WEEK 1 of Camp: TRAUSNITZ

It’s been awhile since I’ve written and that’s only because camp has literally consumed my life; it’s not a bad thing though. My first week was last week at Trausnitz castle and I had my own group of 10, all 13-14 year-olds.  Al but two went to Gymnasiums which meant that they were all very intelligent.  The week went well; I think the liked me but I wasn’t as fun-loving as I could have been just because I was a bit nervous, etc.  Charles and I had English groups (him 13, -6 graders and all little shit boys!), then Pierre-Luc and Aurelie had French groups. Emma and Fabian were night counselors and did well, considering the pranks and thefts that occurred in the hostel, and we had a new French-Canadian counselor, Annika who, in another life, I swear we’d be nearly best friends.

Trausnitz was beautiful! It was a little castle next to a river and up stream there was a lake where we took the kids raft-building and swimming on Tuesday.  Of course, my group built that thing like it was our job (and it just goes to show that I’m competitive, even at raft building). To be fair, my kids were on the move and all worked together- a true representation of  my group all week!

We didn’t’ stay inside the castle, even though other groups did. We were in the mini-hostel next to the castle which had our bedrooms, recreational rooms, classrooms, and cafeteria.  On the cliff to the side of the castle there’s a hanging post and Pierre and I wanted to take the kids on a night walk and tell them a scary story on one of the first nights… we concluded that we wanted the kids to sleep through the week.  On Wednesday night, we had a knight’s dinner. Trausnitz gave us medieval armor and dresses to wear and dinner was self-served and hand-eaten off of wooden planks and clay pottery.

Trausnitz really isn’t much of a town but it had a little candy shop up the road…trust me, we found that out within the first day!  Besides those trips, the boys never ceased to amaze me how much money they spent on the vending machines.  One kid phoned home on Wednesday telling his mom he didn’t have any more money and in return, she phoned the front desk to lend her son twenty euro so that she could reimburse them on Friday when she came to pick him up!

Anyway, the “happy-ning” went well; my kids were the best! One of the dramas was actually about a poor family who sent their two children to go fishing and when the father ate one of their clams, he choked on a pearl which made them instantly rich.  The play ends with them moving to Hawaii, buying a car, and eating pizza instead of fish… clever I thought!

First weekend: I spent the weekend in Nürnberg at Rob’s host family with Fabian, Emma, and Pierre. We had a blast! The first night we had a lot of wine (a lot of which we spilt… wupps!). We managed to lose Pierre within the 4-bedroom apartment, the toilet was found foaming a foot high, and Rob and Fabian were, at one point, screaming out the 5th story window out to the streets of Nürnberg.

The second night we went out to a dance club called Planet.  It was awesome!  Saturday we actually made our way to a lake outside of the city and met up with some of Pierre’s friends.  I loved it because it reminded me a bit of home and a lot of what a regular summer in the Midwest consists of.  For Rob and Alice, it was their first time swimming in a lake! I really enjoyed watching them in their new world of nature, weeds, dragon flies, and swimming across the lake.  Day well spent.

Sunday morning a large group of about 12 of us headed to Alexander’s in the town square of Nürnberg for a bomb Sunday brunch! YUM! Sunday afternoon brought me to Burg Wernfels which has turned out to be an incredible place!  It’s about the same size town as Trausnitz; however, you can tell that it’s been a hostel for awhile. It has a separate cabin for recreational activities such as pool, foosball, ping-pong, etc. They also have a pool, and wireless in the lobby, nice rooms with bathrooms, good cafeteria food, kiosk snack shack….