Mad-o-meter

It seems impossible your mad-o-meter can go from zenzero to wristlock in thirty seconds. In church. But they we were.

It started out flowers and fresh air. We had walked there. Everyone including the Conserve Water While Showering Zealot knew better than to suggest driving on a beautiful September morning. Conservation talk cuts both ways. I hadn’t even actively discouraged the scooter. Aside from my skinny-in-the-wrong-place jeans constricting round my legs like a permanent calf raise on dumbbell shoes, it had been a pleasant approach to the pew.

Truth be told, we don’t actually have pews. We have red chairs.

We were even on time. Granted the service starts at 11:45am but getting a teenager, middle schooler, and a child with a lot of questions to church after Daddy’s been gone for 7 days and after an evening of wine tasting is something I think God notices.

The service starts with singing, my favorite part.

Within five minutes, two of my children had left their red chairs – past me on the end - in search of water. Within seven minutes, one of the water-bound children also wanted a sip of my tea, animating to everyone sitting behind us that it was too hot. Between minutes seven and eight, there was a minor sibling altercation that always looks MAJOR to a Mother mid-hymn followed by a much too vigorous refusal to switch seats because “he wanted to see what his brother was writing.” Who’s writing while we are supposed to be singing anyway?????

At minute eight my eyes were closed in worship. At minute eight thirty, we were in wristlock and making our way to the back for a conversation. Unfortunately the offering was being passed at the exact moment of exit but these things happen seem to happen without much warning when you cede control to people who have chosen to sit in the almost front row.

It’s probably worth noting that the “everyone sitting behind us” may have included a school teacher I have a tiny problem with for sending students- mine included -out of the class for what I can only conclude is misbehavior, asking a question or breathing too deeply.

It occurred to me somewhere between the “You can never sit next to your brother in church again” edict and the rope I was now trespassing to sit in the last row of red chairs that maybe I was overreacting a tiny bit. That perhaps my big movement to the back in wristlock was more noticeable than whatever altercation preceded it. That maybe I wanted my children to behave just a little more than I wanted to worship. That maybe I cared even more with an audience, especially when the audience includes people you have a tiny problem with.

Once safely in the last row, the mad-o-meter continued to register for a bit. I even tried to make eye contact with the almost front row who was carrying on writing until I realized – all too vigorous sign language confusion a clue- that maybe it was time to let it go. That maybe I should carry on letting God meet me in my red chair and my too tight jeans and ask for a change of attitude.

I know he listens when we ask him for that. I know that because instead of bolting out the door at the end of the service which would have been to plan, I stopped to introduce myself to a family I hadn’t seen before. They were in fact new to Luxembourg and new to the church. I got to be their welcome. Me, the one with tiny attitude issues, who had just been welcomed back herself.

Am I a Good Parent?

(whew 3 months is a long time between posts!)

I don’t much follow business news anymore but my 73 year old father-in-law turned me on to the Financial Times management columnist Lucy Kellway whose no nonsense approach to office life I continue to find insightful and entertaining. Because I don’t have a paid subscription to the Financial Times, I listen to Lucy’s weekly column as a 5 minute podcast (smartly called “Listen to Lucy”) on Stitcher (next to Facebook, my most well-touched iPhone app.)

This week Lucy had an engaging column “Am I a Good Parent?” which was the message of a recent UBS online banner ad campaign, the implication of course being that good parents provide financial stability for their children. If only it were that easy. Seeing the question as the minefield that it is with no universal standards for what makes a good parent and no independent arbiter to judge, Lucy posited the question to 40 of her work colleagues over email. None of the working women responded (:<) All of the men responded “Yes” and their whys were nicely bucketed into three categories: 1) They have been involved in the process through time and sacrifice, 2) The end result, treating child as product, has turned out well. 3) My kid, treating child as customer, tells me I’m doing a good job. Lucy counters each of these responses as incomplete answers finally concluding, “It’s a labor of love. Good and bad don’t come into it.”

