Food woes

Just back from a 10 day trip to Portugal and Spain. Lovely trip, full of sun and sand and will blog about that later. But first a rant about the food. Its impossible being a vegetarian there. I don't think they understand the concept of not eating meat and fish. If it said no meat, and are there any veg dishes on the menu, they would rattle of all the fish dishes, and if i said no meat, no fish, then what would be left is salad!!
And the worst is tapas. In all the tapas restaurants i could have either potato (fried or in a salad) or fried peppers. And that's it. And that's lunch/dinner not a tea time snack. By the end of it I was longing for good old sambhar rice and vegetables, or even some veg pasta!
And to top it off, the girls are so fussy and either want chicken nuggets or fish fingers, so half the time I was in McDonalds eating a vegetable burger which consisted of two buns, cheese and lettuce. The last two days I put my foot down and we went to a nice Indian restaurant and I completely pigged out, so none of the benefits of losing weight on this trip!
I think its good the girls are not as fussy as me. They have survived on sausages, fish fingers and chicken nuggets most of the trip. Otherwise it would have only been fries or bread so at least this way they get some proteins and some variety.
The food was quite bland also, the only exception being the Goan Portugese restaurant we stumbled upon in Lisbon, so couple of days the hubby and I got innovative with the small rice cooker we carry to make dal rice for the girls (yes i'm terrible, i cook on holidays for the girls!!) and made spicy veg paella, and chole rice!
Ok, enough ranting, the next post will have something other than food!

Birthday parties

So S and A's birthday party finally happened. It was highly jinxed this year and fingers crossed it finally went off all ok. Firstly it was scheduled for one month after their actual birthdays thanks to the hubby's hectic travel schedule, school holidays and other birthday parties. And the week before it happened, S broke her leg. I cancelled the party, and frankly it was the least of my concerns since S leg seemed to be taking a very long time to heal and I was worried that the doctors were not treating her correctly.
Anyway to cut a long story short, S seemed much better, and when i asked her if she still wanted to celebrate her birthday two months after the date she seemed enthusiastic. It didn't matter that she had already got her presents from her close friends by then. So i went ahead and booked her original party place - spielzaenti - an indoor play area for kids. And S and A were both thrilled. I didn't realise how much S had wanted to have her birthday party until some of the other moms told me she had been discussing her party with her friends in school, and one day she came and told me what items the menu should include since her friends asked for that. A was also very excited and insisted that I call her two special friends and when she ended up with a splinter in her thumb two days before the party was most upset that she may not be able to cut the cake.
The party went off well and the girls had a blast. It was on Friday afternoon after school and I had also asked the moms to bring their elder/younger siblings. Most of the younger siblings are A's friends so that worked out well. The moms were then also able to relax and hang around and not worry about arranging playdates for their other kids. The hubby got back from work early and helped decorate the cakes (I had ordered a Cinderella cake for S -she had insisted when i went to order, which turned out to be hopeless), pick up S from school and look after S and A in spielzaenti while i got the snacks organised. Luckily it was a sunny day so the indoor play area was not too crowded so we spread out over three tables. S finally got a flower cake and A got an animals cake. The frazzled moms got prosecco!
The hubby had a tough time with the kids at the car racing section- they kept asking him for coins, until he finally threw his hands up and asked them to harass someone else. Didn't help that some of the kids were driving the wrong way on the track and banging into other kids. Now the hubby knows what I have to deal with on a daily basis.
But the girls enjoyed and when we finally left at 7 pm it was tough to drag them away. Of course they insisted on unwrapping all the presents that day, so at the end of the day I felt, personally, like I had finished some big presentation/deal in office!

