My employer, Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM), has offered me a contract extension of one year. Several difficulties have arisen in completing my project to the previous schedule (current contract was due to expire the end of July) and they have asked me to stay on to finish these experiments and to help out somewhat with others that are being developed. So we (the family and I) have agreed to the extension and will now be here until the end of July 2007. In many ways (financial & stability-wise, mostly) we feel this a good thing. A further extension is very unlikely and as to what is next, who knows? Feel free to post your outrageous suggestions or fervent wishes in the comments section and we’ll consider including them in our pipe dreams. 😀
Author: Fenton
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Frankfurt & Prague
Here is a blog about a trip we made last October:
Immediately after Fenton’s trip to the US we took advantage of the opportunity offered by the Autumn holidays (Herbstferien) to travel to Frankfurt and Prague. We left late as usual (to be fair Fenton had arrived back only the day before, and the weather had been particularly wet making getting washing dry (we have no dryer and the heating wasn’t yet on) particularly difficult). We got to the Temple in Fredricksdorf in the early evening. Spent the next day alternating between attending the Temple and entertaining the children, which included teaching them how to knit. Saturday afternoon we went and met my Aunty Shirley and her partner Gerhard. We spent the afternoon with them at Saals, a recreation of a Roman fort. Bryna was particular taken with the ‘pretties’ — jewellery and coins that had been found there. The rest of the children seemed interested without being carried away.
That evening we had dinner at Shirl’s and met my cousin Krista, for the first time, and her boyfriend Mike. A very pleasant evening. Krista speaks a little English with Mike and Gerhard really speaking none at all and so it gave the children a chance to use their German and Fenton an opportunity to strangle the language.
The next day we had lunch with them at a pleasant Greek restaurant after which we departed for Prague with Joshua throwing up immediately before departure. We arrived in Prague late that night where we stayed at a hostel we had previously booked. Clean and basic.
The next morning got a few things organised (e.g. food) and caught a tram to Prague Castle arriving just in time to catch the change of guards. There is a cathedral inside the castle walls which was quite interesting and Fenton and the older four children climbed to the top of the tower (297 steps, though Mara counted 298!) giving them a fantastic view over Prague.
This castle was the home of Good King Wenceslas (though he never was king, but he has been sainted) and is the patron saint of the Czech Republic. Another impressive sight inside the castle was the Great (or Horse) Hall, so named because they used to hold indoor jousting tournaments as well as the usual balls and receptions. 
As you can see in the photo it has beautiful late Gothic vaulted ceilings and the open doorway on the left leads to the Riders’ Staircase — a staircase designed to admit a knight mounted on a horse into the hall. A doorway at the end of the hall (opposite end to the one the photo shows) is the room in which the Second Defenestration of Prague (1618) took place sparking off the Thirty Year’s War between Catholics and Protesants. You should try to use defenestration in a sentence at least once this week.Shortly after this, being about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, we decided lunch was in order. As the prices inside the castle were exorbitant we proceeded to a restaurant, recommended by our ‘Lonely Planet’ guide, where we enjoyed and Indonesian meal. We then planned on catching the funicular railway for which we marched the children to the top of the hill only to find that it was shut that day for maintenance. We then enjoyed a pleasant stroll down the hill (denied by Joshua, ‘We are lost again in a strange city’) with great views of the castle lit at dusk. We then caught a tram from the bottom of the hill back to our hostel.
Our last day in Prague included a visit to one of the four St. Nicholas churches which was full of chubby Baroque cherubs and gold-plated saints. Mozart had played there once which had most impressed Joshua. We then walked slowly across Charles Bridge (see the tourist-posed photo) with the children enjoying souvenir shopping and then onto the old city centre.
We saw buildings which had played parts in the First Defenestration of Prague, the declaration of Communism in Czechoslovakia, the declaration of the end of Communism, the declaration of the end of the Second World War and the end of Czechoslovakia and the beginning of the Czech Republic. As well as this the city centre has many different architectural periods and styles interestingly juxtaposed. A personal favourite was the art nouveau buildings and the one nicknamed the ‘dancing building’ (post-modern, see the photo). 
A stroll back across the river and a quick play in the playground before we returned to the hostel for some dinner and to prepare for the return trip the next morning.Gaynor’s Linguistic Note: It’s surprising how well you can get around without knowing any of the Czech language.
