The epic weekend begins with a day of 5 cities

This weekend Axel and I went to Berlin to see the U2 concert. This will be my next blog, but I must first tell you about the Friday, the crazy start to the crazy weekend.

Axel's colleague's partner just gave birth a few weeks ago. Being Canadian and basically living parallel lives to us, we decided that they would be the best people to ask about getting an english-speaking doctor to help us get some tests done that our Strasbourg doctors needed me to do. Unlike in Canada, the US and in France, the labs to get blood work done are not separate but rather part of your doctor's visit in Germany. This means you must make an appointment with a Germany doctor before they suck out all of your blood.

I had spoken to an english-speaking midwife when we first arrived. She was great BUT she is on vacation until the end of August. In addition, to get tests, I would still need to see a doctor anyway, so we went to the doctor recommended by Jason and Laura. I emailed the doctor to ask if it was possible to get tests done and just introduce myself. And hope that she would be able to recommend someone near where we live. Well, it turns out her english isn't as good as we thought it would be, because her response to her email was "We are waiting for you the 16.7. at 11.30 Dorotheenstr." So I got myself an appt. (and now I just realized that I arrived a day AFTER I was supposed to...god pregnancy brain is crazy). Anyway, it turns out that getting there was an adventure. It's on a secondary tram line, which means I could take the slowest tram on earth, stopping every 5 blocks from Köln to Bonn, without having to get off. OR I could do a 3 transfer trip, saving myself about 20 minutes. Being a lot less mobile makes decisions like this easy. However, taking transit in Köln means that you must have enough change to pay for the trip or have a german credit card. I, unfortunately, had neither, but because Axel and I have rebelled for months without paying, I figure I would pay for a ticket half-way and see if I get caught. Well, I got caught, but I feigned ignorant and won.

I got to Bonn and, thanks to google maps (which finally didn't fail me in Germany), I got there in 10 minutes. The office was very dated (from the 50s) but clean. The two nurses were very friendly and when I gave them my card, they didn't take the numbers or anything. In fact, they didn't charge me at all. I still don't understand why not, because all of this was in german, so I'm still waiting for my bill, or whatever. They made me fill out a bunch of forms, and because we did forms in german class in week 2, I had no problem doing it! Woohoo! Deutschkurs comes in handy!

Then I got taken to the back room to get my blood taken, pee and weight. The nurse was super nice and had written questions she needed to ask me in english on a piece of paper. Unfortunately, she didn't understand my responses so I had to pull every german word I knew to respond so that she could kind of get what she was looking for. And then I met the doctor. The only way I can describe her is that she looks like she should be a teacher in Harry Potter. Her hair is all over the place, with clips hanging from random spots that don't actually hold any hair in place, and she was dressed in layers so you couldn't really tell what the actual outfit was. In essence, she was like a cat lady without all of the cats. And when we started our appt, I knew she had a heart of gold. She is one of these women who LOVES babies, loves pregnant bellies and loves her job. We went through some questions and she would ask me, put her pen down and look at me in the eyes to listen to what I had to say. This experience is a stark contrast from my french doctor who's all business with no time for chitchat or eye contact. Then she did an ultrasound and turned to me to say, "Wow, it is HUGE. Can you still breathe?"

I told her I could, and I really only stop once going up 6 flights of stairs to our apt everyday, and she was impressed that I was still able to walk around. So she then asked if the father was really really tall, because she checked the bone growth of not-so-little pickles. I told her no, and she point-blank asked if I was sure Axel was the father. So, we have a giant on our hands. She checked the blood flow of the uterine arteries (both excellent) and the liquid flow of the umbilical cord (also excellent) and then did all of the measurements and figured out that pickles was at the maximum growth for the number of weeks. In other words, it's huge.

So then I left, made my way back to the train station and just backtracked. On my way there, the brakes of the tram started a small fire, which didn't seem to alarm the driver who came and extinguished them during a 5 minute tram break! Ax and I met at the main station, figured out how to get to the middle of nowhere airport where Ryan Air flies from, and started the other half of my day. We hit Krezfeld to switch to get to Weeze, the location of the British Air Force and the emptiest airport on earth. And then we got to Berlin.

Last month, our dear friend, Erin, came all the way to Köln go visit us after a greuling 14 hour interview in Heidelberg (Yes she got the job!!). She is the reason why Ax and I are in Europe in the first place as she had done the ISU summer program (called SSP for more acronym lingo) in 2006 and came back a full blown space geek.

