A week of culture and complications

Eventually I will return to writing about our Christmas trip! But first some more pressing items.

Last week was a busy week! [Side note: I have been so busy that it has taken me a couple of weeks to finish this blog post. So as I'm about to publish it on Jan. 31, I'm writing about things that happened the week of January 18.] Partly by choice, and partly by circumstance. On the one hand, there have been a lot of opportunities to enjoy the things that make living in Berlin special, and I have taken advantage of them. On the other hand, a number of the things for which I am responsible have run into problems in the last week or so, and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed trying to deal with them all.

In the vein of bad news first, I'll start by talking about the complications.

1. Pipes burst in Butte rental property - one of my jobs for the last 4 or 5 years has been to manage our rental properties. We technically have property managers for most of them, but I still have to manage the managers. So just after Christmas we had pipes burst and I have been working for the last few weeks with our property manager and our insurance company to try to get this sorted out. Unfortunately our deductible is rather high so we'll be paying out of pocket for a good bit of the damage. Task in progress.
2. Legal issues - another property headache. A former tenant owes us quite a bit of money. I hired a lawyer to pursue him, but the tenant skipped town. Since we don't know where he went, I have to give up and I have been asking the lawyer to give me back the remainder of our reserve money that we had to pay him up front, so I can use it to pay for the water damage bills in the other property. He had been unresponsive for a month and I was beginning to wonder if I would see that money again, but he finally responded late in the week after some stern pestering on my part. Looks like this one will be resolved soon.
3. My German gym has been taking money from my bank account! A fellow gym member told me last week to check my bank account because many members had unknowingly had money deducted from their accounts. (When I joined the gym I had to give them my bank account information so they could withdraw my monthly fees.) I checked my account and sure enough, the gym had made 3 unauthorized withdrawals from my account, in October, December, and January, for a total of €170! I have been emailing, calling and asking in person at my gym all week to no avail. Of course made all the more difficult because it has to be done in German. Finally I got the name of a man in the corporate office from a friend, and that man called me back, but we have played phone tag. I am trying to decide which is a worse outcome, not getting the money back, or having to call this man and discuss banking issues in German. Task in progress.
4. Kitchen problems - I think I have talked before about how our stove vent has been broken for nearly a year, and then recently the big burner on our stove went bad. My landlady will of course pay for replacements but she wants me to do the work of choosing something and getting it installed. I put it off forever because the task was daunting, but I finally buckled down and did a couple of days of research on German appliances and ordered both things last week. Unfortunately, when the deliveryman arrived with the new stove, he took one look at my old stove and told me the new one I ordered wouldn't fit in the space. To spare you a lot of the back and forth that I have been through since that day, suffice it to say that a) it seems that the old stove was very old, maybe more than 20 years (Why would the landlady build out a new kitchen prior to renting this house to us, but leave a 20+ year old stove in it??) b) The man who built out the kitchen swears that a standard size stove/oven will fit in the space; meanwhile, the deliveryman said otherwise and took the stove I ordered back to the shop. c) I have told my landlady that this is too complicated for me to handle and she needs to arrange it herself, but she seems to be in no hurry to accomplish this.
   
   The second appliance, the vent, was set to be delivered on Wednesday. DHL gives the ridiculous time window of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. I took a chance and spent the morning ice skating with Carter's class, but sat home from about 11:30 until 6:30 waiting for the delivery, which never came. It wasn't all bad because I used that enormous block of time to clean our bedroom, change the sheets, vacuum under the bed, dust all surfaces, put away piles of things. It looks great! And the story has a happy ending because the next day, as I was driving home from something a little after noon, the DHL man was in our cul de sac turning around to leave our street. I flagged him down and was able to get the delivery then. Once I figure out what to do with the stove, I will have an electrician install both appliances at the same time. Overall task still in progress.
5. Furniture buying - after totally tidying up our bedroom, I had a strong desire to completely finish the job. Which meant I really wanted to finally get a chair for our room, and a coat rack to hang things on to keep them off the floor. So I spent some time on the local classifieds, called ebay kleinenzeigen, where I have bought all my other used furniture. I couldn't find a good coat rack so I ordered one from Amazon, but I found a nice leather chair for €20! I also finally found something I thought would work as a Lego table for Carter. I feel a little crazy buying furniture at this stage, because we will be using it for such a short amount of time before we head back to the US already. But it's important to me to have our house feel like a home, if possible.
   
