Name That Tune and Other Observations - Part 2

I am completing part two of this post right after part one. Any comments or questions will be answered at a later date.

So where were we?

How about more about the school? Today (Friday) was school spirit day. All of the kids were supposed to wear blue and white. When we arrived to drop off the kids some of the upper class girls were at teh main entry gate with music blaring, dancing and singing. They were also offering to put face paint on all of the kids. This was not full out designs and such, just blue and white streaks or BIS letters on the forehead. David and Katherine both refused and went on in to the building. Katherine tells me that she went back later and had some put on, but washed it off soon after because "it felt weird when it dried". The older kids were really having fun with it and pumping up the other kids. It was fun to see. It is really a huge relief how much the kids are liking the school. David never really recovered from moving to Allen from Coppell. He never really claimed to like his school in Allen too much. He is having fun and making friends here and says the days go by pretty fast. He is also making a name for himself as the Mine Craft expert in the school. I have been facinated by the school bus system they have in place. There are no yellow dogs here. It is a variety of vans and buses coming from all over. This is not part of the extensive public transportation system, it appears to be a third party company providing this service. Man do they have a fleet. I have seen buses labeld up to fifty, but I think there are even more than that.

This is the circle drive drop off area for the buses. The background area circles out and has buses stacked up.

There are also several larger buses too. Cindy looked into the cost of this. For both kids over the course of one year it was over 5k euro. If you did it for two years you could buy a car. Since we are only going to be about 7-10 minutes away I think we will continue to drive. It is surprising how many kids come on these buses, I am in the huge minority as a drop off parent. The main road in Haimhausen is still under construction so all of these buses and all cars are still coming down the same narrow winding dirt road every morning and afternoon. It is way out of the way and cuts through some land of a farmer/rancher. I don't think they are real happy about it even though they agreed and/or were compensated some how. Most of the time (out of spite I think) they have some of their equipment in the way and are trying to do something during rush hour that impacts the flow on the dirt road. It is surprising how well the traffic has flowed during this construction time. I am not going to know how to get to the school once tha main road is open again.


Since Monday of this week traffic in Freising has been horrible. Early this week it was due to road construction. Most of these towns have limited access to them. When you are driving along the autobahn you usually get 2-3 choices of exits for a given town. In Freising for example you have Freising Sud (South), Freising Mitte (Middle) and Freising Ost (East). All three of these exits take traffic flows across their respective bridge over the river to get to Freising. Monday they decided to shut down Mitte and tear off the blacktop to replace it. There were no signs or warning that I saw. You could still take the exit for Mitte, but then be stuck in traffic and rerouted on small roads to get to the Ost bridge. The Ost exit is where TI is located so I have been taking it and fighting as little traffic as possible. This is what it looks like when too many cars get on these side roads with nowhere to go.

The latter part of the week and today the traffic increased due to a festival that starts in Freising and lasts throgh next weekend. It took me about two hours to get the kids picked up, get Cindy from TI and back to the apartment. The best I can tell, this festival is a warm up for Octoberfest in Munich. There is a tent that seats over 7000 people and they serve beer. It is not too far from our apartment, we can walk there and will probably check it out at some point this week. We at least need to see what all of the fuss is about since we have to deal with the traffic. Also, we should probably cast our vote for one of the three female finalist in the Volksfest Madl 2013 competition. 

http://www.volksfest-freising.de/volksfest-madl/volksfest-freising-2013-finalistinnen-wahl-freisinger-volksfest-madl-3094562.html

http://www.volksfest-freising.de/service/preise-oeffnungszeiten/

Part of my delay today happened as I left the apartment to get the kids from school. I drove right into the middle of a protest. The first picture was one side of the street, the protestors and the PoPo on the other side. It looked like on the police side they were setting up for a speaking event. There are a lot of political posters all over the place in the last few days. Originally I thought these people were either for or against the person speaking. Then Cindy was telling me about some refugees that have asked for asylum in Germany and are unhappy with their living conditions. These people holding the signs do not look like refugees, but they might have been upset about a news story a few days ago where 140 police in Freising put a stop to a multi day march that was eventually ending up in Munich. There were some injuries and police brutality claims stemming from that event. I really have no idea of this is related. The big banners they are holding translate to say "Freising is Colorful". 

Update on grocery shopping. I am used to the walking and carrying groceries back to the apartment. Bringing glass and plastic bottles back to the store to get the deposit back is a pain. The good news is that Cindy talked to some TI people and she found a very large grocery store next to TI, that also has a location close to our soon to be house. It is almost like a Target store in that it has a large selection of groceries but also has toiletries and other houseware stuff. Almost a one stop shop kind of place. They have aisles and aisles of beer and wine as you might imagine. The store also is in a building with several other stores and eatery places. We stopped at one place and had some very good food on the way out the other day and it was relatively inexpensive. The local places around the apartment are intimidating because the cashier goes into turbo mode scanning the product while I have to bag it (in the bags that I brought with me) and pay and get out of the way of the next person. The cashier does not wait. She starts throwing stuff at me from the next customer if I am not out of the way. Cindy and I observed one tactic against this rushed process. The guy just did not give his form of payment until he had packed away all of his goods and organized them for carry out. Only then did he hand over his debit card. I have not been brave enough to try that one yet. The big store has the grocery carts outside, so you can kid of throw your stuff in the cart, get done paying, then organize as you are in the parking lot by the car. I was also able to buy in more bulk since I was not worried about carrying all of it home. 

Cindy and I were also discussing grocery prices. We really took notice of how much a meal at the apartment vs. eating out was costing us. I paid .19 cents for a table salt refill that would fill an average salt shaker 3-4 times. The pizza that Cindy and I like comes three to a pack for 2.59. We split each pizza so that is like 6 meals, plus the beer of course. The kids found some fish stick they like. I can buy 30 of them, enough for three meals, for about 3 euro. It is still hard to use the apartment kitchen, I cannot wait until we get into our house. We are doing better about eating in as we figure out the grocery thing and what we like. 

Laundry update time. The situation in the apartment is much better than the hotel. The washer and dryer are "owned" so nobody else can use them. They are located in the basement two floors down. The good news is that I don't have to have coins or pay for each load of laundry. Does anyone have experience with a cloths dryer that has no vent? The first time we used the dryer here we could not figure out why the fourth load of laundry was not dry. We just laid out the cloths on our handy air dry rack and let them dry. Well, we found out later this dryer has a plastic container that you ahve to empty. It sucks out the water into this container at the top, where you would put in the detergent if this were a washer. I think I mentioned this once before. Anyway, I am an old pro at the washer and dryer here. I think the new house will have a similar situation.