Namesake

Even before Sofía was born, I knew that I wanted her middle name to be Magdalena.  Before I even explained why, my esposo sensed that it had some kind of importance for me and agreed immediately.  (Ah…what a great quality to have in an esposo, no?) Sofía has an Abuela, but I had an Oma and I spent a lot of time with my Oma when I was growing up.  I’m convinced that she is the reason why we grew up with more than one first language.  (Well, that’s simple-she lived with us and didn’t really speak English!)

I didn’t really come to understand the greatness of my grandmother until I was an adult.  I grew up hearing stories of her experiences, but appreciation set in much later.  During the war, for various complicated reasons, fluctuations of borders, and explosives egos, my mother and her German, blond blue-eyed, catholic familia were put into a German concentration camp. 

At one point, my Oma’s nephew was placed in a line to be shipped off to some other camp.  She “stole” him out of that line and saved him and when what she had done was discovered, she was severely beaten as a punishment.  Evidently, not even that was a deterrent to my Oma, as some time later (Exactly how long, I can’t remember as my memory is a bit fuzzy from my jetlag.) my grandmother escaped with her three-year-old daughter and her young nephew carrying them both to freedom. That escape was planned for months if not years; my grandmother plotted and learned the routes and contacts she would need to meet along the way.  Freedom didn’t come overnight either, but really took weeks and it wouldn’t be until months later that they stopped running from country to country and the Red Cross arranged for the three of them to live in a small room of a farm house in the middle of Nowhere, Germany.    And this is what that house looks like today.

So my husband drove a rented Mercedes almost from border to border across the entire southern part of Germany so that our daughter could see the house where her Abuela and my Oma lived after my grandmother proved that she was one of the most amazing women to ever live.

People ask me all the time about Sofía’s middle name.  I usually tear up and say she is named after my grandmother and walk away.  If you’ve ever asked me…..now you know why! J

This post is part of the Septiembre Blogging Carnaval on Bilingualism.  You can visit the entire Carnaval here!

Toys in Alemania

It seems that Alemania is famous for their jugueterías (toy stores) and toy makers.  We visited a great jugueteria and had fun looking at all the things for sale that were different.  There were a lot of well-made wooden toys.  I don’t know how the Germans can afford to buy any of the toys because they are extremely expensive!  We also came across a ToysRUs, but didn’t have a chance to peek in—I would have loved to have been able to make cultural comparisons there also!

I really liked these hand-made wooden puppets with different types of characters!

Here is a Lego® vending machine in the metro!  In case you really need something at the last minute I suppose, since the stores close at 8 PM!

My favorite toys were the wooden food toys!  The variety was amazing and a splendid representation of the culture!  Again, they were super, super, super expensive or we would have bought a bunch for me Sofía to play with! 

I really admired this wooden toy—yes it is wooden and not a supermarket packet!  I took the picture because it happened to be one of my esposo’s favorite Schwäbisch dishes!

Many of the food toys were little tin containers (Think Altoids) with tiny wooden hand-made pieces inside!  I thoroughly enjoyed opening all the tins to see what kind of surprise was inside!  (My esposo didn’t enjoy it as much—what a shocker!)

Lastly, we came across this construction kit.  We should have bought it, but we were too tired to think at that point!  If you look closely at the picture of the house, you will see that it is the exact replica of how German country homes are built.  (Coincidently, it is how many of the houses in Latinoamérica are also built!) Included are mortar and trowel too! But we really wanted it to build castles like all of the castillos that we visited!  As you can see…we thoroughly enjoyed the cultural analysis of the toys in Alemania!

 

 

Viaje a Alemania

These are my babies.
Somewhere in the hills of Germany’s Moselle River Valley, at Burg Pyrmont, my babies pose for some of the first of what will be quite a plethora of fotos that I will have taken over the past 2 weeks. My esposo and I have been planning this trip for over three years! The first time we had tickets in our hot little hands, I was pregnant with Sofia during the first (God-awful) trimester. We ended up cancelling because I spent the majority of those three months vertical on a couch somewhere. (But I digress!) soo... All our estrellas lined up and we spent dos splendid semanas visiting my relatives and sight-seeing! I will try to write about some interesting points of our trip over the next few days starting with hoy!

Sofía was so excited to go on an airplane again! I love the special treatment given to familias with small niños and I especially love Lufthansa with small niños (even in spite of the strike!).  They gave Sofía a busy packet and one of the azafatas even gave Sofía her wing pin!

Here is a string of fotos inspired by the sticker-badge given to us by the TSA agent at Dulles Airport!

We tried out headphones for the first time during this flight and they worked beautifully!