While I agree with her in principle, I find the conclusion somewhat unsatisfying. As parents we want to know we are doing a good job. We appreciatively hear and file away the parenting attaboys we receive. We glory in the moments when our children think us cool or better yet, right. But more than affirmation, we want hard evidence that we are doing it well at least most of the time. Yes it’s a labor of love where the traditional x’s and o’s don’t apply but the “wait for launch and see” approach seems a reckless gamble with what UBS and we know is our biggest investment.

There are some places in life, car shopping for example, where comparisons are helpful. As much as we know comparison parenting is unreliable because it’s a moving target (your peers are not my peers), sometimes we can’t help ourselves. Sometimes a peer comparison makes us feel cheerfully normal but just as often it makes us feel smug or inferior. And even when it makes us feel normal we have this lurking feeling that each child and family culture is so unique that our momentary relief of being “on benchmark” is fleeting at best. Plus, unlike a car, you can’t get under the hood of another household to see how things really look on the inside when visitors aren’t allowed.

Process or time put in seems a decent proxy for good work but that always feels like a call to arms between working and stay at home parents. I’ve lived on both sides of the divide and know there is good and bad in both camps. A parent may give impressive amounts of their time by coaching their kid and then bully them into better performance. Another parent may have fewer, less publicized hours to give but with greater intention and connection. Certainly there is a baseline of time investment in order to be an effective parent as well as healthy doses of expansive, unscripted time but the scale is different for each child. Not to mention the secondary benefit to children when they see their parent invested in and renewed by meaningful work. I stand with Lucy. We can’t agree on one process.

As children get older, the temptation to look at child as product is very compelling. We start laying claim to their physical appearance as soon as they are out of the womb and the land grab continues with each achievement they earn, particularly in areas we either had our own success or could be credited for helping them discover. It’s tempting because they are in some senses a product of us and their environment which we either carefully or haphazardly created but if they were merely a product we’d know how to recreate them to spec. Anyone with multiple children can tell you that is both impossible and hilarious. The idea of looking at child as consumer is even more problematic because we know the world won’t be so generous.

When I asked my own children the question “What makes a good parent?” the first thing one of them said was: “All parents make mistakes.” It’s always good to get that out of the way first. He then went on to say, “Kids who have good parents are respectful, obedient and operate within a set of values which may or may not be the same as their parents.” While that sounds mostly good (Judge Mom wished that he had said compassionate over obedient) and easy for kids with a predisposition towards compliance, the idea of “good parents have good kids and bad parents have bad kids” is wrought with so many problems and exceptions that it only took two minutes for my nine year old to remind us all about the story of Matilda – good kid, horrible parents.

The one thing that Lucy didn’t entertain was measuring ourselves as good parents by how purposefully we animate virtue to our children, or what David Brooks terms “eulogy virtues vs resume virtues.” During my discussion with my kids, one of them explained that he thought parents over focused on teaching life skills (resume virtues) like how to hold a fork or how to do laundry when “as humans, we can figure a lot of that stuff out on our own.” But eulogy virtues like joy, peace, patience, kindness, humility, generosity, gentleness, self-control need to be taught by people in proximity. It requires a combination of a few words, a lot of action, and dogged consistency. Who else would willingly sign up for that job?

“How To” teaching only requires that we know our subject, “How to Be” teaching demands a reflex of character that’s only there if you are actively committing to living out what doesn’t always come natural every day. It is easy to be kind when we aren’t irritated; it’s hard to show kindness in the middle of a shitstorm. It is easy to have oatmeal for breakfast; it is harder to have oatmeal at a breakfast buffet and not let the entire table know about our restraint. Our kids need to receive our gentleness when they make a horrible mess and extra doses of it when that mess embarrasses us. They need to see us activate our strengths and be vocally self-critical of our weaknesses. They need us to show them examples of how joy doesn’t erase suffering but sometimes springs from it. With intention around virtue, seeds are planted and blooms eventually spring but it's often slow and not always in the places you expected.

With this definition, the question of whether or not one is a good parent is no more measurable than any of the previous attempts but I sense it’s a better question we can answer for ourselves because we will find the answer somewhere deep in our bones. It’s an answer we aren’t obliged to share over email.