So being surrounded by space cadets meant a day of space for us! We went to axel's awesome job to check out the European astronaut centre! This is THE training center for all European astronauts, training that is a minimum of 4 years with various exercises like learning how to fix something in space by mimicking Zero gravity in a ten meter deep pool. Most parts of the international space station has been made to a 1:1 scale (not all though, because the whole thing is the size of 2 football fields) and astronauts practice orientation and experiments in them. There is a simulator for the Russian mobile that took our own Bob Thirsk up just last month which they practice take off and landing. All of the experiments have their own rooms for practicing the experiments. A fellow canadian and isu alum, Jason, who coincidentally had a wife who just had a baby a couple of weeks ago, walked us through all of the modules and was still thrilled by it all. But this was not the coolest part.

In the storage room of ISS:


Erin, Jason and I:


On one of the exercise machines, trying to look like I'm defying gravity:


Axel pretending to do an experiment:



Jason and Erin in the EAS lobby:



Stewart, yet another Canadian (from Newfoundland) and isu alum, showed
us his area-the control room!!! Most of us reference "Houston" from
the Apollo 13 movie as the control room but in reality it is just the
main one. Europe has two-one in Munich and this one! Russia also has
one but is segregated from the rest. We lucked out because Stewart was
around to show it all to us. The astronauts were sleeping so we
couldn't see them but we saw all of the camera views of the iss of
earth! Wow. It is pretty amazing to see our planet from far away. He
showed us the astronauts' extremely packed schedule (in 5 min
increments!) and all of the things they monitor to ensure all is safe
on board. What was really impressive was the enormity of the planning
and monitoring of 6 people just above our heads. And the sacrifices
these people are making for the advancement of human knowledge of
space and in reality, our own planet. I didn't really get excited
about it until I had seen how many people are really involved in this
cause. And how Stewart and Jason still get excited about what they do.


Here we are in the control room...in the background you can see a feed of "Houston", the main control room.


Erin then got treated to another typical Köln day when we have
visitors - pouring rain. To add to the desolate city feel, it was yet
another holiday in germany so nothing was open. I think we now know
that for next time we tell people to bring an umbrella and make sure
not to come when it's an important day for Jesus.

The wrong day for an ill-fitting shirt

This morning I realized that my favourite shirt has hit maximum stretch and is no longer wearable if I don't want massive cleavage, as my belly stretches it to the limit. But because I was in a hurry to make it to school early, I decided to wear it one last time and just hope that no one notices me popping out of my shirt.

I left 5 minutes early because today is Canada Day so, to celebrate, I decided to pick up a little pastry for german class. You have to get to the bakery early to get the good sweet brotchen or buns and because they are really cheap, they go fast. Well, I got there one customer too late and had to get the bigger (but still the same price) cake instead. Why I like the brotchen is because you don't have to deal with cutting them. Why is this important? You will see in a second.

I got upstairs and found that I was early enough so that only the new students that we are getting this week and our teenager were the only ones there. And when I say new students, I mean two priests. Yes, two priests to match our two nuns. And two gays. As the class trickled in, I went to get some plates and a knife to cut the cake. The two gay boys came in, took one look at the new additions, and looked at me cutting the cake...then american gayboy sat down and motioned for me to pull up my shirt...because not only was I showing way too much, but the priests were also taking note. It was the longest cake cutting I've ever done. It was downhill from there.

I ended up sitting beside one of the priests and my stupid cleavage was an obvious distraction. He kept staring at me...and then at my belly...and then at my hand. I thought I must have had cake on it, until the break when italian gayboy pointed out that I must have looked like a hooker in his eyes because here I was, boobs hanging out, pregnant in a tight shirt, and no wedding ring.

The class seems to get a little wilder and more foul-mouthed when we get new holy people for some reason. Today, we talked about being a fotomodell (model) and our teacher talked about how in Germany, everyone thinks that Heidi Klum is the devil. And then italian gayboy was asked about his tattoos so he took off his shirt to show them off. I spit up my water on the floor when this happened because he's a big, hairy man, so him with the nun and priests in the background was worth a photo (it was way too obvious to take a photo today, so I'm waiting until tomorrow). A little teaser on some of the tattoos: a polkadot bow tie around his neck, a chain that "hangs" from his neck attached to sunglasses on his chest, across his abdomen is written SUPERSTAR with a rollerskate flanking each side, a pencil tattoo behind the right ear and my new favourite, on each of his fingers on his right hand a letter that together spells CAKE because he loves cake.

Because it was their first day, the priests didn't have their books yet, so american gayboy lent them his book and we shared mine...they not only forgot to say thank-you, but they accidentally took his book home. We joked about how it would be sprayed with holy water when gets it back. I tried to make some small talk before they left by asking where they were from. They were not very friendly. In fact, they were borderline rude to me, but when they said "Providence", italian gayboy shouted, "Oh I had an ex-boyfriend from Rhode Island! Providence boys are adventurous!!"

Needless to say, we all decided to go for lunch to debrief. The russian mafia boys, the gayboys, and me, the pregnant hooker (as italian gayboy called me after he saw me "seducing" the priest with my cleavage and belly).

Russian mafia boys:




Gayboys: