School Updates and Weekend Baseball With Sightseeing Trip

Last time I talked about David's 6th grade trip to Upper Bavaria south of Munich near the Austrian border. After the blog post we received a few images from school that shows some of the activities. I wanted to update that post with these pictures.

They did a team building game that required some thought and creativity to complete, along with team work. David told us about it but we also got some good news from his teachers. A few days ago we had our annual four weeks into the new school year meeting with his teachers. IN years past we have found out about some minor behavior issues and resistance to the changes and new routine of a new school year. We are very proud of David this year as so far he has had great reports. In fact we were told that David exhibited some leadership characteristics during this challenge. The team was not making much progress and everyone was talking, nobody listening. Eventually the kids decided to go with David's ideas on how to complete the challenge. That was so great to hear.

They did lots of activities, these are just the pictures that David was in. 

Below is David's 6th grade homeroom group in their Bavarian Day attire. I think David hid in the back on purpose, he did have his lieder hosen on as we saw last time.

Katherine's teacher and assistant teacher are doing a great job communicating on the class blog. The above picture is also from Bavarian Day at school with Katherine's 1st grade class in front of the school. Katherine is the last kid on the far left. I am impressed, it looks like everyone in the class participated and dressed up. 

We also get updates on the class "Unit of Inquiry", which tells us what they are learning about during different times of the school year. The above montage shows all of the kids presenting their "all about me" posters. Below Katherine is in a staring role showing an example of the first unit of inquiry this year. These are just a couple of examples of the extra work these teachers are putting in to communicate with the parents. Pretty cool, we are loving this school year so far.

Weekend Baseball Trip to Regensburg:

There are some changes happening on the baseball team. Several of the players are too old to stay in the "Schueler Live Pitch" team. Once the kids reach 12 years old they have to move to the Youth Team. The problem there is that the youth team has kids that are up to age 16 I think. There is a huge difference in 12 year old and 16 year old baseball. The solution is that coach Xaver is going to keep the core team together and create a Youth 2 team. David is going to be one of the youngest but he is going to make the move up too so he can get some better competition. At least we hope that we will see some more advanced baseball with this move up. 

Making it a Youth 2 team will allow them to play other teams that are in the 12 to 14 year range. With this change the assistant coach sponsored the team uniforms and bought them all new, really nice jerseys. The kids were really excited. 

The way the baseball season works around here is much different that what we are used to. We started last year with the indoor training season that ended with the indoor tournament. Since them we have had three "seasons" separated by major holiday breaks. The first games were up until the two week break for Easter. The next games went until the European vacation month of August. Now we are starting the last group of games through the end of October, or whenever it starts snowing. Our head coach has been MIA lately. He is in school still and finishing up the equivalent to a master's thesis over the past two months. I guess we can give him a break for that. He is due back with the team soon. In the mean time the assistant coach has taken over practice and games. Two weekends ago we visited the town of Regensburg. We had been there one other time early in the year but only stayed for baseball. This time we planned to see this historical German city. 

The town is about 80 minutes from our house depending on traffic. The men's team has been the German champions several times so they have a big stadium, the largest one that we have seen in Germany. In fact they hosted the European Baseball Championships there earlier in September. The German team did pretty good for a while then lost two in a row to get knocked out. They have so many teams at different age groups that we had to find the "other" field down the street from the main youth field. It was a nice flat piece of ground in the middle of an otherwise empty field. The Atomics beat up on the Regensburg team pretty bad two games in a row. David pitched in both games and did not give up any runs. After the double header we went down the road and checked in to our hotel for the night. 

We had a free night saved up from our previous trips. This was a really great hotel that we found close to the baseball field. We reserved a family room that had a large terrace. The trees are already starting to turn around here. The hotel also had a restaurant where we decided to eat that evening. It was a nice Bavarian meal before we returned to the room for a little relaxation that evening.  

The next morning we got an early start. There was one sightseeing attraction close by that we had time to check out before we headed into town for our guided tour. This site is called Walhalla. It is a monument on the side of a hill. Inside the structure are busts of important German's of the past. The car park was a little ways down the hill. We walked up the path to find this site.

It was a very foggy morning. Above is the front of the monument on the side of the hill. Normally you would see a nice view over the rolling hills. We had a few minutes so we decided to go inside and check it out. Maybe the fog would burn off a little bit while we were looking around.

Mozart

Beethoven

Wagner

Einstein

There were many more, most of which I was not familiar with. We stepped outside again to find the fog was actually a big thicker, so no view today. It was time to head off to the city tour.