Amazing Grace

I am drawn to any article or essay about parenting like a dieter is to one square of dark chocolate. For good but mostly bad we crave benchmarking. I confess to reading the articles about the early parenting years with a mixture of relief and smug delight. When things aren’t going so well I like to remind myself that my children were rock star sleepers. In my memory I round up on how long they were breastfed.

On the other hand, I clip articles with titles like “How to Raise an Adult” and try hard to convince myself I'm not one of those parents involved in the college admissions mania. Inevitably a mini crisis will follow (my lie) like my 17 year old asking me if the laundry is done yet and by the way can I cut him a piece of bread. With that my mind wanders to me in his dorm room fixing him a cup of ramen noodles. I wonder if it's too late to become a family who camps or if a Swiss Army Knife would be a good 18th birthday present.

These moments of doubt are never fully rational. And they are often followed with a rant and then a new plan for making our dependent children more independent. We've had approximately 14 different plans on household chores none of which have been consistently applied. Twice daily teeth brushing continues to be a surprise.

At my kid’s school all Grade 2 students play the recorder. Some are into it, some understand it’s not a long term instrument. Having been deprived of any musical encouragement at home, my 2nd grader has taken this recorder business very seriously. Part of the drive is acquiring belts like in karate. Seven belts down, one to go and only a week left of school. The final belt of the year is for the piece “Amazing Grace.” It’s going to be close.

After much practice the notes are all there but the rhythm is still off. As an insider I have been primed to listen for “Amazing Grace” but without the right cadence a new listener would be hard pressed to place the song. It’s not bad, it’s just not “Amazing Grace.” Yet.

As parents we work hard and try to hit all the right notes with our kids but sometimes you can’t make out the rhythm. We know if we’ve been successful at potty training. It’s a lot harder to know if we’ve been successful in raising a well-adjusted adult. It’s the culmination of hitting most of the right notes and hundreds of releases of the rope - many of which seem undetectable at the time. It doesn’t all come together right away.

This week I got a call from my 17 year old. Not a text but a call. He had some news. After not getting a response to his week old email to an administrative office in Luxembourg regarding critical information needed to write his extended essay this summer, he decided to go in person. Initiative that wasn’t even my idea. I did however wave the flag that we would only be in Luxembourg for 4 days this summer and noted that because it takes 10 days to get clean shirts, I was less than optimistic about him finding the *one* person in Luxembourg with information about hybrid buses and emissions before Christmas.

As we parents are primed to do I took the call ready to problem solve. Problem was he wasn’t calling for help. He was calling to tell me that after four offices, three bus rides, and relying on his broken French, my almost adult had found the *one* person in Luxembourg with the information he needed. There was a meeting on the spot and a promise for a follow up email by the end of the week which arrived in his inbox as we spoke. All of a sudden the laundry and bread cutting weren’t such a big deal.

Before I could even offer him a ride home (as we parents are primed to reward successes) he told me he’d be home in 45 minutes because he had to stop by the grocery store. ??? He needed to pick up some fruit for his science experiment. I wanted to say “I could have done that for you” but instead I said, “Ok, see you later.”

The truth is we all overparent in some things and underparent in others. With kids on the cusp of launching into the world it’s going to be close. This week I’ve rounded up. I’ve been reminded that if we hit enough of the right notes eventually it’s going to sound like “Amazing Grace.” Not only to me as an insider but to anyone with ears to hear.

Goodbyes

When I first moved to Europe, a French woman told me something I didn’t yet have the experience to understand. Having been an expat in the US for many years but now back on her home turf in Europe, she said many of her friends here are expats because “Once you’ve had an adventure, you find yourself drawn to other adventurers.” More than language or cultural similarities, her “people” have become those with the shared experience of having lived as a fish out of water.

I get it more now. There is the opportunity for the relational concentration of the college years mashed together with the vulnerability of the middle school years for those willing to genuinely forge new friendships while living abroad. Making new friends in a culture that applauds a slow lunch and frowns at a to-go cup of the coffee is valuable lubricant for conversation with the potential to go beyond the surface. And in the absence of nearby family and a network of long standing friendships, 1) “Sorry, I’m busy” is a well-known lie and 2) shallow swimming ain’t gonna satisfy for long.

