Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off To School We Go

And so, we are settled in a new place. I find moving a fracturing experience.

I don't like change. There is always that period of dissonance.

You know, you wake up in the middle of the night and wonder what city you are in. And where they keep the bathroom.

A period of time when clean underwear can be hard to locate. Which necessitates buying emergency underwear, which immediatly gets lost in the shuffle and is not unearthed until it is time to pack up and move again.

Or you realize there is no hot water and stand quietly helpless wondering how, without internet access, you will be able to explain in German that you require hot water. And to whom exactly you are supposed to explain this. And ponder if getting a hotel room in order to shower immediately is an excess or a necessity?

That kind of my-toothbrush-could-be-anywhere dissonance.

But, time heals all feelings of being unsettled. We arrived, kicked German lessons into gear and started school. School is close, which is nice. We bike. Which is brilliant.

I love my bike, with perhaps an unnatural passion. I have not gone so far as to name it, but I will be quietly heartbroken when the time comes for us to part.

Tom likes his bike. A lot.

Hope tolerates hers, but for the first time in her life finds trams compelling. Such is life.

In the morning, we (a) locate our biking helmets and take the lift down or (b) take the lift down, and then take the lift back up to locate our biking helmets. Saddle up!

A new  helmet has been ordered for Hope. A riding helmet, actually. We'll be doing a little riding over the Christmas holiday and a little research would suggest that while a bike helmet is not suitable for horseback riding (there's not enough support in the back), a riding helmet is perfectly acceptable for biking (they tend to be hotter, which is why everyone isn't doing it).

Tom  is in need of a bicycle upgrade, but we're holding out until the used bike shop back in Brno has the appropriate size.

But, back to our school trip.

After securing helmets, we wrestle our bicycles out onto the street and race the tram to the crossing.

Oh! Tram wins! This sort of photo ages me ten years.

Then we cross at the bike crossing. Note the abundance of helmets. Clever bikers! That, by the way, is seriously the bike path. I will do a later post highlighting how incredibly delightful this city is for biking. The bike path is well marked, there are no cars on it, and pedestrians are aware that they will be run over if they step into the path.

Crossing with the light. On the bike path. Hello, we are so not in China any more!

Hope is the slower of the two children. By a factor of about 400. Tom now bikes to school alone, while she and I take the slow, chatty ride to school. Jeff once commented that he prefers walking over biking with the children, as that allows more time for conversation and reflection. I was like, "Honey, clearly you have never biked with Hope." I swear she operates that thing on Chat Power.

The white lines you see Tom biking within are the Bike Lane. Chatty Cathy here has a hard time coloring inside the lines.

This is a shot from the bridge over the Danube canal. This is our biking path to school. Nice, right? We're thinking "blustery" might be the word of the day in January, but as it is still September, I'm not fretting. Just working quietly behind the scenes getting everyone kitted up for winter so that they'll be ready when the weather changes.

La, la. This is a close as we ever get to Tom. Now, a month into school, he has arrived and is trading Pokemon cards with his pals before Hope and I ever get this far. Independence is good.

The canal ride is beautiful, although I enjoyed it more before Jeff asked me if I ever thought about Hope losing control and ending up in the drink. I enjoy it a little less now. And tend to ride between her and the deep water.

La, la, the final traffic light crossing.

And, we're at school. Tom is working on his bike locking skills ("Dude, no one is going to steal the light pole. Please. Lock. Bike. To. Pole."). Photo evidence was necessary to prove to him that he actually needed to work on these skills.

 

Total distance: 1.5 kilometers.

There is a tram we can take, but interestingly enough, it takes about ten minutes longer to take the tram than to bike. So, unless the weather is genuinely bad, we're biking.

Tomorrow: My Biking Life

 

Comments

[phoebe]

Is Hope wearing a uniform?

[Ellen]

Indeed she is. Sharp eyes! The school does not require uniforms, but we bought their school clothes in the US this summer. In the US, there is a trend for public schools to require uniforms, so the stores are full of these easy khaki, white shirt, polo kind of kits. The *loved* them. And so, I bought her a uniform. I also love them; easy care, and I only wish the school would require them. Unfortunately, uniforms are just not an "Austrian" thing, and the school doesn't think uniforms would sit well with the 30% of the school who are Austrian. Ah, well.