It was only about a ten minute drive to get to a parking garage at a large shopping center close to the main train station. We walked into town and met up with our private guide. She was a young college age girl that was born and raised in Regensburg. This town has a long history as a medieval town and part of the Roman Empire. There are still many examples of medieval construction along with some of the Roman walls. You can tell by looking which is which. The Roman walls used huge stone blocks. Regensburg was once the capital of Bavaria.

The cathedral is the dominant structure in the town. We were told the scaffolding is always up on one part or the other. The only time it has been totally gone was a few years back when Pope Benedict XVI visited the town. He served in this cathedral in Regensburg before he became the Pope. Our guide told us the locals were so excited, not only for the visit, but also since it was the only time the cathedral was free of scaffolding in the lifetime of most of the current residents. She said they spend over a million euros per year on the upkeep of the exterior.

A detailed view of the facade and we took a quick look inside too. 

Above is what is left of the main entrance to the city center in the Roman times. 

This was a major city full of wealthy people due to it being a major port city along the Danube River. Below is the stone bridge. It was not much to see this time around. The restoration project is due to go on for several years.

Here is an image from the Internet from across the river looking back into the town. 

It is a very picturesque town. The tour was short and sweet, about 90 minutes. We ended below in the major square where the town hall is located. The castle looking tower is an old hotel noted for hosted dozens of royal figureheads in the past. It is said to be very expensive to stay there still.

Above is a front pic of the cathedral. Below is a nice little square in the shadow of the cathedral. There was a biergarten here where we stopped for lunch. The leaves from that tree were falling on to our table. We had great weather for the day, but signs of the coming winter are all around.

We made a slight detour on our way back to the car. Above is the Reichsabtei Sankt Emmeram church. Below is the clock tower from the courtyard area leading into the church.

We made it back to the car and headed out of town. We had one more stop before we made it home. It was for a brewery tour inside a monastery. This is the second monastery/brewery that we have visited. The other one, Andechs, is south of Munich. This is the Weltenburger Brewery located southwest of Regensburg along the Danube. Once again I was totally surprised by the sheer number of people out here in the middle of nowhere. I swear if you put up a biergarten anywhere in Bavaria, people will come. They'll come for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for, err, uuumm, beer.............. Sorry, flash back to one of the greatest movies ever. The point is it was busy and there is nothing here other than a biergarten. 

Just before our tour started we had time to peek in to the Abbey. 

The tour was interesting. They only give the tours on the weekend since the facility is in use on weekdays. It was one guide giving the tour in English and German. That was a little annoying to wait for the same information to be given twice, but we managed. Especially when the beer tasting part was happening. 

The guide was very good, and much nicer than her picture above makes her look. I was just getting a pic of the barrels where the beer is aged. We got to try several varieties of beer. I won't rehash all of the information about the beer making process. What I do want to talk about are some of the traditions that are still practiced today. It is interesting to hear how the beer purity laws from five hundred years ago are still practiced today. Water, barley or wheat, hops, yeast is all they can use. The taste difference in all of the beer brands are just based on how much of each they use and how long they choose to age or leave the beer in various stages of development. The other interesting part was hearing about the reason they make the stark beer, the seasonal beer with higher alcohol content; as well as the reason we have end of summer festivals like Oktoberfest. The monks made the stark beer around lent because they would not consume food for that period. The stark beer was made for the caloric intake they needed, the higher alcohol content was just a benefit of the process. Bavaria still has the stark beer season every spring. She also told us that a long time ago they could not make beer during the summer months since they did not have the ability to cool the beer properly. For this reason they made as much beer as they could from November until April each year. When October came around each year they had to get rid of all of the leftover supply to make room for the new beer season. This is why they started have large festivals where the beer was cheap or even free, just to get rid of it. That part has changed over the years, especially at Oktoberfest. We are hearing that a liter of beer is around 12 euros this year. Pretty steep considering it is less than half that cost at your local biergarten. I am not sure that I have all of the facts straight, but that what I got out of the tour that was interesting, and added some detail to what we have experienced so far in Germany. One surprise on the tour was finding out that there was a young couple that were Texas Tech graduates in our small tour group. Imagine that, running into some fellow Tech grads on a brewery tour in the middle of nowhere Germany. Maybe not so much of a coincidence, we know how much Tech students like our beer. 

What a great weekend trip! The ride home from there was nice and short and we had time to get ready for the work and school week. 

Check back in a day or two to see the pictures and descriptions from Oktoberfest 2014.