Declan Gone Wild

Doing things in Europe always take longer than you think they do. Mainly because everything is foreign and different and exceptionally complex when you aren’t used to them. I’m so thankful Shea Orrick, Kevin Orrick’s daughter, is here to help me with the kids on this portion of the trip. The prospect of handling two little ones by myself in Zurich makes me want to stay in my room, especially when Declan is essentially insane with jetlag right now and putting us all on edge. He’s a little out of control…and very loud. Well, compared with Swiss kids, he seems very “American” and outspoken. As Shea said, everyone here seems so quite. It’s true. It’s a controlled quite culture. I laughed thinking my well mannered son had become the epitome of what many Europeans think male Americans are—loud, disruptive, a little out of control and very much cowboys. Okay, my son was acting like George Bush—a real cowboy throwing European caution to the wind and going at it alone. Today has been comical. We went to the Zurich Zoo and chased Declan—who didn’t hear a word we said to him all day and who yelled and ran around like a wild animal. He chased ducks with reckless abandon. He was the only kid riding the ponys and saying "yipee" "ride em cowboy" at the same time. Fitting, really. I've attached a video of him petting a Rhino (really), and riding ponys. We got home—exhausted! Dashel was great. A little crabby from the jetlag, but in essence pretty happy.



The first day here was exhausting. The chain of events happened as follows.

Monday was a blur. Because we were put on another transatlantic flight from the US to Europe, we were not able to get the bulkhead seating for the flight. The transatlantic bulk heads had bassinets built into the bulkhead walls whereby an infant under 6 months old can sleep on the long flights. Without such luck, I was reduced to holding Dashel the entire flight. This is a mighty task, given that the flight was 9 hours. I did all I could to sleep, but my uncomfortabilty kept me from sleep. Declan kept waking up in his chair and crying because he’d get really uncomfortable sleeping, so Dave finally moved him to the floor for the last few hours of the flight. I was so sleep deprived by this time that I didn’t even consider laying the baby down in Declan’s seat to sleep so I could get in a comfortable position and sleep myself. That is, until the last 20 minutes of “sleep” time on the flight. Once I finally fell asleep, I only slept for 20 minutes before they turned all the lights on and steward came to ask me if I wanted breakfast. Blurry eyed, I accepted and woke up, only to discover that only 20 minutes had elapsed since I went to sleep. Our next flight got us from Frankfurt to Zurich in under an hour. But our great casualty in that flight was our stroller, which got left on the tarmac by the airplane stairs. Yip, just left. They took us on a bus to the plane, so we put the stroller down near the first step of the stairs, like we do in the US when you want to leave your stroller for stow and retrieval upon arrival gate side. But this time it didn’t get picked up. I was devastated. I almost cried. I had searched for WEEKS for this stroller and bag and now they were gone. And Dave was in a sour mood, worried that he might miss his interview for the Weekly Commentary with Hernando De Soto. He didn’t have time to inquire into the whereabouts of our stroller. We’d just have to leave it be.



So my first stop on Tuesday was to find a stroller. I wasn’t going the rest of the journey without one. So I had to find a nearby hotel to ask their concierge where there was a children/infant store. The one they led me to was called MacBaby (yes, a fitting name, I know). I was suspecting maybe 3 choices of strollers, but to my great surprise there were about 75, so I took awhile working with the sales lady to help me learn how to fold and open each stroller. She spoke no English, so it was like a real game of Cherades. Quite funny, actually. When she finally understood I was asking her about a stroller that had a travel bag available, too, she led me to one model which did have a bag. So my choice was narrowed considerable. Satisfied to have found a new stroller, I could happily face the prospect of the rest of the trip. So onward to the Zoo.


We happened upon the Zurich Zoo, a really great zoo built on the side of a mountain that encompasses a lot of acreage and animals. They’ve done some really amazing exhibits where you get really close to the animals—you are the other side of the glass from Apes that stare back into your eyes only inches from you. And there were a lot of baby animals in the Zurich Zoo. Baby arangutans, gorillas, camels, lions, and monkeys. Interesting, because in America most zoos seem to not promote breeding programs, so when a baby animal is born in an American zoo, it’s some kind of phenomena. I remember at the Oregon Zoo there was a new baby elephant and the line to see the elephant was a 2 hour wait. So this experience was great.

Dave’s main purpose in being in Zurich is business, and the main focus of that business is a DVD he is filming on the gold storage program here in Switzerland. His filming has been time consuming and exhausting for him, but I think the end product should be great. I think he’s hoping for the DVDs to come out by mid-Summer, latest. So if you’re interested in one, contact him.

So far, traveling with 2 kids has been a challenge. From little sleep on the flights, to even less sleep upon arrival is wearying. Last night the baby was up every 2 hours crying. I don’t know if it was jetlag, gas, or not feeling well. But whatever it was kept me up most of the night, so that today, while driving home from the KinderZoo, I thought I was going to pass out driving. Which is so unlike me, because I can never imagine myself falling asleep behind the wheel of a car. But I could have today.

And Declan has gotten in enough German cartoons to last a lifetime. A great way for him to continue to learn German, I have to admit. The apartment we are staying in has a tv, but all the programs have been dubbed in German. Funny, really. We were told that there is a specific German actor for each character or actor in another language. For example, Brad Pitt is always dubbed by the voice of the same German guy. And the same goes for every actor.

Even cartoon characters. Anyway, Declan has watched alot of Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse Club and Dora the Explorer in German. And WAY too much Sponge Bob (I HATE that show). Yesterday he was watching Dora and he said "Mommy, Dora speaks German!" It was cute.

So on that note I’m going to try and get some sleep. With any luck I’ll start feeling like myself again in about a week.