The downside of friendships established over new peaks and unknown valleys are that the goodbyes hurt a little bit more. Next week I say goodbye to these two beautiful women, Holly and Heidi, who have seen me through the good, bad, ugly, confusing and humiliating for the past two years. They have also graciously kept me from gaining twenty pastry pounds because I am far more faithful with exercise when they are around.

My oh my have they both adventured well. Not only have they taken the tosses and turns of a new everything in stride, but they happily hit the pause buttons on their careers (as a scientist and a Ph.D., respectively) to anchor their families here in Luxembourg and literally pour themselves out as a blessing to so many. I am but one of those grateful recipients.

So for you in Seattle and Iowa that get them back, my heart does sing for you. They are ready to be back home with you, dare I say more deeply alive than even before, and I happen to know – fully equipped to make you an excellent cappuccino in a “for here” cup.

Travel Tip from Rome

For most, summer travel to Rome means a gelato-stained tick sheet of “must sees” a mile long.  My glossy travel guide claims you can see all the major highlights in four days, an ambitious proclamation for a city with ancient remains everywhere you step, over 900 churches and only two metro lines.

A long weekend and third trip to the Eternal City, sans children, means you can put the tick sheet down and (mostly) wing it.   Except if you are like me and you can’t help yourself from doing restaurant research.  If you’re going to commit to a pasta carbonara, you want to enjoy every calorie.  [I have recommendations on this front of course.]

Regardless of your chosen pace, the truth is that you will get caught up in the whirl of a big city like Rome.  You will never see it all or find the best place to have a pair of shoes made.  You will be completely overwhelmed – not just by the size of the city – but the history it holds.

So, my travel tip for whatever new place you travel to this summer.  Find an hour on your busy itinerary where you can escape to a quiet corner of the city and just sit.  I found my spot at the SS Apostoli Church, a second tier tourist attraction not heavily circled on any map.  First time we passed there was a mass going on.  Second time there was a long line of people waiting to take a picture of the apostle James and Phillips tombs, a ridiculous photo really given that you are in a dark crypt.  Third time, it was early Monday morning and there were only two of us in the church.  Complete silence for 30 minutes. 

The travel writer Pico Iyer says, “The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or the mountaintop, but to bring that calm into the motion, the commotion of the world.  [In stillness], a huge heaviness fell away from me, and the lens cap came off my eyes.”

I recommend you add that to your “must see” list.

---

Some Recommendations

Three dinners, three winners.  Armondo’s Al Pantheon, a well-known, family run at moderately priced traditional Roman trattoria, adjacent but not on the square near the Pantheon with excellent food and a kitchen staff all over the age of 50.  Recommend view of the kitchen for anyone with an Italian grandfather.  Giulio Passami l’olio, a moderately priced, casual but hip (late arriving bridal shower party confirmed) Mediterranean kitchen with a long wine list and helpful sommelier 600 meters from Piazza Navona recommended to us by a Roman friend of a friend.   Antico Arco, an upscale modern Italian restaurant in Monteverde (taxi required) with a twist on Roman classic dishes and attentive service.   For a glass of wine, research told us to check out Mime e Coco on busy Via del Governo Vecchio but we preferred the lively local vibe of Il Bar del Fico near Piazza Navona and the more quiet but comfortable, Kindle-friendly Etabli.    

No need to put the Pantheon on your tick sheet.  You will pass by it multiple times during your stay and at first you will wonder, “How on earth did they build that 2000 years ago?” then you will start to wander the streets around it for shopping.  Rome is all about leather, cashmere, shoes and other things to drain your travel budget.  There is good shopping for all these things around the Pantheon including Cosimo Colonna where you can dress your man in Euro duds without gasping at price tags or committing to a summer scarf if you don’t want to.  You should however make him get a pair of colorful Gallo socks.  When in Rome … black socks will not do.

The most enjoyable shopping however was in the Monti neighborhood which is behind Piazza Venezia and the Colosseum.  Via del Boschetto and Via Urbana are lined with designer shops of Italian made goods and vintage shops in a range of price points.   The most fun was being there on the weekend for the MercadoMonti, an indoor urban market we read about in the NY Times March 2015 “36 Hours in Rome.”  With about two dozen young designers selling their handcrafts, my Euro dude was able to pick up a snazzy jacket for under 100 euros.

