A packed Friday

On Friday, Stefan and I drove south to Staufen, then east, past Münstertal, and into the hills...

where we parked and began our hike up the beautiful...

Belchen (1414m). A helpful trail sign left little doubt about what direction we should take, until we encountered this...

fork just a dozen meters up the road. Stefan wisely checked the map, but it didn't show the fork, so we stayed to the left until...

we were strongly advised to go to the right. We had one last view of the...

valley behind us, where lay nestled the tiny village Kaltwasser, before we headed into the...

mossy...

woods. We saw nothing but trees, switchback after switchback, until at long last we emerged...

atop the ridge, with water vapor still burning off the mountain in the warmth of the late morning sunlight.

The Belchen is clearly a lovely place to spend the summer if you are...

a sheep or a goat or...

a cow.

We opted for...

a more open route back down, and observed that folks on the Belchen enjoy a little more flourish than those on Schauinsland when it comes to...

stacking wood. After we walked back through...

Kaltwasser to our rental car, we decided to drive to...

Staufen for some coffee, seltzer, and ice cream. I believe Germany is one of the only countries in the world where one can make an occasion of going out for seltzer.

We made it back to Freiburg in good time to see...

the play Elias's summer camp put together. The play is about a king who locks up his daughter because she doesn't want to get married; but then he begins to have regrets and sends a dragon from Toulouse to look after her. First the dragon has to track down the princess; a rabbit is unable to help, and the dragon subsequently receives conflicting directions from two foxes (shown above). Eventually he learns that the princess has been stolen from her tower by a band of robbers; the dragon rescues her and...we have to go back next Friday to see how the story ends, since the play isn't done yet. (Elias won't be in camp next week, so he'll be in the audience rather than on stage.)

Can there be a better way to top off a great day than to go see...

your two favorite German soccer teams face off in an exhibition game at a small town field in Bahlingen am Kaiserstuhl? How fortuitous that we happened to be in town during the Kaiserstuhl Cup! SC Freiburg beat 1860 Muenchen, 2:0, scoring a dramatic second goal just before the clock ended. Other highpoints of the evening included two storks flying over the field into the setting sun, and the absence of vuvuzelas.

After school

While we were making dinner this evening, my mom asked, "Is there anything I can do for you?" Apparently we don't say that enough around our house. Elias's jaw dropped, he looked with awe at his grandmother, and he gasped: "Oh, do something special for us!"

Elias's school day ends no later than 13:00 every weekday, which means that in theory we have lots of afternoon free time to spend in culturally or physically edifying ways. In practice, Elias is tired of edification. We have finally found a compromise between his desire not to go anywhere and my desire not to stay inside being driven nuts by a hyper child: the school playground.

Most of Elias's new buddies attend a very laid-back after-school program at his school. There was no room for Elias, but the director said the playground is public space and he should come by and play with the kids when they go out to play, from 15:00-17:00 every day. As I'm still responsible for him, I can't stray far, so while he's busy playing monkey-in-the-middle and jumping rope, I jog circle eights around the block and across the school yard. Preliminary data suggest that if Elias falls down and breaks an arm, he won't have to wait more than 3 minutes and 35 seconds for me to pass by. Today I did about seven miles. The scenery wasn't as varied as up in the hills, but I did get ample opportunities to observe the goth Realschule (middle school) kids experimenting with cigarettes, iPods, and budding sexuality at the bus stop.