   So the complication once I find things I want on ebay is going to pick them up. Furniture is heavy and it is often in apartments that are up many flights of stairs, and when I get it home I have to take it up two flights of stairs, one of which is a narrow spiral staircase. So there is a good deal of anxiety involved in these purchases, made greater by the fact that I have to communicate with the sellers in German, often by phone (I dread making phone calls in German). Dan has made it clear that he doesn't want to spend his time picking up furniture or assembling furniture, so it's up to me to handle it. Some sellers are very nice and will help carry it but others absolutely won't. So Thursday I called the lady who was selling the chair to try to arrange pickup, but she told me that I wouldn't be able to carry it alone (and by implication she was letting me know that she wouldn't help me). So I had no choice but to involve Dan. We went to pick it up today and he was NOT happy about it. It turns out the chair wasn't heavy at all compared to a lot of the furniture I have hauled by myself. It was heavy, but I could have done it. Oh well. Carter's Lego table I did go get by myself on Thursday. The wonderful seller carried the heavy tabletop down 5 flights of stairs and over to my car for me; I carried the legs and extra table leaves. Then when I got home I manhandled all the pieces all the way up to Carter's room by myself. All that's left is to wipe it all down and reassemble the legs. Task complete (mostly)!
6. Diablo's health - For about a year Diablo has been tripping when I walk him. I had the vet look at him over 6 months ago and she didn't see anything wrong, just that maybe his muscles were weakening from age. He has been on a pain medication every day for the last 4 or 5 months and it has seemed to help him some. But over the weekend Dan noticed that he has a large swelling around the top of his left front leg. It is so large that I have missed it all this time because it almost feels like muscle or something. So I took him to the vet on Tuesday and it is a tumor that needs to be removed. He will go this coming Tuesday for an ultrasound, and then we will schedule him for surgery. The vet speaks a little English but not much so it's not clear how worried I should be. Of course at his age any surgery is not good, but Diablo is otherwise in good health so I'm hoping for the best. Task in progress.
7. Church mission work - I am on the missions committee at our church, and have been pushing for our church to do some actual hands-on service work. Since we have been in Berlin the church has raised money for various causes but only a very few participate in any service work (a small dedicated group serves food to the poor and homeless every Friday night). A couple of weeks ago our committee chairperson arranged for a meeting with the refugee center in the neighborhood of the church, and asked me to join the meeting. Afterwards I volunteered to contact the center to propose a date that our committee could come visit the refugees. Suddenly I have become in charge of this event: making announcements in church, writing for the bulletin, managing the list of volunteers, making a flyer to advertise the event in the refugee center, planning the agenda, etc. I am glad to be doing something for the community, but the timing is a little poor given all the other things that are going on. I'm really excited though, at the response I have gotten. It seems there is a huge desire to do more than just donate money. Our visit is this coming Friday, so task in progress.
8. Job offer - just when I'm feeling pretty crazy busy with what is already happening in my life, my former supervisor at Nuance reached out to me this week about a contract job in the UK. This is highly appealing because a) I would love to keep my foot in the door, both from a networking/resume standpoint and also for keeping up my skills b) some extra money would ease the financial pressure of some of the extra expenses mentioned above c) I didn't really miss working until I was offered the chance to take a job. Hmmm....
   However, if I take a job here it will mean that, for the duration of the job, I won't be able to do any of the things that I enjoy in Berlin. I might as well be living anywhere, just taking the kids to school, working, picking them up, feeding everyone, sleeping, and doing it again. It is not lost on me that of course this is what Dan's life in Berlin is like, and I truly get it and feel for him. But at least one of us should be happy, right? I will find out the specifics of the offer but it's highly unlikely that I will accept it. Task in progress.
9. Extra cooking - Feeding people is something that I do a lot, and I enjoy. But it does add extra pressure to the week. Carter's class was going ice skating on Wednesday and he told me he would love to have double chocolate caramel brownies to take to school. He fantasized about them for a while and said it would really make his day, but I just said "uh-huh, would it make your month?" But Tuesday night I decided to surprise him by making them. He was so shocked and happy on Wednesday morning and he admitted that he was kind of kidding and never thought I would actually make them. I'm glad to be able to do something like this occasionally, beyond his expectations. It was funny though - the international kid crowd is so different from the American kid crowd. The brownies were very fudgy and kind of mushy, and Carter carried them in his backpack from ice skating to school. So when he opened up the tupperwares the brownies had squished all up on one side of the container. He said about half the class said it looked like poop and refused to eat it! I don't think American kids would ever pass up brownies, no matter what they looked like. The ones who did eat one loved them, but even their raving wasn't enough to convince the ones who didn't like the looks of them. Carter was excited though, because there would be some left over to bring home and eat. But he said he went to wash his hands and left the container unguarded and when he came back they were all gone! Two classmates asked for the recipe.
   
