Camp Orkila

Sophia & Troy spent the weekend at the YMCA Camp Orkila with many of our good friends.  The property happens to be amazingly placed on the North End of Orca’s Island in the San Juan Islands, facing the city of Victoria.  We both had to pick Indian tribe names, so I introduce you to Wachiwi (dancing girl) and Winterhawk.  Sophia went rock climbing, archery, pottery, and is eyeing the zip line for next year.

Good Morning Beograd

I had an hour as the sun came up to walk around Belgrade.  The locals call it Beograd (without the l), and the city can be quite beautiful.  I wandered through the old town and toured the Ottaman fortress overlooking the Danube and Sava rivers.

Discovering Cyprus

Troy traveled to Cyprus for business and had an afternoon to explore the capital city of Nicosia. It was a strange trip from the start, missing his flight from Athens. And this odd experience didn't stop during his stay, having never seen water on the island - arriving at night and departing at 3 am. Nicosia is said to be the only country capital in the world that is still divided. You remember the struggle between the Greeks and the Turks...well it lives on in Cyprus today. The capital is literally split through the middle, with the UN buffer zone (in some cases less than 100M) between the two sides. I'm told I can pass easily from side to side with a US passport, but I wasn't going to try it before my flight. I walked the entire perimeter of the buffer zone, and you have an amazingly beautiful city that is absolutely war torn. I'm not talking just about bullet holes in the walls. I'm talking about the sand bag bunkers still through the main streets of town, the UN officers asking me not to take photos, and much of the area within two blocks relegated to warehouses as the local government gives away the space to fund the restoration of downtown Nicosia. I believe there is a reluctance to rebuild, only to see it torn down again. The primary conflict that led to the divided city ended 35 years ago, yet it still lives on in the day to day lives of those in Cyprus. I tried to show you some of the beauty, as well of some of the conflict that goes on today in Nicosia.

Fathers Day

Father's Day in Germany, the Pentecost Thursday, is usually a day celebrated only with the fathers, and their sons sometimes, riding their bikes into the forest & enjoying healthy amounts of beer. Our friends, dominated by cross-cultural families, thought that a day off work & school would be better spent with children playing in a playground, and everyone else (moms included) enjoying the beer, at a local beer garden.
So we biked to the Hirschau garden, and then met up with lots of other families from Sophia's school (which meant the kids all had friends to play with in the great playground). We borrowed a friend's stroller for Alexandra to take a nap (one of the drawbacks of having a bike seat & not a riding trailer - thank you Elizabeth for the stroller!) and spent most of the day hanging out & having a good time!
On a side note: I've decided that if we are at a beer garden for the day I'm going to start buying beers by the 1/2 liter. We just don't drink beer very fast ( or very much of it) and by the time you get to the second half of the beer on a hot day, the beer is warm - and we all know what warm beer tastes like...

Alexandra's daddy kisses...