Whatever

When we don’t really know

When sources cannot or will not be disclosed

Whatever comes to fill in the blank

The catch all for that elusive thing we sort of believe

_ it takes

_you want

_works

A wink to corners cut, people unseen

Its flimsiness further crippled when used all by its lonesome

Whatever.

For all its accommodation, an abandoned whatever reeks of indifference

A smack down to further thinking or conversation

The socially accepted shorthand for “I don’t care past here.”

But what if rather than the last bite, whatever was the first taste

A call to scan far and wide for

Whatever is true and lovely and excellent

Not only the obvious things but the hidden things too

Past right now into what is right and just

Past the edges of good enough

A continuous decision to gorge on so much lovely your thought bubbles could be jumbotroned                                                                                                                           

Probing what moves us one step closer to our humanity and two steps closer to understanding another’s dignity

Noticing what takes our breath away and allowing it to give it back with compound interest

A flywheel of virtuous thought and practice

Whatever re-imagined

To a wide open place with commas and exclamation marks and run-on sentences…

Root Bound

You do not have to be a prisoner in your own pot

A knotty mess of rules or lawlessness

What little soil remains hard and resistant to water

With roots like tired rhetoric poking out the bottom

Last flowers put up as a flag of desperation

Once upon a time you were a healthy seedling

Shotgunning new pathways all over the place

Before you thought you knew enough about the world

Before you replaced childlike wonder with presumed grownup wisdom                                                                                                                                      

It’s no treat to have your roots broken up

To risk a transplant to a new, unfamiliar pot

Where survival cannot be guaranteed

But how then to know how big you could have grown?

How parched you really were?

An Open Letter to the Hospitality Industry

It can’t be easy to make different kinds of people happy.  The world is full of unreasonable people, mysterious allergies, bathrobe thieves and Monday morning food critics.  We are not one size fits all.  We are adept at receiving hospitality but sometimes have a tiny problem forgetting our manners, especially when on holiday.

You have a hard job and we appreciate (most of the time) all you do to make our experience outstanding.  

There is, however, one thing I need to tell you.   First, it happened every once in a while, now it’s all too often.   It feels like a cresting wave.  And it’s not just a couple of you. From 5 star hotels to quaint B&B’s, your fancy restaurants, neighborhood bistros and hole in the wall joints. In tourist towns and backwater hideaways.

So a candid word.  You want my feedback, right?

There is no faster way to undo all your great service, when at the end of a meal or at check-out you utter these 10 words, “Don’t forget to leave us a review on Trip Advisor!”  Pffffft.  Balloon popped, tire deflated.  Those are your parting words to me?  It’s like finding a second hair in my soup when those 10 words are immediately followed by, “And my name is Patrick.”

No, I will not Patrick, Francesca, Vihaan and all the rest of you.  I will never ever EVER leave a review if you ask me for one.  You immediately bring into question every nice thing you’ve done for me up until that moment and now I’m not sure how I feel about my visit.  Were the insider tips on a neighborhood coffee shop part of a larger strategy to move me from 4 to 5 stars?  Was the free dessert for my son because you found him amusing or a calculated step to get a family friendly tag?  

I didn’t tell my first boyfriend I loved him because he asked me to.  It’s ugly beggy.   What I do know is that I feel less good about my experience than before you spoke those 10 words into being.  It cheapens the entire experience. With that one question I feel you no longer count me as a guest.  I’ve become a marketing tool.

Believe me. I get it. I know at the end of the day it’s a business for most of you.  But in the moment allow us to keep up the charade.  I want to feel like a warmly received guest in some time-honored tradition.  Not that I deserve it.  Reviews are important.  As a customer, I value them.  As a service provider, you depend on them.  As a marketer, I do understand.  But there is simply no tactful way to ask for one -- especially before the food has even digested.  Not when our relationship has crossed from a simple transaction to a personal experience. Timing matters a lot here.  Sure, give me a business card or send me a follow up email reminding me your business depends on it, or allowing me to harken back to a wonderful experience -- but this is one place where a direct person to person ask fails.  Handing me an iPad and telling me it will only take 5 minutes is not the encouragement I need. Pfffftt…..

