Castleness and Jetlag

I'm sitting on the balcony at my mother in law's house in Germany right now. I won't publish this post until we are back in the states, because that is part of the deal Fritz and I worked out when I said I wanted to blog. The worry is that people will forcibly enter our house and break all our incredibly valuable Ikea furniture, steal our hand-me-down gear, and deface our beautiful builder white walls IF they know that we are on vacation. (I don't have the heart to point out to Fritz that most those things are already a nearly weekly occurrence with two piccolini.)

Two days here and the jetlag is still kicking our butts. Fritz and Mattias are taking the longest morning nap ever; so long that it's ceased to be a nap. Breakfast was merely a brief awakening for them. Noah is hanging out with Oma, his new best friend, running errands and whatnot.  Here's to hoping that he'll be asleep before midnight tonight. And hoping he doesn't fall asleep and nap in the car....

Spring comes earlier in Germany. The trees are budding, the flowers are blooming. It's beautiful. We visited a castle yesterday. Noah said he wanted to see a castle. I think he gleaned the importance of castles from his female classmates - otherwise, I'm not quite sure how he knew what they were. He didn't know the German word (Schloss), so obviously he didn't learn about them from Fritz. There are castles everywhere in Germany, so not a problem, but they don't all look like Neuschwanstein (Disney's idealized castle), so we're having some trouble deciphering what's a castle and what's a chapel and what's the big(ger), fancy hotel and cafe next door.

Here's a quintessential castle for us Americans, complete with moat, view from the inside courtyard.
Mespelbrun in Spessart.

But we did find one with a moat. Hmm. I went on the tour, but I still don't know the German word for moat. Maybe moats aren't so important to german castle-ness. Or maybe I sleep-walked through the tour.