Euro days 10,11,12,13: settling in...
Settling into a routine of sorts. Kids went to the very cool Luisenpark (a giant municipal park that has many playgrounds) in Mannheim for a fieldtrip. The next day they tie-dyed shirts and went on a scavenger hunt in the old town. They took a bus down, but they walked up for the return. My daughter lost count after 314 steps (actually only about 15-20 more steps.)
Friday son woke up with a cold and daughter not quite ready to brave camp on her own (she has an English-German dictionary now, so she feels more confident for the next time if it happens), so kids stayed home and drove me a bit batty while I worked (especially since son's cold mysteriously got a lot better an hour later.) Fortunately got son to take a _5_ hour nap in the afternoon. He seems to be cold free now.
Continuing my daily trail mastering. On Friday I was at a little less than 25 minutes. Next week I will see if I can improve my time. If I get good enough that I don't notice how steep it is, I'll have to go down and then back up. We'll see.
Today we went to the Speyer Technik museum. Lots of aircraft up high on posts at acute angles with access via staircases (straight and spiral.) Not for acrophobes. The planes were of different vintages from different couniries - fighter and commerical. For some planes you had to lean quite a bit while walking inside. For the Lufthansa 747, they let you walk on on the wing (with safety railing on all sides including overhead so you couldn't fall off). The 747 as well as another plane had the option that you could take a _slide_ down (you ride special mats that reduced your speed some and there is also a long exit slope at the end so you don't shoot out at the bottom bowling over other tourists.) Those fighter aircraft were sure not long on creature comforts (hard bench seating with a metal back from a folding chair anyone?) The museum also had a small amusement park section with self service rides (1 euro per ride! Two of the rides were a tyrolean and a boat thing. The boat thing ratcheted you up a long slope then let you rush down until you got to the end where there was an small incline which launched you airborne into a body of water. The boat thing has a cable so you then get winched back to the entry point. The museum also had spacecraft (space shuttle), cars, trains, fire engines throughout the ages, vintage construction machinery (a _steam_ steam roller), motorcycles, etc. Highly recommended.