Do solicited reviews even sound genuine?  My bet is that they are the solid “very good” but completely generic reviews that aren’t worth the time to read.  If you want me to tell people about my experience, here’s what might cause me to take the time (and it is a time investment) to write a heartfelt review LATER:

1) Provide truly outstanding service. Duh. I’m not suggesting that a 3 star hotel needs to provide service like a 5 star hotel, but service that exceeds expectations is noteworthy.  The bar is set for clean rooms, hot food, and wifi that works but do a little something more that would cause me to want to spread the word.  The Southern Europeans offer an after dinner drink on the house.  I don’t need you to entertain my kid but it’s sweet if you connect with them in some small authentic way.  It feels like moving a mountain if you accommodate an early check in or late check out.  I appreciate your patience when I ask you to repeat the specials for the third time.   Be who you  are.  If you are a coffee shop, provide great coffee.  I won’t ding you for a lousy smoothie.  If you are a small cafe in a 700 person town, I’ll understand when you don’t have fish on the menu that day.  We will adjust our expectations accordingly.  The truth is -- as much as we like to believe we are special, we also really like to tell people when someone else recognizes that about us.

2) Accept that some customers simply aren’t the online reviewing type.  As a travel and social media enthusiast, I am already prone to share but there are just as many people with iPhones like my Mother who are still figuring out the difference between a like and a comment.  If however they received outstanding service, they may pass it on the old fashioned way -- word of mouth.  That’s equally as valuable.  My Mother is very persuasive.

3) While noticing your generational demographic also remember that some people don’t like Trip Advisor or have an alternate preferred review site or method to propagate reviews.  For the discerning, it’s like asking a Yankees fan to a Red Sox game.  

4) If you must, send a reminder a few days after the trip.  Few people are in a position to write a review right away (and, if on holiday, the last thing they want is the obligation to start a “to do” list), so a later follow up -- with a clear memory or antidote of my stay and a mention (and links) to your review pages-- might cause me to write a review.  And if something went awry during my stay, name it and apologize again.  We have all owned an air conditioner that has broken at the most inconvenient of times or had to endure a noisy mate at a nearby table - maybe even around our own dinner table.  Feel my annoyance and then carry on fixing it for the next person or laugh with me if it was just dumb luck.  More often than not, it’s more endearing to be vocally self-critical.

5) When you see us trying to get a selfie around the table, offer to take the photo.  A photo of me in your establishment (with a smaller face) viewed later might be the tickle I need to write that review or get more impressions on Instagram.  

 6) Instead of asking me for the 4th time if there is anything else you can do for me, tell me an interesting story about your establishment (that ideally I don’t hear you repeating to the next table). We remember charming stories such much better than we what we ordered two weeks ago.  Or the story might make the recall of our experience slightly better than it was.

7) When I or someone else does leave you a review, please don’t go on the defensive.  Astute travelers pay as much (or more) attention to your responses as they do the customer review. We can tell when a customer is being irrational without you having to point it out.  We all understand that “poor bathroom lighting” is not a deal breaker for 98% of the population.  Don’t feed the animals.

 8) Sure you can send a thank you after I write a review but do not send me any discount or incentive as a reason to leave one.  No one wants to feel manipulated.  The post review feedback however recognizes that I’ve taken time out to do something and makes me like you even more.  

9) Do a quick google of your guests and find out which of them are active reviewers on travel sites or bloggers and then double down your efforts on #1.  We know you are on your computers already.

10) Speaking of #1, do more of that.  For everyone.   Whatever you promise, do it well and and let’s make a connection.  Word will get out.  

Thank you from all of us,

Kate & Brett Ballbach

So, Berlin

One of the great things about writing a personal blog is you have no deadlines.  One of the bad things about writing a personal blog is with enough procrastination you have no one to blame but yourself when you can’t remember the details of that thing you planned to write.  This is especially dangerous when trying to write travel advice with fuzzy details.

 So, Berlin. 

