rope. tree. fan. spear. snake. wall.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

desperation drives alala to do mad-crazy things...

Yet another two-week holiday in Bavaria, they just had one for Easter and now it's Pentecost. For the Easter holiday we did abso-feckin'-lutely nothing, except I almost killed my children for being toxically annoying. Fighting, whining about being bored, clamoring to watch ever more TV (so sue me, I said yes. I certainly wasn't going to entertain them myself) got SO OLD after two weeks. This time? They were already at it on the Sunday, which was not even technically the holiday yet. Gargh!

So today I dragged the kids to the train station and bought train tickets to Zirndorf so the Sniglet and I can visit the Playmobil Funpark. Oh but it's even worse. To get there on the train is such an odyssey, such a chaotic mess of connections that the day's half over when you get there. So we will go Have Fun™ for about six hours, and then we will sleep in a hotel so that we can to back in the morning for more Fun™! Ugh. Have you figured out yet that I hate theme-parks? And then we will catch a mind-boggling variety of transport media home. Bus! Walk! Regional train! Express train! Run! Another regional train! And then the car, because even though the train station is only a mile from the house, I will be a gibbering wreck and will definitely need a ride.

All this because, even though I went to all the trouble and expense of marrying a German, and we know the Germans are notorious travelers, I appear to have landed one of the non-traveling sort. Other Germans use their weeks and weeks of vacation time: we are spending one (lousy effing) week in Croatia this August.

We get holidays out the wazoo, but our family doesn't use them because a certain Husband is always, always too busy. Bitter, much? So I have accepted that if I want it to happen I have to do it myself, but I am unable to cope with two squabbling children on my own in a foreign city. Yeah. So a couple years ago I took Ignatz to Amsterdam, just the two of us. I think he was eight. A bit later we went to Paris with my mom, but she was so decrepit she wound up spending most of the trip on this tour bus, so it turned out to be another Ignatz-n-me adventure. And I was thinking it may be time for another one, but the Sniglet is now old enough to recognize the fundamental unfairness of this tradition, so I have to start taking him places too. And I am beaten down enough by now to accept that what is fun for a five-year-old is a theme park. Gah. So this is not just a day out, it's basically the Sniglet's vacation.

I'm trying to put something together for me and Ignatz for next week. I started with Dublin, but I didn't jump on the cheap airfare fast enough, and now it's up to €660 (about $850). Ditto Helsinki. I'm thinking of Vienna, but that's a bit anticlimactic, since we already live in a German-speaking, schnitzel-eating part of the world. It's a bit like visiting Canada when you live in Washington.

Well, I guess we'll see. We'll see if I survive the Playmobil thing first...

2 comments:

KimberlyDi said...

Keep your sanity!

I understand about disappointment, ref: husband being gone all the time. You make the best of what you got in life. Your kids have a great mother.

~d said...

Hang in there chicka-log on to find major support, alala! (((HUG!)))