walking and walking and...

I'm very happy to report that the kids and Dave are doing well. They did NOT walk 19 miles yesterday, fortunately. I continue to be impressed with Dave and the kids. They're adapting to this change so well, I'm surprised by it. I dare say that getting out into the sunshine and walking around has been helping out a lot. I hope it continues!

Here, when we do something off-post (like grocery shop at a Rewe instead of the commissary, for example), they refer to it as "doing something on the economy." I have been without a functioning phone since we've been here because I wanted to get a phone plan on the economy instead of signing up for something at the Post Exchange. Yesterday, as I was almost halfway into town, I realized that I forgot to bring my tax exemption form (VAT) for my phone purchase. I desperately needed a new one, and I'm not even exaggerating. So I turned around to go back to the Lodge to get the VAT form. It would be a 19% savings, so it would be worth the trip.

I had to use a new gate, so I wasn't exactly sure how to get back in. It was okay, though, because we were going to take the kids into town later, and I needed to figure out how to get back in the new way (the old way was broken), which I did. Got the VAT form and went back into town. I was told about a great shopping area in Wiesbaden that nobody had bothered to mention to me before. (Why not?!) So I went there and it was indeed pretty great. I spent about 40 minutes getting a new phone from O2, and I got a GREAT deal on a Samsung S7. That was a good thing, because they didn't accept VAT forms, after all, which meant that my 2 mile roundtrip walk for the form was for naught. Oh well. I have once again joined the smartphone era. Woo hoo!

I walked back to the lodge. I rested for a little while and then we all went back to that shopping area. We had a less-than-mediocre dinner because we keep messing up our timing with the restaurants that close early here, and we took what we could get. We got the kids ice cream, and got to see the outside of the New Town Hall.  Mind you, the New Town Hall was built in the 1880s. Pretty incredible! I guess I'll have to figure out where the Old Town Hall is and see if it's standing or not.

We walked back to the gate I had used earlier. The sentry would not let us through, and was an absolute jerk. (I'm filing a complaint, which will do me no good.) He had us go through the main gate, which I didn't know where it was, and he told us to go down the hill and turn left. (He was very rude about it, though. VERY rude.) So we did that and ended up Where the Sidewalk Ends. Not in a nice Shel way, though, even though I referenced it. The briers and brambles clued me in that we were not where we needed to be. So I downloaded the Uber app, which I am pretty much against. No Uber service where we were. So we walked back, and thanks to God, I recognized some buildings from my bus rides that I've been taking to and from work, and we found the gate. It was 11:20 p.m. We had been turned away a little bit before 10:00, which was already late enough!

Do I say this too often? The kids were SOOOO good! I got really mad, like blowing a gasket mad, when that man turned us away. I was so mad I was afraid I would yell at the kids when they didn't deserve it, so I just told them Mommy's really mad at that man and I need some quiet time to cool down, so I needed them not to talk. Well, they did their best, but they definitely didn't complain at all about it taking too long or about not having enough energy. (Livvy, poor thing, REALLY misses the van!)

And of course we made it back. I gave the kids a nice cool bath (for about 2 minutes), and got their jammies on, and they were asleep in 30 seconds. I figure they had walked about 7 miles, which was not the first time they did that, because they did it last Saturday too! All of them earned gold stars, which in our family means that they earned a new toy. However, in order to get said toy, guess what they will have to do? Yes, walk 7 miles.

Unless I figure out the bus system, which I've been trying to do and am getting closer and closer to doing. The kids ride for free. The stroller can come along, but some Germans will probably yell at us and tell us the right way to do the stroller the first time or two. (It's their way.) My difficulty is how to pay for it. I'll get there.

I've looked at two houses so far, and I don't think we can move into either of them. I have another house to look at Tuesday, but there's a different one which I'm hoping my housing office will give me the good news that the landlady is willing to come down in rent (by an enormous amount). It's possible, because the house has been vacant for 7 months, but I'm not holding my breath. Chances are that the house I look at on Tuesday will be it. Keep us in your prayers, please.

Other than that, Dave has a pretty good routine for him and the kids, and I am happy with my work so far. It's mostly reading and getting familiar with things, but it seems like it's going to be interesting. I'm so thankful that we're here!

Now for the pictures:

No more cones for her. Dishes only!

The kids cooled down with some ice cream

This girl loves her fries

The worst wienerschnitzel I've had, yet

I've been craving eggs, and this was a yummy sandwich that I enjoyed all by myself

A collage of New Town Hall, Wiesbaden