I had to check my calendar to remember exactly when I was there.  It was “this” month (refusing to believe to today is in fact May 1) so the statute of limited memory should allow for more or less accurate recall.  I was also there for a 3 day weekend - with a nasty head cold – back in September 2014.  Congested or breathing normally, the first trip was love at first sneeze so I decided to return “this” month for Spring Break solo with just the two little boys.  (The big boy with the map skills was with his Dad on the East Coast doing college visits which is hard for all of us – more accurately 4/5 of us – to believe.)

I don’t know if it’s the Seattle girl in me or my low threshold for Bavarian food overload, but Berlin wins for best German city in my book.  And I really, really like Munich.  (See my post on Munich.)  Berlin lacks the beauty of Munich but there is an energy about the rapidly changing city that you don’t have to be 21 years old to enjoy.  You are constantly surprised by the amount of cool tucked behind ugly exteriors.  And the city takes their coffee very, very seriously. 

[The two found favorite coffee spots in Berlin were The Barn and Bonanza Coffee Roasters.  Lucky for me, Bonanza was 50 feet from where we stayed and their flat whites were just about perfect.]

So how’d I do?  Totally nailed it.  Beyond being expertly caffeinated, here are a few tips for doing Berlin.

Tip 1: build confidence early by skipping public transportation on arrival and taxi to hotel.  Never mind the cost or the glory of saying you caught the Airport Express to the U-Bahn followed by a 10 minute walk with luggage.  No one will be greeting you at the hotel with a medal for it at 9:30am.   And when you find out the cab fare is only 22 euros, you’ll wonder how big a tip is too big before the taxi driver asks for your number.

[We stayed in a very reasonably priced apartment hotel called Brilliant Apartments in Prenzlauer Berg on what may be one of the best gentrified streets in the neighborhood.   It was a brilliant choice for what we needed never mind what my boys say about the wifi strength and the assaulting water pressure.   The apartment is in the former East Berlin so modernity expectations should be appropriately checked.   I wrote a review of it here if you are in the hunt for lodging while in Berlin.]

Tip 2: pick a hotel next to a great café with pancakes in the AM and wine in the PM.  They don’t have to be good pancakes.  The pancakes will be the siren call you need to wake your kids for a 7am flight.  Be aware however that Europe is a place that loves bookings so even though you wouldn’t expect to need a booking for a weekend breakfast, build confidence and fill stomachs early by making one.  We got the last non-reserved table.  It was my day.

[Café Krone is the café affiliated with Brilliant Apartments.    As of today there are 6,279 restaurants in Berlin on Trip Advisor.  Café Krone is #13.  You will like it.  They have carrot cake.]

Tip 3: strategically select your neighborhood.   Berlin doesn’t really have a center and it’s massively spread out so it takes some planning (or a bike, see below) to pick the area you want to explore.  Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg are both popular, creative chic places for great eating and shopping and pervasive use of English.  Kreuzberg is gentrifying but more “edgy” and home to the live music scene.  If you want evidence there are actual children in Berlin, Suedstern is a cute family-friendly neighborhood.

[We stayed at the Casa Camper Berlin in Mitte last fall when it was only my husband and I.  It was a great location for a first visit to Berlin and the hotel was that perfect blend of down-to-earth but cool in a way that doesn’t require mood lighting and fruited water.  Unfortunately for my snotty nose, the toilet paper – as in the rest of Europe – was not up to USA standards.]

 Tip 4: pack biking shorts or your best biking dress.   Everyone knows Amsterdam as a biking city, but that’s really for the locals who know the rules.  Berlin (and Copenhagen) are better biking cities where you have a chance to blend in as a tourist and not be run over.   There are extensive bike lanes and few to zero hills to remind you that you aren’t in shape.  Also, finding a bike rental or guided bike tour in Berlin is as easy as finding a Starbucks in London.  Maybe even similarly priced.

 [On the first trip, we rented bikes from the hotel.  It was a fantastic way to see the city and also means you can more easily ride through the Tiergarten in route to visit Tempelhof Park – a “park” on the site of an old airfield.  There is something about seeing those wide empty runways that kick starts your brain.  And if you are lucky enough you might see men rollerblading in speedos in not warm September.   Now THAT I remembered.]

