Days 3 and 4

Yesterday we took the girls to a playground at a nearby park called Doblhoff park. The park’s about a 15 or 20 minute walk from here, and yesterday was too hot and the girls were too tired to make it (more on our night’s sleep later), so Oma drove us. What a fun park!

The octopus (quadropus?) see-saw/spin around thing is the girls’ favorite. I think I’ll email the above picture to the new Boothbay town manager and suggest he replace that old, broken stand-up “see-saw” thing with one of these. Fun for all ages!

The other draw at the park is the ducks. We forgot to bring the rolls that I just couldn’t throw away on the airplane, but they’re not even stale yet, so I’m sure we’ll be able to bring them the next time we go.

You can’t tell how hot it is in these pictures, but this weekend was a scorcher! High 80s or 90 I guess, the highest I saw was 30, which is 86 Fahrenheit, but the humidity was high too. Opa’s not phased by the heat, he says this is nothing compared to when he was in Baghdad (as a tourist, he didn’t fight there or anything). It felt hotter in the sun, and it may have been. The forecast was for the low 90s.

The nights have been cooler, but unfortunately there have been a lot of thundershowers. And they’ve been loud, too. Just when the girls fall asleep it seems like they get nice and loud. Maggie slept through some loud booms last night, but Nina woke up. It passed pretty quickly though.

Then today we went to open a bank account. Oh my gosh, you’d think we were buying a car or getting a mortgage or something. It took hours! The Austrians are not a speedy people. At one point we were told to come back in 2 hours. I can’t remember why. So Nick went to register all of us as citizens of Baden, but their computers were down, so we went to get a cup of coffee and some topftentorte (it’s like cheesecake, except topfen is more like ricotta than cream cheese, so it has a slightly grainier texture) for the girls. Delicious! It felt very European to sip our mélange (similar to cappuccino, but with a higher espresso to milk ratio. Or at least, that’s what I think the difference is) in the outdoor café.

Then we walked around the pedestrian district of Baden some more, ran through the casino park, and went back to the bank. Now the cable people are here hooking us up with TV and internet. Big day!