Flashback: July 20-31

During today's trip to Nürnberg it was noted that Samuel is logging an awful lot of travel at a very young age. The question we are currently investigating (in dramatically spaced installments) is: How many miles/kms does Samuel have per day of life? This is, you might be saying, a rerun-ploy as lame as any flashback clip-episode of the Simpsons, but there you have it. As Gian Carol Menotti once wrote: "To this we've come."


Shortly after his one month birthday, Samuel (not Menotti), was still a little guy. But we all loaded up in his uncle Tom's civic and drove to Cleveland for the Young Composers Program where we were teaching teenagers about composing.

With all of the craziness that goes with a week-long camp for teenagers, we all felt relieved that Grandma Betsy came up to help take care of the hungry little beast. The program was quite a success. Quotes from our survey included stuff like "the most fun and exciting week out of the year" and "I did not feel like a sheep like I did at Interlochen." Certainly the most popular part of camp was Grandma Betsy's Snack Hour (TM), where students didn't notice they were being treated like sheep...or they just didn't care.

Boston, MA -> Cleveland, OH (665 miles • 1073 kms)
July 21st Totals: 39 days of life. 665 miles, 17 m/day • 1073 kms, 27 km/tag


After finishing that extravaganza, we piled into the car for another road trip. This time to Louisville, Kentucky, where Peter showed Karola and Sam the house where he grew up. They also took a dip in the pool where he learned to swim, Lakeside:

But the real fun was in seeing our old family friends the Moores, who threw us a great party on July 30th. Many thanks to Beverly, Gerald, Kevin, Jocelyn & Colin for taking such good care of us! And thanks also to all the friends who turned up. If people from that party have photos they can email us, that'd be great!

Cleveland, OH -> Lousiville, KY (370 miles • 596 kms)
July 29th Totals; 47 days of life. 1035 miles, 22m/day • 1669 kms, 36 km/tag

Journeying tomorrow

For what seems like the 97th time, we are taking off on a trip. Tomorrow for Nürnberg for the first orchestra rehearsals of Dunkelrot. You can find some links about the opera at Karola's new web site... [ahem]... NEW Web Site: karolaobermueller.net. Anyway, self-promotion aside, we will be leaving Darmstadt where we have lived, worked, eaten, slept, and peed all over (you can attribute whichever of these to whomever as you see appropriate). Oma&Opa's house has been a very lovely residence, full of good food and many many cakes to coincide with afternoon coffee.

Today we a very nice afternoon with three of Samuel's tanten (Aunts), an onkel and two cousins.

From left to right: Cousin Jakob, Tante Marion, Tante Sabine, Oma Barbara • Opa Volkfried, Cousine Pauline & Tante Margrid.

And of course, Onkle Hartmut:


Here is a close up of that cake: Baumkuchen (Tree Cake) which is tall, hollow and has rings in the cake, like a tree. Unlike a tree's rings, however, these rings do not tell you how many years old the cake is.



If that's not enough (and it probably is), here is a somewhat bizarre 360° view of the garden at Sachsenstraße 18, where such cakes are to be had:

[and you may have to stretch out your browser to the whole thing. Oh well.]

OK, Time for bed! See you soon, hopefully.

3 Months / Back to blogging

Hello everyone! It is very good to be back (unless you didn't notice that we were gone in the first place). We have been on the road and visiting with friends and family. We have been living all kinds of good blog material--so much, in fact, that we haven't had time to blog about it all. So we will be back-posting the last months in flashback segments, basically as a way of covering up for the slow days in the near future.

But back to the day at hand. Sam turns 1/4 today. And how does one celebrate the big one-slash-four? Why, by taking a kinderwagen ride with Oma, of course.


And then you round the day out with a concert.



Incidentally playing recorder for Samuel has a kind of snake-charming effect on him. By which I mean it seems to help him with his poops. I don't know if that's what goes on in snake-charming also, but that's the kind of hypnosis that goes on in our house.

PS The movie from last post has been modified so as to work with Quicktime on PCs. Sorry about that.