[On the second trip, we dared not speak of bikes.  We are having ongoing issues convincing our 8 year old that he will EVER learn to ride a bike.   This makes biking an uphill, downhill, and standstill battle with untied shoelaces.  This is the child who will flail his body into the air to save a goal but who fears any *potential* encounter with pavement.  Suggestions welcome.]

Tip 5:  mix in a little fun with all the history.  The history of Berlin is obviously something you can’t miss, but it’s also somber and best absorbed in doses.  There is a surprisingly number of alternative non-history related things to see and do in Berlin.

[You will no doubt go to see the Berlin Wall Memorial – an outdoor museum that is kid/pet/germ phobic friendly.   There is no better way to understand the barrier that divided a city than by traversing the ground where it was.  The signage along a long stretch of the wall on Bernauer Strasse is excellently done.  I wish I could say the same for Checkpoint Charlie.   The only bright spot around the Checkpoint Charlie circus is the Asisi Panometer, an admission-charged impactful panorama exhibit of a part of the Berlin Wall with lights and sound as well as a collective of photographs from the period of the Wall and before its fall in 1989.  Better yet is the The DDR Museum, a free interactive museum that shows what life was like in the first Socialist state in Germany.  An absolute must do.  Also on that must do list, but without young children, is the Topography of Terror – another free museum that shows an unforgiving look at the terror and persecution perpetrated by the Nazi institutions of the Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office.  When things start to get too heavy, head over to the Game Science Center (also near Checkpoint Charlie) - a totally fun, small space with 20 exhibits showcasing future interactive technologies.  Good for all ages and for hands that like to touch things.  The Berlin Zoo (for those not overly sensitive to animals in small cages) is an also nice change of pace.]

Tip 6:  Prep the kids for grittiness.  As long as you know to expect open containers, abandoned buildings, and unmanicured parks – it won’t be a surprise when you bring a basketball to Mauerpark for the third day in a row and the court is littered with as many open beer bottles as people waiting to play.  (We did however have the court to ourselves plus one on the first cold morning.)

Tip 7: make a friend in the neighborhood.  Local suggestions from the right person within the right radius is one way to cut down on marathon walks to dinner.   

[Our friend was Sadie.  Sadie runs The Juicery in Prenzlauer Berg (PB), right across the street from Mauerpark, serving some of the tastiest super food smoothies & juices.  The boys were hooked and happy to follow Sadie’s suggestion by eating at two delicious restaurants on our street (Oderberger Strasse): the fancier Ky Sushi for Japanese/Korean and Vietnam Village for tasty eats with great outdoor seating.  PB is a great neighborhood for eating and several food blogs (the best of which was Berlin Food Stories) and careful reading of Trip Advisor rightly pointed us to: Maria Bonita for hole in the wall Mexican, The Bird for a ridiculously right on American burger, Fast Rabbit for vegan wraps and hard core rap, Kochu Karu for Korean/Spanish tapas – who knew?, and Pastificio Tosatti for homemade pasta for take-away or eat-in at two small tables.  Two places we wanted to try but ran out of time were Babel for Lebanese and Lecker Song for Chinese dumplings.]

Tip 8:  If you don’t know what you want to eat, head to Mitte.   It’s as central as you can get in Berlin and it has everything, including over 1,000 places to eat.   Auguststrasse is the street name to know and explore.

[Some good ones we enjoyed:  District Mot for Vietnamese street food (went there both trips), Cocolo Ramen for at-the-counter noodles, Mogg & Melzer Delicatessen – a modern deli in a former Jewish school with a fantastic rueben sandwich you’ll need help finishing, and Lokal for a high end, seasonal modern German dinner.  Lokal, recommended to me by my good Lux friend and fellow eater Angela, is definitely worth crossing town for.  Book ahead for sure.]

I asked my 8 year old what I should include about Berlin and he said:  “Tell them Berlin is cool.  The people have good English and most people are really nice and the zoo has animals you don’t see in every zoo and the Wall is cool and the Science Center is cool …

Like I said, cool.