   On Wednesday night I made some raspberry bars for my event on Thursday night, so I spent two evenings in a row baking. Tasks complete.

Christmas in Tuscany, Part 2

The lion is the symbol of Florence. I loved all the
beautiful lion statues, so I'm going to post some of them.

[It is now mid-January but I am determined to blog about this trip! I'll get it finished one of these days. Here's the next installment.]

Christmas Eve was Uffizi day! No one but me was terribly excited about it, but I felt pretty confident that everyone would enjoy it once we got there. I had read a couple of children's books about Renaissance art and really thought the kids might be interested in comparing some of the techniques and characteristics of Renaissance art to the prior style of the middle ages. Our hotel had a great collection of guide books that guests could borrow (what a great idea, I had never seen that before), and I found a Rick Steves book called Mona Winks: Self-Guided Tours of Europe's Top Museums. The tour of the Uffizi in the book was perfect for our needs; it boiled the museum down to some easy to understand themes, gave us specific pictures to look at, and took us on a path that ensured we saw a good chunk of the museum and the most important pieces. Moreover, unlike the gigantic Louvre the Uffizi is relatively small and manageable. We thought one museum was enough so we chose not to visit the Accademia, with its Michelangelo statues, on this trip.

Can you believe the size of this line? We must have waited at
 LEAST a minute.

The Uffizi is known for its entrance lines - often 3 or more hours long - but on Christmas Eve we walked right in! I was carrying Mona Winks and while the book was a little outdated and some of the art had been moved, for the most part we followed the path and got some really interesting commentary on the art we saw. The kids probably wouldn't admit it but I think everyone was interested, learned some things, and saw art that was sometimes beautiful, sometimes gross, and sometimes funny.

Christ's blood literally pours out and is caught
by angels

We thought this medieval baby Jesus looked a
little like Chucky and were freaked out
that he appears to be holding a dead bird.

There is a gorgeous view of Ponto Vecchio from the gallery. The red tiled
roof covers a passageway that was the Medicis' private walkway between
home (Palazzo Pitti) and work (Palazzo Vecchio).

What is up with the scary reptile in between the two kneeling figures???

This beautiful Madonna and Child with Two Angels
by Filippo Lippi was held up as a prime example of Renaissance
art because of the three-dimensionality and real human qualities
of the figures and the landscape in the background.
Mary doesn't need the artist to paint a medieval golden halo over
her head to let us know she's holy. As Rick Steves says, "She
radiates sweetness and light from her divine face."
 

We had a good laugh over the translation in this sign; we
practiced introducing a bottle: "Carter, meet my Coke
bottle." Coke bottle: "Nice to meet you, Carter."
Museum guard: "Out! Out! You are not allowed to
introduce bottles in the gallery!!"

You wouldn't want to do a chest bump with this guy!

Leonardo da Vinci's Annunciation

Reading from the guidebook in front of Botticelli's Birth of Venus

After the Uffizi we told the kids they could take a break. They went back to the hotel room and enjoyed themselves reading and playing computer games while Dan and I went out to see some more of Florence. Hooray for the kids being old enough to do this!!! I went first to the Mercato Centrale, the big central market, to look around and possibly buy some snacks because we were worried that we might not find anyplace open to eat on Christmas Day. I bought some pears that ended up being delicious, but mostly just wandered around looking at all the stalls selling vegetables, fish, meat, cheese, pasta, etc.

A moment alone on the steps to the top of the Campanile

After I left the market I climbed the 414 steps to the top of the Campanile, the bell tower next to the Duomo and waited at the top for sunset. There weren't too many other people which was a very good thing, because the stairway is circular and narrow and there is a part at the top where the people coming up and down have to use the same staircase. Since my ticket was also valid for a climb to the top of Brunelleschi's Dome on the top of the cathedral, I descended from the bell tower and then went right back up the 463 steps to the top of the dome. It was a good workout! I found Dan up there and we came down together and went to the Baptistery, inside which are mosaics and artwork galore.

View of the Duomo from the top of the Campanile

Judgement Day depicted in the Baptistery: the Devil eats the damned

It was time to rejoin the kids and head out for Christmas Eve dinner. I had a reservation at another recommended restaurant, Trattoria al Trebbio. We enjoyed a nice, festive but casual meal and went back to the hotel to get ready for Santa.

Christmas Eve dinner

The next morning we awoke to excitement in the air. The kids came to our room to wake us up at the appointed "no earlier than" hour. The stockings had been laid in the hallway with care the night before, and packages were now sticking out of them. We carried them to the kids' room, where the tree was, and emptied them. I think Carter and Haley were somehow expecting a big pile of presents from Santa and they were a bit disappointed that, besides filling their stockings, all he left them was a note saying that some presents had been delivered in Berlin. But they hid it well, or got over it quickly. We opened the few presents we had brought for each other and put under the tree, and these generated enough excitement to make it a successful morning of gifts. 

Stockings on the ledge in the hallway outside our 2
hotel rooms, which were right next to each other. There was
only one other guest at the B&B and they were completely
on the other side of the building, so we had this space to
ourselves.

Carter digs into the new Rick Riordan book he
asked for

A hotel room Christmas

 

Merry Christmas!

After Christmas morning room service breakfast, we dressed up for church. Dan wanted to go to the service at the Florence Cathedral, sung in Italian Gregorian chant. I chose to go instead to an English speaking church service so I could sing Christmas carols, my favorite part of Christmas morning, and the kids went with me. 

After church we grabbed a quick bite to eat from one of the sandwich shops open on Christmas day and strolled around town. It was actually more crowded Christmas day than the previous days and there were lots of shops open. We walked across town to Michelangelo Point, a broad terrace with views over the city, designed by Guiseppe Poggi in 1869. We enjoyed the stroll and the view, took some pictures, sat in the sun, relished Christmas Day in Florence with nothing pressing to do and nowhere else to be.

Posing at Michelangelo Point

On the way back to our room we decided to stop for gelato. One store we passed had a line of people out the door so we figured it had to be good. We stood in line for maybe 45 minutes but were rewarded with what we all agreed was the best gelato we had ever had. It was creamy and flavorful and excellent in every way. If you find yourself in Florence you absolutely must visit Gelateria Edoardo! The cinnamon gelato was to die for.

We spent the evening relaxing and packing our bags to head to southern Tuscany in the morning.

They do things differently here

Sunrise by school

That's a dumb title for a blog post because, duh! I've been writing for the last year about things that are new and different, things that I'm learning, things I have had to get used to. But sometimes it still surprises me how different the process is to accomplish everyday tasks here vs. in the US. I wonder which things a person who is an expat living in the US would find confusing and overly complicated compared to the way it is done back home??

The gals in my running group this morning

Today after my Friday morning run, (gratuitous photos - it was a beautiful morning!) I went to the doctor to get refills on a prescription. Whereas at home I would call Walmart and use their automated system to order a refill, and then go at my convenience to pick up the medicine all packaged up and waiting for me in a nice orange bottle with a childproof white cap with my name and dosage on the label, here the process is different. I learned this last year so I'm an old pro now. I went to the doctor during "talking hours" and asked at the reception for a new prescription (each time I go I get a 3 month supply). They print a piece of paper with my info and the medication info and then take it in to the doctor who either signs it or says she wants to see me first. Today she just signed it so I was on my way quickly. Then I take the paper to the small pharmacy by my house. They don't keep much medicine on the premises and have to place an order for most prescriptions. But wherever they order from is somewhere very local, because it arrives the same day. So I hand over the paper at the pharmacy and they tell me to come back this afternoon after 4 to pick up the medication. When I pick it up it will be in the box that it presumably comes from the factory in, no personalization or dosage instructions or anything. The pharmacist just hands it to you and you hope you remember how the doctor instructed you to take it! Now that I know how this process works, it was easy to do. But it still strikes me as being so different from what I'm used to.

