The last month: Constructing our own little nest

Ever take a course in college where you paid attention in class, took decent notes, studied a fair amount, and then got to the test and realized that it was asking you questions you weren’t prepared for? Questions that you could tell were similar to what you studied, but that really weren’t really covered well in the reading? And then you start sweating?

Well, that’s what I feel is about to happen to Kate and me. And Pecos.

And this dog too.
We’ve been living in a perpetual state of preparation for the past few weeks. We’ve read books and articles; watched youtube videos of births, breathing techniques, and diaper changing; and put so many pieces of Ikea furniture together I’m surprised there’s no trademarked logo outside our apartment.
And just when I think we’re as prepared as we’re going to get, I ask something EXTREMELY dumb, like, “Seriously. Does she really need this many diapers?” Or “What do you mean babies don’t need pillows?”

Well, thankfully we still have a month left to prepare. And we have a lot to do in that month.

We have three baby showers in the next two weeks. One of them is tonight, at Jay and Linda’s new house, here: We have to sell our car.

We have to rent a car for two weeks while we wait on the guy whose car we promised to buy to get HIS new car.

I have to stop pretending to be a cardboard robot.
We have to finish transitioning to our fall and winter clothing

We have to ensure we’ve turned our breech baby

We have to complete setting up the baby’s room, including sanding, painting, and constructing a few more items. Here’s what it looks like now, which isn’t bad. But is only 75 percent complete.
I have to go to Baltimore for a week for work.

We have to go to Ikea a few more times, just to ensure there’s nothing there we didn’t buy yet.

And I have to get rid of my rash. Don’t ask. Here’s me wearing 1001 patches of substances people are allergic to to determine if my rash is allergy-based. (It wasn’t).
Hopefully, just as we’re finishing up with the last of these items (probably the sanding, painting, and constructing part), we’ll be completely prepared for the test of a lifetime. Probably not, though. Cardboard robot no like study.

Germany's face - a jogging hulk in 1985

Someone with too much time on their hands.

Someone with too much time on their hands and a joint.

Copenhagen and northern Germany

We finally did it. (Yay!) When we crossed the border into Denmark last Thursday, Kate, Pecos, and I officially visited all nine countries bordering Germany.

OK, so it’s a small victory. But you have to understand that those damn Danes are such a nuisance to visit, as we can’t fly there cheaply and it’s so damn far away. Because of that, I dragged Kate and Pecos into the car for another long ass car trip. But it was totally worth it.

Here's Pec and I at the Little Mermaid, in Copenhagen.

For those keeping track, our current country count is now:

• Me: 42 (9 new ones since moving here)
• Kate: 31 (25 new ones since moving here)
• Pecos: 13 (11 new ones since moving here)
• Elizabeth (in-utero … yup, I’m counting them): 12

In Western Europe, I still have the following countries to visit: Portugal, Norway and Andorra. Kate has Norway, Lichtenstein and Andorra,

Pecos will always be hopelessly in last place.
So, to get back to the point of this blog, our drive to Denmark (and northern Germany) was predicated on a few things:

1) To see Denmark (apparently Germany’s hardest to visit border country) and home to some magnificent cheese and Hamlet
2) To vacation in Copenhagen (more cheese … and ice cream)
3) To visit the island of Sylt, allegedly the “St. Tropez of the North,” and see what all the buzz was about
4) To eat lots of fish

We also spent a night in Hamburg on the way up and a night in Germany’s renowned port city of Lübeck on the way back. Here’s a digest of our Danish digression:

Hamburg – the Disneyland of smut: Hamburg is more than a hooker’s haven. It also has tons of sex shops, strip clubs, and neon lights in the shape of boobies. But what it lacks in refinement (assuming you’re calling inadequately garmented foreign females roaming the streets after dark “unrefined”), it makes up for in industriousness, fashionable cosmopolitan neighborhoods, and beautifully natural parks, trails, and lakes.

And it always has a fishy smell.

We did a walking tour, saw a few old churches, and dropped in on a number of spots we visited last April when we were here for a weeklong class. In all, Hamburg is a brilliant city that we’ll gladly revisit.
Sylt – to boldly go where no non-German has gone before: I’ve heard SOOO many good things about this unapologetically upmarket beach resort on Germany’s North Sea coast, but, now that I think of it, only from Germans. It seems as if all of Germany drank some sort of Sylt-is-cool kool aid because we didn’t hear a single non-German. Just weird grunts of laughter coming from Kate watching Pecos frolick on the beach.
And, to answer my earlier inquiry about what the buzz was about, we couldn’t really tell. It was August, but it was cold and windy. And the famous seafood place (Gosch) sold mostly fried sea fare (like a German Long John Silver’s).

Sure it had white, sandy beaches, some neat beachy flora, and Pecos LOVED it, but in general, I’m not rushing to get back. Copenhagen: Storybook streets, Nordic nosh: What a fantastic city. It was small enough to walk through the entire city, but large enough to be an actual metropolis with a working subway and distinct communities.
The people were all blond and fit (think Vikings) and they all spoke English with a cute British accent, which seems to be the norm in Scandinavia. Their word for “hi” is also “hi,” which I thought was great.

OK, back to the city: It had lots of old sights (which I won’t bore you with) and water or tinkling fountains around every corner. It also had a few breathtaking green and leafy parks which Pecos seemed to enjoy.But best and weirdest of all was Tivoli Gardens, a 150-year-old “pleasure garden” smack in the center of the city, rife with amusement rides, restaurants, theaters, and tall, blond Danes eating soft ice cream slathered in chocolate.The ice cream looked too tasty to pass up, so we ordered a small for Kate and a medium for me.

Although I never thought I’d say this: It was too much ice cream. It didn’t look like a lot – maybe the small would be a “medium” in the states and my medium would have been a “large.” But it was so thick and lacking any sort of typical soft-ice-cream “air” that mine probably weighed close to a half-a-pound.

So, sadly, we both ended up throwing out perfectly good (and tasty) ice cream. At least I thought it was tasty. It certainly wasn’t as sweet as regular ice cream – but that made it all the more appealing and natural (as “natural” as ice cream can be) to me. Sorry, no pictures. Instead, here's Kate in what appears to be Iran.

Lübeck – a haven of havens:

After taking an incredibly expensive 30-minute ferry over from Denmark ($100), we arrived in Lübeck, which is a city … uh, yeah. It’s a city. We didn’t know anything about this place other than it had an old city gate (which was very neat, as far as old city gates go) and was home to the biggest marzipan manufacturer in Germany.

So, our first few stops were, of course, to see the gate and buy some marzipan. Here’s Kate at the gate (late for her date because she ate so much on her plate).
What we liked most about the city, though, was all the water. It’s a harbor town, but it’s on an island and it has a bevy of rivers and canals flowing nearby. So, everywhere you turn, there’s … an old guy fishing. Here we are laughing about that discovery.
Although Pecos didn’t get to go swimming, he enjoyed it too, as it had a series of parks lining the rivers.

And that’s it. It was probably our last road trip with the Ka and perhaps the last one pre-baby. But the places were great, the fish was amazing (even though I didn’t have any fish in Hamburg, I feel like I did), the ice cream was appreciatively vast and tasty, and we all now have another country under our belts. Next big adventure … selling the car.