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Poster Accolade
Followers of the newly published calendar (link to the left) may have noticed a recent two-day event, the 18th NNV/CPS Symposium. It’s a small conference run by the Dutch Physical Society (NVV) primarily as a forum for PhD students. I presented a poster (pdf file, 1.8MB) entitled Detection of Relativistic Electrons and Positrons in a Tokamak which won the ‘Best Poster’ prize. 😀 The prize was accompanied by the gift of two books, The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos both by Brian Greene.
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More Gruesome Details!
In the wake of popular demand I have decided two things with regards to this blog. Firstly, I solemnly promise to further harrass, cajole, poke and pout other family members into posting more frequently. It won’t be easy to increase my already virtually intolerable high output of these Encouragement MechanismsTM but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make. I hope other family members are willing to make it too. No reward will be too expected to be withheld and no legs will be fast enough to get away if a negative reply is received furthermore to my oft-heard plea, “Hey you should write a blog post about that.”.
Secondly, as a growing family with many diverse and interesting engagements we have started keeping a calendar. Actually it’s more like a calendar system. My handheld computer synchronises with the family laptop from which two A3 pages are printed — the current and the proceeding months. These pages go on the fridge door (sometimes even technology bows to time-honoured traditions, plus it’s the most frequented place in the house) so the comings-and-goings are clearly visible and new appointments can even be added by the children. Once a month we have a sit-down and go through the upcoming month. Changes are made and the process repeats producing two new fridge calendars. It seems to be working so far though of course a fridge door with a touch screen interfacing to a central computer would probably be a better solution. But hey, you’ve got to work with compromises sometimes!
The short of this calendar system is that now it is simple to publish to the web our family calendar (exactly as found on our fridge door, less the children’s pencil additions!). I’ve placed a new permanent link on the left hand side called ‘Comings and Goings’ so go on, try it out now 🙂 The default view is for the current day, though I like to look at whole months myself. What this means further is that if you see an event that interests you, drop us an email or leave a comment and we’ll be happy to give you even more gruesome details.
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One Year Here!
For those that have not been watching their calendars recently, we have been in Germany now for one year! Though we said goodbye to some people before Christmas 2004 we didn’t arrive here until the 5th February 2005. To celebrate this small milestone we had a small party with a family who were very helpful to us soon after we arrived (and continue to be so!). Unfortunately no photos from the ‘One Year Here’ party but a good time was had by all.
We feel like we’ve certainly been living in interesting times these past 12 months and — at this time of reflection — want to express again our deep thanks to all those who have lived them with us.
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Gaynor’s 35th
We just completed a two day celebration marking the end of Gaynor’s 35th revolution around the Sun. The actual anniversary of her birthday was on the 19th and on that day she received presents from her kindly husband and children — as graphically portrayed. Of course she had been receiving gifts and well wishes from all corners of the Earth-sphere for a number of days but took time out to personally accept those from her immediate family.
Friday evening included a Fenton-prepared meal — Shepherd’s Pie (a speciality) and Devil’s Food Cake with Blood Orange Icing (apologies to sensitive souls for the Satanic references) — with some friends followed by a fireworks show in honour of her marvellous achievement of staying alive. Viva le Gaynor!
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Weihnachten (Christmas)
It snowed late on Boxing Day but on Christmas the sun was actually shining. It looked a little more like Christmas but it didn’t feel like a proper Christmas. We went sledding a couple of days later but otherwise we mostly played inside. We did have a snowball fight with one of Joshua’s friends. Bryna says it is very cold and she doesn’t like cold feet. I cleaned my room just before Christmas so that Mum would feel happy.
We had a real Christmas tree and it was spiky. We put some lights up in our windows with about one hundred in each window. We also had candles burning as part of decorations. We didn’t have many decorations at first but we made some for the tree and the windows.
We ended up doing some German traditions this year and some Australian ones. We opened the presents on Christmas Eve and had St. Nicholas come. Instead of putting out stockings you put out shoes for St. Nicholas and they get filled with sweets. St. Nicholas comes on the 6th of December so you have enough stash to get through to Christmas. We still put out our stockings on Christmas Eve and they got mostly filled. We didn’t get any mangoes though.
We had some missionaries and two friends over for Christmas dinner and we sang some Christmas carols. The Christmas dinner was really yummy with roast goose, roast potatoes, chestnut stuffing and vegetables. We got to try a new Italian dessert — pistachio panatone — brought by a Sicilian missionary. Mum also says we had a salad of smoked salmon, rocket and mascapone cheese for starters and a palate cleanser which was a pink grapefruit sorbet.
