Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

As probably all of our readers already know this weekend the greatest soccer team of all time (VfB Stuttgart) won the German Bundesliga for the first time in 15 years. It was totally unexpected and therefore it is even sweeter now.

During our travels this year Stuttgart was televised several times and every time we got to see them play they won and captured first place. After a few ups and downs this season we watched them again last weekend and they were again in first place on the last day of the season. The last and most important game was also televised in Mexico and we couldn’t wait to watch the game, but then a catastrophe happened. Our landlord didn’t pay the cable bill and cable was turned off for the most important soccer game of the last 15 years. You can imagine how frustrated I was.

In a previous post we mentioned a friend of ours who we referred to as Dave the Prick.  That actually wasn’t our own name for him.  He’s well known in Seattle under that name.  But we take it all back.  Most people who know Dave probably wouldn’t even dare to ask if they could come over to his house at 8:15 in the morning to watch a soccer game that he didn’t really care about.  No one really would expect any answer from him other than “F—, no!”  But luckily we got his life-partner Terri on the phone the night before and she agreed that Dave would be up and would let us in. 

Thanks Dave and Terri and thanks to the greatest soccer team on earth, who has the chance to also win the German Trophy next weekend.  So if you missed them becoming German Champion don’t forget to watch them win the trophy next weekend.

I (Allison) was granted a 2 month leave of absence from my job at Microsoft to participate in an exchange sponsored by the Rotary Club. On this exchange I traveled for 4 weeks with 5 other Americans, one Rotarian and 4 normal people (ha ha!). We stayed with host families and the Rotarians showed us around their area. Some examples of things we did along the way: tour of the Munich airport, German war museum in Ingolstadt, Deutsches Museum, city tours of Salzburg, Regensburg, Ingolstadt, Augsburg, Munich, boat ride on Chiemsee, tour of the Ludwig castle on Herreninsel, tour of the abbey on Fraueninsel by a Benedictine nun, hike in the alps, trip to Kufstein and a tour of the Riedel glass factory, orchestra rehersal in Augsburg, etc, etc, etc. It really was an amazing tour and Rotary picked up the tab for the entire trip.

While I was on the trip Matthias spent one week with my parents in Woodinville and then he flew to Germany as well. He spent time with his family and did some traveling on his own – spent a few nights in, Switzerland. He took care of William and Julian on his own for those 4 weeks and I think I will be eternally in debt for that.

After the trip we all met up in the Allgaeu region of Germany. We stayed on a farm and took small day trips around the area. William and Julian loved collecting eggs from the chickens every day. The weather was pretty bad – mostly rainy and on the last day of May we woke up to about an inch of snow! We then spent some time with our friends Martin & Evylene in Switzerland. Evylene’s family has a mountain cabin in Wallis and we spent 2 nights there. It has to be one of the most beautiful places on the earth. On our way back to Germany we spent a night in France on the Wine Road in the Allsace region. There are lots of small/private vinyards and wine makers in this region, and the villages in this area have been preserved in the old style and it is beautiful. We stayed in Obernai in a hotel just above where the Tour de France will be starting on July 3rd!

Back in Germany we spent a lot of time visiting with friends and family and we also caught a lot of the World Cup soccer matches.

We didn’t actually get tickets for any games, but just being in Germany when Germany in hosting the World Cup is an amazing experience. In all major cities in Germany they have big screens set up where people can gather and watch the games. We watched the Germany-Poland game in Stuttgart. In the square where the game was being showed there were roughly 70,000 people – more people than fit in the stadiums the games are being played at. In Berlin 500,000 people were on the streets for that game. Germany won in about the 92nd minute, and the crowd went crazy. And after the game the entire city center was filled with people celebrating and singing and waving German flags. German flags are everywhere, which is very unusual for the Germans since they tend not to be very patriotic (understandable after their history). Experiencing the World Cup in the hosting country is something I think everyone should experience in their lifetime.

Acclimating to life in America has been hard for Matthias and I. However, William and Julian seemed to just keep rolling with whatever we do and wherever we go. We are writing this blog on the road – we’re camping for a week before I have to go back to work. We’ll be in eastern Washington and southeastern British Columbia where temperatures in the upper 90’s are awaiting.

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