Since that errand went so quickly, I decided to tackle a second errand that I have been putting off for a couple of months. This errand I have never done in Germany and I knew there would be a learning curve. This new errand was...an oil change. I mentioned in November that my car has been alerting me for a while that it needs an oil change and inspection. When I asked around, I was told to go to the dealer for service on the car. I was hoping to be able to make an appointment online so I wouldn't have to communicate with anyone in person, but no such luck. While procrastinating over the last few weeks, I noticed that an auto shop I have never paid attention to before is located on a corner not far from our house and they advertise oil changes and inspections. So today I decided that since I didn't need to be anywhere for a few hours I would drop by and see if maybe I could accomplish this.

This errand started out inauspiciously, since the shop is on a corner and I didn't know which street the entrance was on. I realized during a red light that I was in the left left-turn lane and I needed to be in the right. When the light turned I started slowly to let the first car beside me go by and then sped up to change to the righthand left turn lane and make my right turn immediately into the shop. This caused me to cross in front of a bus who, while far enough behind me to make this driving manoeuvre not totally unsafe, nevertheless was close enough for its driver to think that I shouldn't have done it and to voice his displeasure with a loud and protracted honk. Oops.

Shaking it off, I found the entrance and waited my turn for a serviceman to free up. When one did, our conversation went something like this (all in German):
Auto man: Good day.
Me: Good day. I need an oil change.
Auto man: Do you have an appointment?
Me: No, do I need one?
Auto man: Yes.
Me: Okay, then I'd like to make one for next week.
Auto man: Your papers please?
Me: Huh?
Auto man: I need the papers for your car.
Me: What papers?
Auto man: {indecipherable German}
Me: Hmmm. I don't know what that is. Let me go look in the car.

I went to the car and opened the glove compartment. I didn't see much but I grabbed the car's manual and the insurance papers and went back inside. The man looked through the manual and didn't find what he was looking for. He rejected the insurance papers.

Auto man: I need the {long German word that is probably the multi-syllabic name of some bureaucratic document}.

He pulls out his wallet and shows me a well-worn green folded paper that looks like nothing I have ever seen before. So apparently I can't get my oil changed without the official German documentation!

Me: When would I get this document? Who gave this document to me?
Auto man: You get it when you buy the car. Is this your car?
Me: Yes, this is my car.
Auto man: Let's go to your car.

We both walked out to the car. He looked behind the driver's and passenger's visors and then inside the glove compartment. He pulled out a small black wallet-y thing that had a folded paper in it with Dan's name on it. I had seen this when I had looked earlier but had dismissed it because it had Dan's name on it so I thought it was his driver's license.

Auto man: (laughing) This is the paper.
Me: I have never seen that paper before.
Auto man: It's a good thing the police never stopped you. You have to show this to the police if they stop you.
Me: Maybe they could have looked in my glovebox and found it. (I actually didn't say anything this complicated. What I actually said is "Maybe they find it." But this longer English sentence is what I actually meant.

We then went back inside and now that he was in possession of the necessary paperwork, he proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes or so typing things on the screen interspersed with periods of thinking.

Auto man: Do you want an oil change or an inspection which includes the oil change?
Me: My car says I need to do both. How much does it cost?
Auto man: I'm working on figuring that out.

Finally he showed me what he had come up with on the screen and I went into sticker shock. This was no $30 Jiffy Lube Signature Service. Two hundred thirty-seven euros! The replacement oil was 103 Euros! Plus 15 euros for the filter, plus the labor, plus the other charges for the inspection. Dan reminded me later that gas here is about 4 times more expensive than in the US, so it makes sense that oil, a different petroleum product, would be about 4 times as much. But wow!!