Trip to Vienna

Just back from a 4 day road trip to Vienna. Long and exhausting but Austria is so beautiful, loved it. We left on Wednesday evening, drove to Innsbruck, reaching around 9:30 pm. Next morning walked around old town, very beautiful, set against a huge mountain range and having the river Tyrol run through it. Set off for Vienna around 12 pm. We reached Vienna only at 6 in the evening, but it was a sunny long day so set out to explore the Prater amusement park near the hotel.
Prater park had lots of activities for kids to do, and after watching the girls bounce on the trampoline and go on the bouncy slide some 100 times we went to the biergarten in the park for a nice Viennese dinner of Wurstli for the hubby and apfelstrudel for me. Yummy.
The next morning (Friday) we went to Schon brunn palace. Its really huge set in a sprawling green campus. We knew the girls wouldn't be upto touring the inside of the palace, so we went instead to the Tiergarten which is part of the palace grounds. Its a long walk through the gardens, so we got to see the beautiful trees, plants and sculptures on the way. We loved the zoo, I know its odd to go visit a zoo in Vienna when we have one literally next door in Zurich, but the girls love animals and I had also read about the giant panda bear which this zoo had and was quite keen to see it. The zoo was very nice, it was housed in  much smaller area than the Zurich zoo so we got to see a lot more. We saw a giant panda eating shoots and leaves (rather stuffing it in with its hands, amazing), giraffes running around, a hippo swimming lazily in the water, elephants playing, having a mud bath, and reaching out towards the visitors grabbing grass growing there. Amazing. Also got very close (through a glass wall of course) to a black jaguar, cheetah, and a lion which roared at us. In fact even the elephanth snorted loudly at us which was quite disconcerting. The aquarium section was also very nice with some horse shoe crabs we had not seen before and up close to the pink flamingos. I can go on and on, but the Vienna zoo is well worth a visit.
After the zoo we thought we should do some stuff for the adults also :) We saw the Rathaus (parliament), the Stephensdome - amazing inside and outside, and walked through the main old town till it got dark.
Next day we again went to Prater park for more fun stuff for the girls, S surprised me by enjoying herself on the spinning roller coaster with me. To be honest, I felt quite sick at the end of it. A also enjoyed the ship. We then went to the Hofburg palace, it was in the same area we had visited the previous day so we just walked around a bit, had a lovely lunch at the Cafe Hofburg (dessert was again apfel strudel) and set out for Hallstatt around 4 pm. I must say I loved the food in Vienna, there was quite a lot of stuff for vegetarians there. I had vegetarian strudel one of the days, and spinach strudel in a herb cream sauce the other day and both were amazing! The desserts are awesome of course.
We reached Hallstatt late Saturday evening. Its a beautiful small Austrian town set in the middle of the mountains along a lake. We were a bit unlucky with the weather, which cleared up only around the time we left (at 11 am the next morning). But the view was amazing, and we picked up some really cute wooden handicrafts.
So now that summer is here, back to holiday season again! Weather has been awful this year, hopefully the summer stays long.

Weekend activities

It was a rainy weekend so we mostly stayed in except for taking the girls swimming on Saturday. Caught up with our afternoon siestas- so now all our schedules have gone completely out of toss, will have a tough time on Monday morning!
The girls spent a large part of the weekend painting. Rather S did. The hubby drew an outline of her favourite dog toy on a canvas and she painted it in. It turned out quite nice, so we've framed it and will hang it somewhere. Here's a picture of it.




















A of course would have none of it, and wanted one of her own. So the hubby drew an outline of a princess for her. But madam would not be bothered to paint it in and outsourced it to S. Which S did. And now A claims that that is her picture. And we've framed it, and will hang it.

Whatever! As long as both are happy, I'm happy. And here's A's picture.

Sundry happenings

The last two months have been extremely busy and I've just not been able to find the time to blog. So what's been taking up my time?

- Firstly S's broken leg. She was home with the cast for 4 weeks and after that she had two weeks holidays from school. Spending time with her, while managing A's school drop offs and pick ups, groceries, shopping, cleaning etc left very little 'me time'. I think I've exercised less than 3 times in the last 2 months! Am still worried about S leg, though its been 2 months since her accident, and a month since her cast has come off she's still walking with a limp. I've requested the doctor to get an appointment with a paediatric orthopaedist to make sure we are not missing anything.

