Scot with one 't'

I chuckle when I see the examples throughout Deutsche society. The American influence. Can’t call it white bread.  Can’t call it plain bread.  So why not call it American bread.  I suppose the origin comes from the fact that backereis (bakeries) are as ubiquitous to Bayern towns as church steeples are to Vermont villages.  Every small town has at least one and usually more than one.  And nearly all grocery stores have an in-store bakery and a bakery at the front of the store run under a different name.  With such great crusty bread baked daily, I guess our preservative based store shelf bread is unique to our culture. As…

In many ways moving to Europe is like moving back in time. As in, ‘what are credit cards’?  As in, always hearing a jingling in your pocket as you walk down the street.  As in, always having to check your seat as you get up to pick up any and all coins you deposited due to shallow pockets. These European Unionists LOVE their coins.  Like the greenback?  Forget it.  There is no Euro bill, just a Euro coin.  And a two Euro coin.  And think having pennies is good enough?  Not for Europeans.  They have a 2 cent coin.  I’m surprised they don’t have a 1/2 cent coin. Every few…

There are many things I love about our 450 year old home but the mice are not one of them.  After three confirmed kills the previous week, I heard the little buggers racing through the walls above me as well as chewing the wall next to where we sleep.  Enough so that I was no longer sleeping. The next day I placed these three traps and had two confirmed kills the next day.  Guess what I did not hear last night–racing and gnawing.

27 OCTOBER 2019 So the children came back from school with their school photograph proofs earlier this year.  Julia loved them.  What we didn’t like was the price.  Crazy isn’t it?  I believe in compensating professional photographers for their work but $40 for a few wallet size hardly seems fair.  Especially when you have three children.  $120 for a few photos of the children in front of a green screen background?  Why?  Not when you live in one of the prettiest places in Europe. So I made Julia a promise. I promised to get the children dressed up in their traditional Bayern lederhosen and drindls. I promised to take them…

OCTOBER 21, 2019 We arrived 15 July and this was the first day the entire family was able to ‘take it easy’ (okay, it was the first day Jules was able to take it easy with the rest of us). We took advantage of the lazy day by taking a ten mile bicycle ride along the Naab river.  Note that Acadia is on the sidewalk while Hunter and Eva ride in the street.  Deutsche law. Some of the country roads are bicycle, pedestrian, horse only.  Some allow automobile traffic.  Regardless, you can navigate along these roads with very little traffic.  However when those few cars appear, you can guarantee they…

Deutschland represents a number of firsts for our family.  Among them is the first time Hunter, Eva, and Acadia have attended a Department of Defense school.  Like all schools there is both good and bad.   Hohenfels Elementary School is reminiscent of a small Vermont town elementary school.  Nestled among the changing autumn leaves where most people know each other because your child is in either their child’s class or they do gymnastics together or they did a library even together.  How do the kids get to school?  Why in a luxury bus of course.  No yellow school buses here.  There is a fleet of luxury buses that span out across…