The man began to explain each line item to me and at this point he pretty much completely lost me because my German is nowhere near where it needs to be to understand a lengthy treatise on auto inspection and repair.  I did understand that about 45 euros of the total amount was for changing the air filter and cabin air filter. My Dad taught me that Jiffy Lube always tries to charge you an exorbitant amount for changing those for you but you can go buy the part at an auto supply shop and fix it yourself for half the cost. I also know that often the guys at Jiffy Lube will honestly tell you that they checked the filters and they were fine and didn't need replacing. So I tried to ask this guy if they always charge the money and replace the filters or if they only do it if they need replacing. I think he told me that the manual recommends replacement every two years. I tried to tell him that I bought the car only a year ago and it was the German equivalent of "certified pre-owned", so I thought the dealership had the car fully serviced before I bought it. Our conversation was deteriorating at this point because he was no longer making any attempt to dumb down his German or speak slowly for me, plus the technician next to him was also speaking in German to the person sitting with him at his desk, and all the German was combining in my ears and I couldn't make out what my guy was saying vs. what the guy next to him was saying. So my guess as to what my guy answered is that the dealership should have marked in the service record section of the book if they had done any service, and since it wasn't recorded there then it hadn't been done. But it's possible that that may not bear any resemblance whatsoever to what he actually said. He talked some more and I just gave up and said "Okay" because really - what choice did I have? I could have walked out and gone to the dealership and gone through this process again to see if maybe I could find the service package cheaper somewhere else. But is it really worth it? In the end I'm at their mercy and have to trust that they aren't going to cheat me too badly and that they will do what is needed for the car. He told me they will call me if they find anything wrong and need to authorize additional expenses, and I'm already dreading receiving and trying to decipher that phone call...

I made an appointment to drop the car off Monday night and have the service done next Tuesday. Hopefully all will go well and I can check this task off my list for another year!

Christmas in Tuscany, part 1

I haven't written a blog in a month! December is a busy month here as it is everywhere else. Mostly in December I was doing the same things everyone in the US was doing - shopping, wrapping and mailing gifts, attending Christmas parties, doing end-of-year stuff at the kids' school, waiting for the kids to finish Christmas pageant practice, etc. One thing that was different for me than people in the US is that Carter and Haley's school was out on December 11! So they were home with me while I tried to accomplish all the Christmas tasks.

A visit from the McKearnans, a Missoula
family now living in Doha, Qatar

Christmas market: what's not to love about cotton candy
as big as your head?

Carter as one of the 3 wise men

We went ice skating on one of our holidays
in Berlin

The spread of yummy stuff when we hosted
Dan's boss's family for a Christmas tea

Now we have just returned from a lovely and long vacation in Italy. I will write about it in parts like I did for our France trip so it isn't as overwhelming for you to read and for me to write! Here are some initial observations:

• Everyone should visit Tuscany in wintertime! The landscape is beautiful, the weather was nice, and the crowds were very light. There were very few foreigners traveling; it was just us with a lot of Italians. In fact, one night on our way to dinner a man walking near us heard us speaking English and stopped us and said "You're American and you're visiting Italy in December??" It was definitely our preference to visit off-season. I'm pretty sure we would go insane with the summer crowds. 
• We got very lucky with the weather. I knew when I booked the trip that there was a chance that it could be chilly and raining much of the time, but the vacation was so long that I figured even if the weather was bad part of the time that it couldn't be bad the whole time. I figured we would hang out in our room and have family time and play board games, and we were staying in an area known for its thermal spas so I figured we would visit them a lot. As it turns out, the weather was a little cloudy the first couple of days, but was really beautiful after that. There was some fog that made for interesting pictures and we always climbed above it to visit the little hill towns. It was cool and even cold, especially in the evenings, but with the bright sunshine we were able to sit outside and eat afternoon lunches in the sun on a couple of days and we spent lots and lots of time outside touring and recreating. It didn't rain until the day we flew home. That day was cold and rainy and completely socked in with fog. We would have had a very different trip if our weather had been like that the whole time.
• Italian food is so delicious. I never got tired of it and in fact was sad to leave because I felt like I hadn't had enough pasta, and I never once got to try a risotto. I don't think I have ever had a vacation before where I ate the same type of food for so many days in a row. 
• Spending Christmas abroad turned out okay. We have always spent Christmas either at home or at the home of family, and Carter wasn't happy about leaving our tree, our presents, our pets, and our house behind. About a week before our trip I pressed him to tell me exactly what was bothering him. In tears he told me that to him, Christmas is sleeping in your own bed and coming downstairs Christmas morning in your PJs to see what Santa brought. And where will Santa put the presents if there's no tree? My heart broke, and I wondered if I was depriving my kids of precious moments in their lives. As it turned out though, it seems that what was important about Christmas was that we were together. There was still excitement even though the pile of presents was very small. We found an English church service and sang carols Christmas morning. We spent the day together. A couple of times the kids said "It doesn't really feel like Christmas", but not really in a sad way. I think next year we'll stay in Berlin for Christmas, but I think this experiment worked out fine.