- My parents visited us for three weeks. That was great, and a relaxed time for me and the kids. Unfortunately it was snowing a lot (can you imagine, i had tempted my parents with visions of spring time and walks in the crispy weather with beautiful flowers, and here it was sub zero most of the time with snow all around). My mom said she enjoyed seeing the snow and her wish of actually visiting us in wintertime came true, but it meant less visits to the parks and outings. We did manage to go to Mainau island (there was a lovely indoor orchid exhibition there) and trip to Rhine falls, but in both places it was too cold to be there for more than a couple of hours. We spent two nights in Grindelwald and that was just amazing. We've never been to the Interlaken region in the snow time and it was lovely to be staying in the middle of the mountains in the midst of heavy snow! We took the train upto Kleine Scheidegg one of the days and the whole area was so different  covered in snow. The hubby and I even managed a trek in the snow- the kids were with my parents in a warm cafe, overlooking the skiers. Back in Zurich, the girls had a ball with their Ajja and Ajji. Ajji ensured both children had great hairstyles, and matching accesories. Lots of books being read to them, board games being played and games being played in the toyroom. Ajja introduced them to the delights of angry bird and other games on his IPad. I got yummy food daily- how is it that my mom can make so much tastier food from the same ingredients

- Job search. We got our 'B' visa which allows me to work. Now the only thing is to find a job. For the last 2 months I've been applying to jobs saying i have a valid work visa, but I have not heard back from even one of them, and I would have applied for more than 15 by now saying I have a valid work visa. Am now enrolled on three job sites from which i get daily job updates. The problem is that 80% of the jobs are in German, and for the balance 20% i would be suitable for only about 1% and while i am now applying for the 5% i would be partially suitable for, there is so much competition that I am not in the reckoning at all. Over the last week I've got despondent and stopped checking out the job sites, otherwise previously, I was applying on average for 1 job every day!

- Summer time is here again - The weather has been good again for the last 2 weeks. Ok i spoke too soon, it snowed yesterday can you believe it? At the end of April. Crazy weather. Anyway the last 2 weeks of good sunshine meant daily activities for the kids. Cycling and scootering in the park (we got a new scooter for A), afternoon picnics in the park, group playdates at people's houses. Good fun, and its been ages. Also there were 2 half days in S school and another day off in between so we had more playdates and more lunches. All in all, I've put on 11/2 kgs and not been able to keep up with exercising or blogging.

Anyway hope to be back to a routine soon.

Irresponsible parenting

S's ligament sprain i blogged about earlier has turned out to be a greenstick fracture! Poor thing, and she suffered so much due to irresponsible parenting on mine and the hubby's part.
Am feeling super guilty about the whole thing.
Starting from the fall. The hubby and I were so busy trying to teach him ice skating and pulling A along that we let S go far ahead unsupervised and we didn't even see how she fell, so we couldn't even tell the doctor how the fall was and which part of the leg she fell on.
And then instead of taking S to the hospital immediately, we decided to wait a day and take her to the doctor. For this I mainly blame the hubby who insisted that for a fracture you need to wait 24 hours to see how it develops and only then go to the doctor and if its not a fracture its nothing much to worry about anyway. My instincts told me that we should go the hospital immediately but I didn't insist.  I in fact went off to watch a movie with my friend (!!! - but really i thought it was only a ligament sprain).

