More Summer Fun and Deutschland ist Weltmeister

Busy time right now around here. I wanted to get a post up so I don't get too far behind. I am thinking not as much typing as usual.

So the first Wednesday of the school holiday was Legoland Deutschland. The second week it was rainy for several days. We were going to go for the bowling and mini golf place but decided on Jimmy's Fun Park at the last minute. It is about a thirty minute drive northwest from our house. It is a large indoor play area.

This was my view for most of the visit. They had couches with foot stools that are way more comfortable than the rental furniture that we have in our house. Above is Katherine climbing the plastic volcano and below is a very short video of the sliding down the outside area, and not the actual slide. 

This place had a go kart area, bumper boats. trampolines, climbing areas, jungle gyms, climbing walls, etc. As you might expect in Bavaria there was a biergarten in the middle of it all. No beer for me on this trip since I did not want to lose my place on the couch and it was a long drive home.

So not too many pictures but the kids still spent about six hours here with no problem.

Geocaching:
A German dad from the baseball team told me about this activity. It is worldwide and I am not sure why I have not heard about it before. There are these boxes of various size hidden all over the place with a central website and mobile app to help locate them. We have gone out a couple of times on the bicycles to try this out. It is a great way to get the kids away from the computer and outside doing something fun. The first day that we went we did not have much luck. In Germany all of the geocaches are listed.........in German. The mobile app does not have a translation function built in so it was rough. We did find one of them but it was empty. The last one that we tried to find left all four of us deep in the overgrowth of the forest getting bitten, scratched, hot, and not much fun; and we never found it.

The second time we tried we did our research at home and headed out.

We knew this one was in a "small one bedroom apartment with a stone door" and that it was across the stream from a V shaped tree. So this is how this works......the one bedroom apartment with a stone door meant that it was in a hole covered up by a rock. A geocache like this has small items in it that you can take as long as you replace it with something similar. Once you find it you sign the log book in the box and you sign it on the app electronically too. We did not bring any small items to replace so we just left it as is and signed the log.

Above we found the next one about 12 feet up in the tree. David stood on my shoulders to put it back. Below was a camouflaged box magnetically mounted to the back side of a large tree. So I think we are getting better at finding these. We are going to have to widen our search zone now since we have found most of them in the forest area behind our house and within about 2km.

Bayern Park:
For week three the weather was nice and warm. We drove about 75 minutes to Bayern Park northeast of our house.

This is the best roller coaster that we have seen so far. David rode it while I took Katherine to a couple of other rides. It is called the Freischuetz. Here is the description: From 0 to 80 km/h in 2.3 seconds. Four inversions and three overhead elements. 40 seconds of pure adrenaline on 483 spectacular meters. This is the Freischuetz, our unique Launch-Coaster.

So not yet the Titan or Rockin Roller Coaster from America, but it is pretty good for an amusement park in the middle of nowhere.

This short video has a few of the other rides in the park. 

Katherine sliding while David was on the big coaster. Below both kids were swinging in yet another ride that has no operator. You hold a string inside to get it going. Once you are swinging as high as you want to go you let go. There is a kill switch inside to stop the ride.

Above was another good coaster that Katherine also enjoyed. This place was really beautiful and well kept.

We all rode the toboggan track. 

David was really disappointed that we did not get wet after waiting in line. I was really surprised to see how busy this place was. With the Bavarian kids still in school I thought we would have it to ourselves like Legoland. I think the kids that are further north in Germany were out of school. This place is still in Bavaria, but barely.

Got a little wet on this one, but still not enough for David. We had a very fun day and rode everything they had to offer. As we left there were still bus after bus of people rolling in. It was getting really warm and we had done it all. The crowds were getting worse so the kids were ready to call it a day. Thank goodness.

World Cup:

I am just adding this part into the blog so when we go back and read this years from now we will remember this was going on at the same time. It really has been interesting being in Europe during this event. Knowing and hanging out with a couple that is German and Dutch added to the experience. Germany closed the deal and The Netherlands finished third. We will always remember being in Berlin at the Fan Mile watching Germany play Ghana, hosting some friend at our house, and watching at the local biergarten. Congratulations to Germany, it was fun to be here to see it happen.