Vattenfall Cyclassics

On Sunday I took part in my first cycling race – the 11^th annual Cyclassics, which is a huge event with the top level pro’s riding together with 20,000+ amateur riders. I had a great time and enjoyed the race immensely. I did the middle distance which was 100km and the course was mostly rolling and through some very nice country side. Few downhills in the pack were exhilarating and fortunately I had mo crashes or mishaps. Despite finishing right around my predicted time I think I ran a tactically horrible race and have much to improve for next year.

Germany and culture shock

Culture Shock! The things that we find interesting these days deal with culture adjustment or culture shock. An adjustment is dealing with kids not being welcomed in most dining establishments, unless they are quieter than the adults that is, which somehow many Hamburg children seem to be. Culture shock is dealing with park etiquette - kids hitting and spitting at Sasha and Jonas or splashing me to the point that my dress is soaked. The mothers in these situations tend to either say nothing or vehemently defend their children. Yup, crazy but true. I had hoped that this part of German culture was a myth that the few other foreigners we had met were making up, but a few months into our adventure we have experienced it for ourselves on several occasions.

Other things that make us smile, smirk or grimace...., the worlds worst ketchup and possibly the worlds best mustard, no ice cubes anywhere (except in a mojito:-), beautiful shoe repair, ice-cream for only 80 cents a scoop, beach clubs with no beach in site, never saying "don't worry about the penny" (17.01 better have that one cent), little samples being given as "gifts" from the store, price of entry into a toilet bares no correlation to its cleanliness, meeting really friendly, smiley peple at sports events when in the "outside world" people never smiling despite you greeting them with a beaming smile, people bumping into you without saying sorry, straight men proudly wearing pastels, pink Lacoste and La Martina shirts indicating your status in the Schickeria, the worst cappuccino foam ever, never breaking traffic rules or rules of any kind, Jakub running every red light on his bike just to make things interesting!

Our apartment is beautiful but it lacks a balcony, an essential feature in this heat. All of the older flats in this building have at least 3 balconies so I have been turning a little green. To counter this Jakub grabbed me and a bottle of wine and took me onto our roof. We hid out there one night, right above the sky light in the boys room.









The boys headed to the zoo today to give me a much needed break. I had a great run in the rain and lazed about reading a chic mag and drinking a latte!

Sweden

Few pictures from our trip to Sweden. More to come...

World Cup Recap

So the Czechs started off with a convincing win over the US and everyone saw them as the next champions. For the second game we got all dressed up in national colour and went to watch in the public viewing area - a big plaza with beer and sausages and a really big screen. Before we settled down the Czechs were loosing and never recovered. At least there was still some hope.

For the game against Italy I snagged a ticket on Ebay and witnessed the final defeat at the stadium. The atmosphere was great, fans were all very friendly and the game was entertaining. Great game, wrong result - Italy and Ghana are through, Czechs are going home.
After that we cheered for countries in this order Sweden, Australia, Ghana, Spain, Germany and France and one by one they too were eliminated. At the end only Italy prevailed again... I think they deserved the win but their play was far from stellar. But there celebration sure made up for it.
It was a fantastic month, full of emotion and national pride. Germans embraced their Nation and celebrated the success of their young team with flags everywhere and on everything. Feels like a much more positive expression than the repressed notion that any expression on patriotism equals extremism.

St.Peter- Ording

The mercury has been rising here right along-side World Cup fever. As a result Sasha, Jonas and I decided to escape to the sea, and have Jakub joing us come weekend. We drove north to Sankt Peter - Ording where we had found a small apartment to rent. My German is so fabulous now that I thought I was booking an classic reed roofed house, common in the area. Instead we had the attic of a four-plex that turned out to be hotter than our rooftop apartment in Hamburg! No worries. We spent most of the day on the beach, hidden for the hottest part of the day in our little beach shell and then we had Siesta back at the apartment. We all stayed up late to watch the last of the World Cup games and really relaxed. It was SOOOOO refreshing to let go of schedules! I think I might just become a little more Spanish/Italian in my parenting after all. Well maybe not, since the boys were so tired today they fell asleep at 6:30 pm.

We did have a little glitch in our plans though, my ATM card was demagnetized and I was therefore without and money. No one takes Visa in the small towns and that was my only back-up. I thought this would be so stressful, but in the end, we took what money we had, bought food and enjoyed life. It actually ended up enriching the trip, if you can believe it.

Jakub joined us on Friday, coming by train, and on Saturday he had convinced me, forced me? to do something I have been talking about doing since I was 13 - a triathlon. Yup, I finally did it Mom and Dad. I swam 500m in the sea, road 20km "Gegen den Wind" against the wind as the triathlon is called, and ran 5km. All in all, it was AMAZING! All I can say is, "Why the hec didn' t I do it sooner?".Nicole had a fantastic race, stayed relaxed and obviously had fun the whole way. Despite a thick, rented wetsuite she came in 24th overall and 6th in her age group. Not bad at all for first time.
Not to be outdone I ran a 1/2 marathon the next day. The race was much smaller which explains how I finished 18th overall and 8th in age group. The time was slow 1:50 but part of the race was through a deep sand and long stretches were into a brutal head wind.

As we were leaving a huge storm was brewing on the horizon. We got soaked on the way back to the house but the boys were safely tucked in a bike trailer. The last two pictures are by Jasmine who was also competing at the triathlon and offered to take Nicole on some training rides.