Day Three: An Easter Market and Surfing a river...just a couple of things we saw today!!!

First a couple of housekeeping items:

1. All are well, safe, and accounted for.
2. Our new friends from Canada are pretty cool.
3. For the kids reading this tonight, don't worry.  I am using my slingbox to watch the Bruins game.
4. It is in fact Day Three. Our flight was Day 1, our really busy transport day was day two, and here we are.
5. It's 4-1 Good Guys


Let me start by thanking my readers for giving me some early thumbs up on my blog.  I appreciate it.  I am sorry for such a short post yesterday, but we were all a little jet lagged yesterday and the internet wasn't working that strongly.  Here is a brief recap:

We landed in Frankfurt without issue.  We said goodbye to Senora Morando's Bell' Italia tour and headed to our gate.  Our flight was delayed.  We camped out for the moment.  They changed our gate.  We made haste to our new gate.  We got there in time to camp out.  We boarded our flight.  We taxied.  We sat on the tarmac for a long time.  We took off.  We landed about 1.5 hours after we were supposed too.  We met Ele, our tour director, and Joha, our Bus Driver.  We also met 14 friends from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  We drove to downtown Munich and toured Marienplatz.  We went through the Victualmart (an open air market).  We stopped for a quick photo.

A photo of the whole group did not make it across the International Date Line, sorry.

The May Day Pole in the Victualmart

 Our brief jaunt through Marienplatz was meant to be an orientation visit.  Ele wanted us to get a peek at the square in preparation for the following day's free time (That is today, Day #).  The place was pretty busy as the weather was fairly nice.

Sunny Day in Munich

Some Bavarian Architecture 

After our quick tour, we headed off towards dinner.  We were told that dinner would be Goulash.  I described it to the kids as a beef stew kind of thing.  They seemed content with the description.  It was roasted pork on a bed of pasta drizzled with a brown sauce.  They were no longer content with my description, but, for the most part, they enjoyed the meal.  For dessert, a custard was brought to each one to their places.  They thought it was going to be ice cream.  Only a couple of kids admitted to liking it, but I think peer pressure may have contributed to some saying it was gross. After dinner, we headed to our hotel.  We brought our bags to our rooms and had a quick meeting.  Afterwards, we were informed that a local Greek Orthodox church was going to be holding a ceremony outside.  There was a communications issue, but some of us caught a bit of it.

From what I understand, church leaders light a candle and at a certain point, they begin sharing the light.  This continues until all of the candles are lit.  It was neat to see.  When we were headed back towards the hotel, it was nearly 10:30pm.  One really neat thing was that there were so many people there, that they had taken over the street.  It is not a small street...it is really busy (even tonight at 11:30pm), but the people owned it.  So much so, that many of the cars were driving along the sidewalks to make their way home.

At this time, we all went to bed.  We woke up this morning and headed off towards Dachau.  If you haven't already read about our visit there, please click here.

After Dachau, we went to the Market der Sinne: http://www.markt-der-sinne.de/

It was a quaint little market filled with food venders and trinket sellers.  The kids fell in love with a dessert item. Basically, it was warm bread dough, rolled around a stick, glazed with sugar and flavoring.  It was amazing.  Many of us had great experiences communicating in a place with very little English being spoken.  This was an authentic German market.  I bought a new wallet, but declined a subscription to a German newspaper.  The kids were more than willing to try my pommes (French Fries), but no one wanted to taste my curry wurst.  Maybe later on the trip, lol.  On the way out of the market, one of the boys came up to me and told me how much fun he was having...that makes it all worth it.  With the seriousness of Dachau, we needed the Market.  With the food I tried at the market, I needed Mike's Bike Tours. (BTW, Bruins Win!!!)

Not all of took part in the next part of the story...from what I heard, they had a great time exploring Marienplatz and climbing to the top of the tower included in a picture above.  We made our way to meet our new bestie, "Besty."  Besty is a native German who was raised in New Zealand.  He was a handsome young man who made more than one of our young ladies blush.

Besty unlocking our bikes.

We took off.  Well, we slowly started moving.  It was the first time, in a really long time, that many of us had ridden a bicycle.  I had to remind myself which hand controlled which brake on more than one occasion.  I loved ringing the bell warning people of my impending arrival.  Besty asked for a brave volunteer to help him with a dangerous mission...so, naturally, I accepted.  It became my job to stay at the end of the line to make sure that no one got lost or separated...more on that later.

 

Joanie, Colleen, and I needed a reminder on how Bikes work, but we pedaled like champs.

 

The bike tour was great.  Besty was really funny and he took great care of us.  We drove through the English Garden and he made sure to stop frequently.  Because I was at the back of the line, no one saw how winded I got.  We stopped at a waterfall...a man-made waterfall (All of the English Garden is man made).

We also drove past a subtle memorial to the White Rose Society of Munich.  During the rise of the Nazi Party, not all citizens of Germany supported Hitler. The White Rose Society consisted of several students from the Ludwig Maximillian University and their Professor.  They created pamphlets that openly criticized what was happening to their city and their country.  By the time the seventh pamphlet came out, they were caught.  One member confessed and took sole responsibility.  None of his classmates, nor his professor, would allow him to take the fall for the charges.  They all demanded the same treatment as their friend.  The Nazis executed them using the Guillotine.  It is a tragic story, but it speaks to the whole point of our trip.  Even if they didn't realize it at their time, their efforts made an impact.

The White Rose Society Memorial

As we pedaled through the Garden, Besty told us about how people surf in the river.  Many of us did not believe him, but he proved to be honest afterall.  Here are some action shots...many of the kids took video.

It was nuts. Besty explained that it was too early in the spring for him to surf, but that he does in fact do it in the summer time.  We moved on and soon found our tour had ended.  Besty called me to the front of the group and presented an award for my dutiful service to protecting all in our entourage.  I took the liberty of stealing a picture off of the Twitter:

I apologize for the cuss word.  We all got a chuckle.

We met up with the rest of the group and headed off to dinner.  I got a lemonade that tasted and looked an awful lot like Orange Fanta.  I also got some amazing mashed potatoes.  I will reserve comment for the main course until after I post this blog.  Most of the kids were really happy with dinner...except that it did not include dessert.  These kids have a sweet tooth and because I am a sweet group leader, I recommended to Ele that we go to an Ice Cream store.  I received my second round of applause of the day (see above pic for my first).

We finally made our way to the hotel and I scheduled a group meeting at 8:30pm.  Without the kids knowing, Mrs. Alongi and Mrs. Mottola had secretly arranged with the German Easter Bunny to scatter some genuine plastic eggs throughout the hotel lobby and the outside grounds.  I made some brief remarks about the upcoming day and told them of the magical visit from the Bavarian Bunny.  Off the kids went, in a scramble, to find their quota.  I saw one kids poach an egg from the hands of one of his peers (I guess we could call him Eggs Benedict)...another one fried the competition and found all three of her eggs in a flash.  With hard boiled determination, one devil-ish student said, "Oh my, let me find another egg."  To which, another said, "Foo, you to young to find that egg."  Ultimately, they joined forces and all smiles seemed to be Sunnyside Up.

They were eggtastic at finding Eggs

She was so Egg-cited to find a blue egg.

They Egg-zited the hotel to look for Eggs

[Editors Note:  Writing Egg puns is harder than you think]

Hope you enjoyed our day...see you tomorrow!!!

Mr. Lavoie currently eggs-hausted from being so flipping creative with his pun-ative approach to this blog.  Hope you yokes enjoyed it.