Day 48 (July 26th): Monchengladbach

Woke up and went to our usual corner bakery for breakfast and brought food back for the kids. The kids must have been really tired since they didn’t get out of bed until 10:45AM. This gave me ample time to crank out a bunch of blogs and catch up. The kids ate their food and relaxed for a while before we decided to do another road trip. I have a listing of all the local castles and chose one that was close by and had a park. If the kids know there is a playground they can be more easily motivated to go. We packed up our water and hit the road. Our destination was Schloss (palace) Monchengladbach located about 25 minutes away. It’s a pleasure having the car parked downstairs at our apartment so we can travel whenever and wherever we like. We found the Schloss and parked the car at a lot two minutes away. We walked over and there was a bridge that crossed a moat that had ducks and fish in it so the kids were excited. They went down to the water and tried pulling the lily plants, not realizing that they were attached to the bottom of the pond. After walking across the bridge we then saw a big mother peacock strolling along with her three babies (see bottom picture). The kids were psyched and demanded I give them my camera to take some pictures. They played for a while and then we made our way into the gift shop (entrance to the park) and walked out through a double glass door to the main grounds. At that point, the kids were amazed to see more peacocks strolling around. Hannah exclaimed, “It’s a peacock palooza”. There were at least seven peacocks just walking around doing their thing. We noted that some of them, probably the males, had pretty colors on them while the females were just one color (see top left picture). The Schloss was painted a salmon color and was nice, but nothing special compared to some of the other Schloss’ we have seen (see second picture from the bottom). The grounds were interesting and we stopped down at the river to look for more fish. I’m not sure how it started, but all of a sudden the kids and I were in an all out berry war. We found a tree that had these little hard berries on it and we started throwing them at each other (see top right picture). I stood behind a concrete wall for protection as the kids made numerous attacks against me. We finished our little battle and exited to the surrounding park that had many trails. We followed one trail and found a strange plant that grew these small red hard tomato type things. The kids wanted to dissect them so we sat down at a bench with a picnic table and the kids went to work. Hannah cut hers open and there were hard seeds inside of it. When Zach cut his open there was a small red inchworm inside, Zach freaked. Hannah picked up the inchworm and started playing with it and made it a little “home”. Zach calmed down and started getting interested in the inchworm also. This kept the kids preoccupied for a while before we decided to hit the trail again in search of a playground. We didn’t find the playground but the kids enjoyed the hike anyway. It was getting late in the afternoon and I wanted to try and find another park that was supposedly not far away. I programmed the address in the Nav system and drove over to the location but could not find the park. We were right next to the entrance to the highway and the kids were tired so we decided to head home. It took about 25 minutes to get home and the kids relaxed until Al came home from work. Rajani and YH joined us for dinner and we ran into Rich (Al’s colleague from work) on the way to dinner. We explored a different part of town that we don’t typically go to and found an Indian restaurant. Rajani is Indian and we let him order the food. We asked for plain grilled chicken for Zach and they tried twice, but both times they put some sauce/seasoning on it that Zach didn’t like it. We ordered some Nam (flat bread) and Nam with butter and Zach ended up eating this as his meal. The rest of us had an assortment of dishes including two different types of rice and a few types of chicken/shrimp dishes in a flavorful sauce. Instead of my usual Heiferwezen, I had an Indian beer called Himalaya beer (ok lager). The meal was fine and we headed next door for our ice cream dessert. Then we went across the street to the Rewe supermarket since Al needed to buy champagne and snacks for her going away party tomorrow. We walked home, said goodnight to everybody and went upstairs to watch Gilmore Girls. For those of you who forgot, one of Al’s colleagues lent us four seasons of Gilmore Girls on DVD. It is the only TV that we have that is in English. The kids showered and everybody went to bed between 12:00 and 12:30 AM.