Presents under the tree; Haley eats breakfast

Now for the trip. On December 22 we flew to Florence, Italy. About a week before the trip and after my conversation with Carter I had called the small bed and breakfast where we would be staying for Christmas and asked if there was enough space in our room to put a Christmas tree, thinking Florence would be like Berlin where there are Christmas tree stands everywhere and we could buy a small tree and set it up in our room. I was surprised and delighted when Francesco told me that he would get a tree for us and he would set it up in the room! He also said that they weren't fully booked and for just a little more money he would allow us to have two rooms instead of one so we could have extra room for the tree and the gifts and the luggage and to relax on Christmas day. Wonderful! So when we arrived in Florence and saw the rooms, not only had they bought a tree for us but they had also decorated it with festive red ornaments! It was perfect.

I would recommend this place to anyone visiting Florence - Soggiorno Battistero. The location was perfect - literally right next to the Duomo in the main square. I had ordered a view room that looks out on the square but Dan couldn't sleep the first night because of the noise. So they allowed us to switch to a larger, quieter room on the other side. Breakfast each morning was brought to us in the room, a simple meal of packaged foods - brioche, yogurt, a hard-boiled egg if you asked for it, and coffee, tea or hot chocolate. We got sick of the same thing each morning, but you couldn't beat the convenience and Florence doesn't really have bakeries and breakfast on every corner the way Berlin and Paris seem to. We wondered why the hotel didn't at least go out and get fresh pastries in the morning instead of serving the packages, but the owner of our B&B in southern Tuscany told us that it's actually the law that B&Bs have to serve food that is pre-packaged. (She didn't follow this law - she made us amazing fresh cakes each morning, but told us that if anyone ever came to check on it then she would get in trouble.)

A modern ad next to an ancient arch

On our first day in Florence we saw the sights right nearby: the magnificent Duomo, the huge tree and nativity scene set up in the square, the beautiful bronze doors of the baptistery. We wandered over to the Ponte Vechhio and then strolled through the Medici's Boboli Gardens. We took a lot of pictures because everything was so pretty - the old stone buildings, the Arno River, the soft winter light. The weather was fine: cloudy but not very cold. The city was decorated beautifully for Christmas - lighted bells or stars or curtains of lights were strung from wall to wall on the narrow streets.  In fact, everywhere we went in Italy was decorated like this and it made it feel very festive.

A panel from Ghiberti's bronze door of the Florence baptistery

Pretty bells hang overhead

Taking a shower in front of the big "bathtub" in the Boboli Gardens

Dan and Carter atop the staircase as the sun peeked out

On the Ponte Vecchio

A gorgeous gown in the costume museum
at the Medici's palace/gardens

L to r: Baptistery, cathedral, tower

After the gardens we told the kids we had a 4:00 appointment to tour one of the famous old theaters in town. This brought Carter to tears. "Touring" is a bad word in our house, and he felt like he had already withstood all the touring he could manage for the day. He whined and snuffled all the way to the Odeon Cinema where we surprised the kids with tickets to the new Star Wars movie. Gotcha! The movie was in English with Italian subtitles, and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. After the last three Star Wars movies I had very low expectations, but I thought this movie was really great and it stirred up a lot of nostalgia for the good old days of Star Wars.

Relief!

We finished this great day with what was perhaps our best meal in Italy. I had made a reservation at a highly recommended restaurant, La Giostra, and it did not disappoint. Pear and pecorino salad, Florentine steak, and a bunch of other yumminess. Everyone went to bed happy, full and tired and we awoke to Christmas Eve the next morning.