A little work, a little play, a little food.

A little plaque of ours has been hooking up the vent above the stove.  Guess how you say "vent" in German.  Yep.  That's right.  Dunstabzugshauber.  Try explaining what you want to the guys at OBI and BauHaus when you have to use that word several times.  Well, that's what I did 5 different times over the course of 3 weeks time.

 First, we got outfitted with a huge metal accordian pipe.  Scott and Mike took one look at that thing and said it looked awful.  I went back the next week and got set up with this monstrocity pictured above, and ordered a board to go over the whole thing to help it look more finished.  I also picked up a smaller white circular tunnel, but we decided that that would look like we had a drier above the kitchen.  Mike suggested we search for a smaller canal.  So, I went AGAIN to the store for more pieces. 

After I forced Scott to make a trip to OBI himself, we ALMOST had it.  I made one more trip to Bauhaus for 2 more connectors, and we were finally in business.   Here's the final set up:

It still has a huge pipe coming out of the wall, but as you can see here from the kitchen entrance, with a little clock in front of it, it's almost completely covered.  So, we'll get some decoration for the corner, and we're good to go!

We had a lovely Saturday in Bonn Germany last Saturday.  Some friends of ours that we met from Northwood last year, Katharina and Sabastian, are from Bonn.  They are moving to Florida in September.  So we made a trip for a 2 fold purpose.  To see friends and check out the town, and to purchase some of their stuff, since they need to clear out, and we need almost everything! 

 So, we had a lovely German lunch at their home with Sausage and Kartoffelsalat (Potato Salad) and went sightseeing along the Rhine and in the city center.  The cathedral there is really beautiful.  They even had a bouncehouse in the city center that day next to Bethoven (who was born in Bonn)

After that we stuffed our rental car full of stuff, which we were delighted to have and gave them some breathing room to pack some more.  What a fun day!

 Katharina highly recommended the bakery by the Bethoven statue too.  I decided to just get the most German bread I could (which Katharina and the baker both agreed that their favorite was the Vollkorn bread.)  Here she is.  It's thick stuff!  The baker warned me when I ordered it, that the machine can't cut the loaf, so I had to cut it at home.  She wasn't kidding!  This stuff is like grains just pressed together. 

You might wonder how one gets her children to eat such bread.  Here she is....the best spread your taste buds have ever experienced.  Speculoos.  Everyone knows about Nutella (or Nutoka...the no name brand).     It's a hazelnut spread with chocolate.  It's like putting chocolate on your bread.  Super yummy! ...... BUT!!!  Speculoos is one step up on the naughty wagon.  It's just pure cookies, ground up with oil added to make it spread.   Oh my goodness!  It's so delicious!  Makes vollkorn bread a treat!  My kids gobbled it up and asked for more.

A nice perk of our neighborhood: 

During May and June there is a fruit\veggie stand just around the corner from our apartment that sells fresh picked strawberries, white asparagus, and occasionally tomatoes.  The white asparagus is an astronomical price! (8 Euros for a little bundle)  However, the strawberries are the same price as in the grocery stores, but picked that morning, and they taste phenomenal!  We've purchased them several times now.  This is a photo of the ones I bought this week.