To be fair, when i had fallen and broken my jaw 2 years back in the middle of the night we didn't go to the hospital either. I had a deep cut on my chin, but the hubby put cellotape and stuck it together, gave me brufen and asked me to sleep in a sitting position the whole night. The next day when i went to my GP he looked at the cotton and cellotape and said, well done and no you don't need stitches. So that turned out ok. And more recently a big knife landed on my hubby's toe (nearly chopping it in half) but we were travelling to the States the next day and he decided to home remedy instead of visiting a doctor. It was  a pretty deep cut and bled the whole day and he was in a lot of pain even on holiday, but steadfastly refused to go to a doctor.
Anyway the point is, we can refuse treatment for ourselves, but you cannot be irresponsible towards your children and take risks with their recovery.
The next day, S foot did not look swollen so I took her to our regular paediatrician. He looked at it and said its not a fracture or a tear, but only a sprain. However he did tell me that she should be walking in two days, which i did not pay much heed to.
Two days later, she still had a lot of pain when trying to walk on that leg, but i kept pushing her to walk, saying its only a ligament sprain and you should recover fast. I then made the mistake of waiting another two days before i called the doctor and told him that she could still not walk. He asked me to immediately take her to the hospital for an X ray, which luckily we did without wasting more time. The doctor said the foot was swollen and was surprised that the paediatrician had not seen it and when they did an X ray, there was a long crack in the leg bone.
She then got a cast (yes she chose a pink one!) and she has to wear it for the next 3 weeks. She couldn't walk on crutches at the hospital so they said to avoid sending her to school, maybe only a couple of hours if required. After goofing up so badly in the first 5 days, we are now being overcautious and not sending her to school at all. With a group of rowdy 5 year olds running around, am worried someone might bang into her leg or stamp  on it. A has already done it twice. And S also gets overexcited when things are going on and might try to walk. The other day, one of her friends had come from school to visit it and i saw her trying to climb up the bunk bed with her friend!
Its quite a challenge keeping her occupied at home. Most of her activities after school are physical and with no school and no activities (other than reading) the days are very long. But somehow with a mixture of english/maths homework, playing the piano, drawing and painting, continual board games, IPad and of course TV, we are managing. Its a struggle to drop A to school and back because of course, the hubby has to travel at this time, so I have to carry S down to the car and carry her back up twice a day. But friends have been really helpful, they've brought lunch over, come and babysat S while i went to pick up A, brought cupcakes for S etc. And the best thing, is my parents are expected next Thursday- can hardly wait!
But the real learning for me, is not to be lackadaisical about the children's health and to listen to my insticts more. Better to err on the cautious side, and hope for the best.

Book recommendation

I just finished reading 'Far to Go' by Alison Pick (our latest book club book) and would recommend it highly. Its set in pre World War II Czechslovakia, in a Jewish household but is written from the view point of the German nanny.
The book is all about betrayal, staring from the British/French betrayal of Czechslovakia in the Munich Agreement, leading to the giving away of the Sudetenland to Germany, and the takeover of Czechslovakia ultimately by Hitler; and on a more personal level betrayal by friends of the Jewish family because of greed, anger, jealousy and the events leading upto their ultimate death.

What was different was the way the author detailed the people's lives, how they went on living their everyday lives in the hope that things would get better. There was not so much written about the atrocities committed, it was all in the background, and all through you were enmeshed in their lives with a sinking feeling in your stomach that things are going to go horribly wrong.

There are many questions raised in this book, why would people not escape when things start looking bad, why do you just stay on assuming things will get better. How are some people better able to understand the risks involved and make better decisions and why are others not?

Also greed and betrayal. There is a character in the book, Ernst who horribly betrays this Jewish family, and in the end the author says he is a fictional character in this story, but is modelled on an actual German who befriended and betrayed close to 40 Jewish families, 'just for kicks'. When we were discussing this in the book club yesterday one of the Dutch ladies mentioned that her grandaunt had hidden and saved a Jewish family in her house in Netherlands in this period (at great peril to her life) and one wonders how some people have the courage and strength to do this, while other people degrade to their worst in such situations.

Then there was the heartbreaking Kindertransports- trains running from Czech to the UK carrying fleeing Jewish children. These children were given an opportunity to escape but their parents had to stay behind, and the children were sent to foster homes in the UK. One wonders how parents would do this, send off their children to another country, to strangers, speaking a different language with little hope of meeting again, but again at least there is a chance for them to survive.

The book intrigued me enough to search on Wikipedia about the Munich Agreement and the Sudetenlands, and that is really saying something because once i finish a book i rarely think about it again.
I haven't read any books on the Indians under the British Raj (other than the Sea of Poppies series) and if you have any good recommendations please let me know. I would love to read about something closer to my heart.