Field Trip

I am one of those people who likes to be packed ahead of time.  I am generally over prepared for most things and getting ready for this trip was no exception.  However, there are always those things you can't be prepared for.  Lena's field trip is certainly one of them.

When I decided to try and find a school where the girls could be "exchange students" for the month and a half we are here while school is still in session, I didn't count on field trips.  But here we are.  A camping overnight with the class to make charcoal.

First of all, we had to get over the decision of whether or not to go.  Lena has never shown a stitch of anxiety about going anywhere with anyone in her entire life, so I was a little surprised when she said that maybe she shouldn't go because she might miss us.  That of course lasted half of one day. 

Then we had to overcome the issue of not having Haftpflichtversicherung.  Shocking, deep intakes of breath, shaking of heads, dread, and serious concern.  It turns out, we do have it, but where we come from we don't insure ourselves separately because it is part of your homeowners or rental policy and it is just the liability clause.  Apparently this is a huge thing here in Germany.  If you happen to accidentally step into the bike paths which are divided from the sidewalks by a painted line, and a bicycle rider swerves to miss you and causes a major accident (or a minor one) you, the pedestrian can be help liable for the damages, injuries, death, etc.  So I see how this is a fairly important kind of insurance.  But my goodness, I felt like a criminal for a few days while I waited (turns out I found out about all of this late on July 3rd) to hear back from my insurance agent.

Once the dreaded permission slip was filled out, we had to turn to the packing list.  So far, we have found someone who can share her tent with Lena.  We have a sleeping bag we will be borrowing.  We bought a blanket at Woolworths (yes they still exist here in Germany, and as much as I hate buying cheap stuff, it really seems like a good thing when you need it for maybe twice before you will have to leave it behind) which we hope to be able to also use as a picnic blanket this summer.  Thanks to Woolworths we also got a kitchen towel (each child must bring their own), a hand towel, and a set of plastic dishes.  It seemed like writing our name on the linens provided for us in our rental apartment might not be a great idea, and losing them also seems like a distinct possibility on this kind of excursion.

Now we need to find an inexpensive pair of Festeschuhe (good solid shoes) with no rubber soles (what like wooden clogs?) with the example of hiking shoes being given (which by the way all seem to have rubber soles, last time I looked) and choose from the very limited supply of clothes that Lena brought here with her.  The clothes are supposed to be Robust and since they will be worn while tending fires for two days, we may have to assume some things are going to be sacrificed in this process.  When you are ten and you are only allowed to bring a limited wardrobe with you for three months, believe me, you don't choose any of your grubby clothes that you don't care about.  And finally, she needs to bring a jar of jam.  Yes, that is pretty much the packing list.

Of course, there is some small bit of trepidation on my part, since I don't actually know any of the parents, hardly know the teacher, and don't really know where they are going.  I'm not really worried, but there is that part of me that thinks, a little bit more information would be nice to have.

I'm sure Lena is going to get a huge amount of benefit from this trip as is always the case on class trips of these kinds, and I look forward to hearing about it.  I know it is times like these that build language skills, friendships, and understanding for other people and the way they do things.

The part I am not looking forward to, is the return.  The class will return to the school in the evening of the second day, sometime between 6:00 and 8:00.  Someone on the trip will call the top of the phone tree once they are on their way and know when they will be arriving (roughly).  Then the phone tree calls the rest of the forty families in the class.  Then I check the schedule for the buses, pack Laura and Bella up and go down to catch the bus.  Too bad this is all happening when Pete is back in NYC!  We ride for about 30 minutes, but that time of day the bus stops two stops short of the school, so we will need to walk another 15-20 minutes from there.  Then we will wait for the class to return, pack Lena's things into the stroller and walk back to the bus stop (another 15-20 minutes and wait for the next bus, which will hopefully still be running every 20 minutes.  If we get really lucky, our best case would be two hours from departing our apartment to returning and getting the kids to bed.

I've really enjoyed living somewhere where we don't need a car, and don't have a car, and actually we haven't been in a car for a month.  But right now, I'm seeing how having a car has distinct advantages, even when you live in the middle of a modern, highly organized city with fantastic public transportation.