Weekend with the Cousins

I spent the weekend in Siegen, Which is about 250km North of Stuttgart. It was Erik's 7th Birthday. He had a number of friends over for a party on Saturday and they beat me at Soccer so I beat them up (I'm so much bigger than them, they didn't even have a chance, haha, j/k). I gave Erik soccer goalie gloves for his birthday. I was nervous about the size because I really had no clue how big a 7 year old's hands are. Luckily they fit. Bonus. They just happened to be his team colours too, also Bonus. We raced Erik's new RC car outside and he broke it (the day after he got it) We also set up a slot-car track. Robert and Erik have a sweet slot car track and a ton of cars which Robert tells me is a nerdy hobby, but it was cool to me. Does that make me a nerd?

I got a bunch of stickers for Anne-Marie. I figure you can never go wrong with stickers for a 4 year old girl. Anne-Marie is really funny because she doesn't like speaking English, so I really couldn't understand her most of the time. But I squeezed the odd English sentence out of her. Robert was also a good translator from the next room.
On Sunday we went cycling. The region that they live in has an annual festival where they shut down the autobahn (highway) over a 130km stretch. People cycle or Rollerblade from town to town along the autobahn and every town sets up food shops and stalls along the roadside. It was really an interesting event.

We were really slow at the start because Anne-Marie wanted to cycle and she has a very small bike for her very small legs. When she got tired she rode in the trailer on Robert's Bike with her bike tied to the back. Noelle also has a pole that comes off the back of her bike that can tow Erik's bike if he gets tired. They live at the top of a hill overlooking Siegen, so it was a fun ride down to the autobahn, but on the way back up I felt really bad for Robert who had a heavy load.

We stopped at their favourite Ice Cream shoppe near the end of our journey and had Spaghetti Ice cream. I think that Erik was a little disappointed that he was not allowed to get the Gigantic 6.70 euro plate of ice cream that I wouldn't have even been able to finish. Noelle and Robert let them eat a lot of sweets I noticed, but Tim and I were raised on chocolate and sugar as well, and we turned out OK (we think), so I say go for it.

I had to leave on Sunday night, and I came really close to being stranded at a train station. The first train that I got on in Siegen was late so I missed all of my connections and had to Freestyle my way home. Luckily my Rail pass allows me to use any train I want so it really wasn't that hard to get back to Stuttgart.

The people at work secretly think that I'm crazy because I travel so far every weekend. I guess Europeans aren't use to such long trips. Whereas a 5hr train ride for me really isn't that long. I've decided that every country has its own relative distances. (Eg. A long trip in Switzerland is 150km. A long trip in Germany is 300km. A long trip in Canada is 1500km or more.) So when you tell someone from a different area how far you are going they will think that you are crazy on their own individual length scale.