House update

Well, we're (with any luck) gearing up to move in just under two weeks!

We're in contract both on our current place and on the place we're buying. The only hurdle remaining is having our buyers get the "clear to close" from their mortgage folks. (They called our attorney Friday and said all was well, but said the paperwork was backed up because of the end of the month rush. Aaargh!)

Assuming all goes as planned, we'll be moving on Nov. 9, and then taking the long weekend to try to settle in before heading back to work the following Monday. It'll be a very cool place - but I still hate moving!!

(Sorry no pictures - we were relying on the sellers' brochure, and when I tried to download the pics for this blog, I found out that they're somehow protected. We'll take pics as soon as we're in, though!)

Culture

It's been a long week. But it had a good start!

Last Friday, we went to go see King Lear at The Goodman Theater. We have season tickets, and really enjoy it!

Stacy Keach (Yes, that one) was King Lear. And he did an amazing job. The King goes insane during the course of the play (and he's not the only one) and he does a believable job. (Not to mention that I think it was the first time I'd seen not one, but two men stark naked on stage. Amazingly tastefully done, though.)

More updates this weekend, I promise!

More Trier

The Porta Nigra isn't the only Roman ruin in Trier. The city was a major northern Roman city, so there's a huge baths-structure, of which some remains. Here are a couple of pictures:







The city also came across a buried baths-structure when they were attempting to build a new parking structure. (An impromptu guide we picked up - who was helping us find Karl Marx's birth-home - pointed out that the city had then built a "very small" parking garage.)



And, as a result of the extensive Roman ruins, the city also has a lot in the way of Roman decor and statuary - which is housed in a neat museum. The photo below is an example of the Roman mosaics common in Trier (and throughout the Roman Empire) - which was thoroughly explained in the museum.

To be...

(where did the weekend go?)

...or not to be...

Friday night, we saw a performance of Hamlet at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. Masterfully done - the actor playing Hamlet was one of the better I've seen in the role. The right mix of anger and petulance, as befits a Danish prince.

And the lighting and costumes were well done as well - minimal costumes, minimal sets. And as I've said before, not a bad seat in the house!

First play of the new season, and it was a good one!

Train to Trier

After a few days relaxation in Koln, we hopped on another train and headed to Trier.

(Trains in Germany are great, by the way. Clean, fast, and affordable. I can't figure out why we can't do that here.)

Trier was a Roman city, and has many remnants of that history. One of the most obvious (and most impressive) is the Porta Nigra, or Black Gate. This huge gate was originally part of the city walls, but time (and opportunistic local rulers who used the walls as a stone quarry) have reduced the structure to just the gate.

Still very impressive! Here are a few picture of the Porta Nigra.

I Don't Like Mondays

10 points to the first person to get the reference. :-)

We're closing in on both selling our current place and buying a new one. Just a few more kinks to work out - keep your fingers crossed for us! Both inspections went well - I'll post pictures once we're out of attorney review.

I'm too superstitious to do otherwise. :-)

Have a great week!

Koln

We spent two nights in Koln - the first one largely spent recovering from a little jet lag on the way over. It's pretty easy to recover, though, when you're sitting in the balcony of a restaurant, with a fresh pint of local beer!

Here's the hotel we stayed at:
Das Kleine Stapelhauschen. It was very nice, and had a great little restaurant downstairs (with a good wine list, too).




We were very amused by the enormous pink David in Koln - it's right at the top of a walkway near the old town, next to a lovely outdoor space associated with a couple of museums and the symphony. (They had some kind of fancy reception there the first day we were in Koln.)



And this is Koln's dom, or cathedral. It was enormous - this photo gives you somewhat of an idea, but doesn't even begin to capture the scale of the building. Very impressive - and it's the first thing you see when you round the corner out of the train station.



We climbed up the bell tower in the cathedral - this photo is my proof I actually went all the way up. (Which was a little dicey for me - part of the trip was on open-weave metal stairs. Ick.)

Germany!

We're back!

After two weeks in Rhineland Germany, we're back to the States and mostly over our jetlag. Not completely, but mostly. :-)

Germany was wonderful - we had great weather, and though we don't speak much German, we speak enough to be polite and most Germans speak at least a little English. (Not everyone, by far, but most.) It really makes you think about the mono-lingual status of most Americans...

Anyway. After flying into Frankfurt, we took the train to Koln/Cologne. Nice city - a fairly big city, but we stayed in the "old town" which was both entertaining and very manageable.



This is the train station we came into from Frankfurt - very nice, very modern, very easy to get around in.



This was taken along Koln's riverfront in the old town. Koln is a very young city, and it shows - lots of people 18-40 spending time walking, jogging, biking, rollerblading along the riverfront. You can occasionally be taking your life into your own hands to walk there!



A little touch of Koln's river traffic - the nostalgic sailing ship across the river, and the modern barge in the foreground. As you'll see in later photos, the rivers in Germany are still very much an active part of the economy - as well as being a great place to have fun!

Next... more Koln!