Where to start on what people gave? I made cool keychains for everyone out of scooby-doo bands (like plastic string). Ariana painted noni glasses (small ones) for everyone but Elijah’s broke before he got it. Josh made bookmarks out of paper, then he burnt them a little and wrote a Hitchhiker’s Guide something on it. Elijah gave us blank books with our names and ‘Gosple Notes’ on it (Yes, that is how he spelt it). It’s for writing down things we hear in church. From Mum and Dad I got a Bugel Bead Kit (it’s craft beads that you make into a pattern or picture and iron it together) and a ballet CD. Elijah got an mp3 player and a calendar with cars on it. Ari got some Little People(TM) and some Ello(TM). Bryna also got some Little People and a soft bear with a bag. She calls it ‘Teddy mit Tasche’. Joshua got a game called ‘Abenteuer Menschheit’ (Adventure Mankind) and a cartooning book.
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New Year Greetings
Though the blog has been a little silent lately we have not. Christmas and New Year’s kept us quite busy and a good time was had by all. If you did not receive an email with our digital Christmas card this year firstly, please accept my sincere apologies (I tried to get everyone!) and secondly, please find it in this post.We have almost completed a DVD of our past year and if you would like to receive a copy please let me know. You can just leave a comment to this post (including your name) and I’ll get it. Of course there is no cost but you should be the kind of person that would like to browse our family photo album since that’s basically what it will be. Unfortunately, all immediate family members (Gaynor’s and my siblings and our parents) will be receiving an unsolicited copy. We like to pretend you are interested enough not to object … well not too strenuously anyway.
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Consider Columbus
For those not in the field of scientific endeavour (or indeed other forays into investigating the unknown) here is a quick working definition of what it is all about.
Research, n.:
Consider Columbus:
He didn’t know where he was going.
When he got there he didn’t know where he was.
When he got back he didn’t know where he had been.
And he did it all on someone else’s money. -
German Schools: Arrrrgggh!
Well where to start on this contentious topic? Having come from the progressive education system in Australia and taking it for granted I have found German schools not wholly to my liking. Why you may ask?
The first surprise: school is only a half day, starting at roughly 8 o’clock and finishing somewhere between 11:30am and 1:30pm. This makes arranging one’s errands a little challenging as most of the shops and offices do not open until 9:30 but children may be home from school as early as 11:30. Furthermore this means the children leave for school in the winter while it is still dark and freezing.
Next point. Because they are only at school for half a day, they are expected to do large quantities of homework. Which means I have the pleasure, first of all, of convincing them to do it — I guess I’d have to do this in Australia anyway — and secondly of attempting to assist them without a good knowledge of German. Much less emphasis was placed on homework at the children’s last school (all were in primary school) in Australia. Of course, I realise the boys are at high school now but the German education system seems to go from the sublime (children starting school at 6 or even 7 years old) to the ridiculous (classifying the children into a secondary school at the age of 10). You should be aware that there are four levels of secondary school each aimed at a particular outcome. So students at the Gymnasium are on the track to university while attendees at the Realschule are anticipated to be skilled but not professional workers. In our case, Mara is in her final year at the Grundschule (primary school) and we are in the process of discussing with her teacher where she should be going for the remainder of her education life.
The schools have no program to assist non-Deutsch speaking children and most of Joshua’s teachers put it all in the too-hard basket last school year. So there was almost no help for Josh to learn German or understand the work but this year (only two months later!) they expect him to complete all the work and have sent home notes about failure to do homework. All children here start English as a second language in 3rd grade. Interestingly, despite being native English speakers our children and many other bi-lingual (in English) children I know only seem to get average to slightly above average grades in English as a subject. This is largely due to the emphasis being on grammar and not so much usage and fluency.
German teachers, on the whole, are an antique breed — lacking in flexibility, unable to cater to children that are different and placing unrealistic expectations and demands. This last point includes such things as ‘You must have this book by tomorrow’ or ‘You must have your bike at school tomorrow’ and that is the first you hear of it. I have found this demonstrates that they sometimes seem to be living in a world that they think revolves around them. While I have no problem getting books and bikes to school for my children asking for it within less than 24 hours is just not always possible.
The teachers hand out a lot of loose leaf papers for work and are obsessed with having them all neatly filed in 8 or 9 different colours ‘schnellhefters’ (the plastic loose-leaf binder type folders with fold-down metal prongs). Two of our close German friends — who have also both spent time in North America — agree that German teachers are, on the whole, over-paid, lazy and self-important. Here endeth the rant. Stay tuned for our blog on Prague.
