Day 81 to 87 - Paris

• We spent the last week on a trip in Paris. There we stayed at a house of friends of ours who also have two kids (two daughters 4 1/2 and 2 years old). It was very nice and relaxing and we all really enjoyed ourselves.
• Florian started dealing with negative numbers. Surprisingly he also found out that ordering is reversed. He told me one day that -2 is bigger than -5 because everything is reversed with "minus numbers". Pretty cool, isn't it.
• Florian wanted to do two things in Paris: 1) Go up the Eiffel tower, 2) Go to Disneyland.
  
• On our first day we went up the Eiffel tower up to the highest platform. This was very cool since I also haven't been up there yet. Unfortunately the weather wasn't that good so the view was a bit foggy. Florian was very excited since he knows it from Ratatouille :) Anyway there were a LOT of people queueing for it, the tickets are quite expensive and when you go there: do NOT bring your pushchair. Still, it was worth it. Florian was very happy and all four kids got ice cream afterwards.
• On our second day we went to "La cite des enfants" a children's museum. Since the session we wanted to go to was already full we booked for the afternoon. While waiting the kids played in an indoor play area at Quick (a French fast food chain) and we had a look at some other exhibits at La Villette. One thing was a submarine. Matthias always said: "Look there is a black plane! When is it going to take off?" Even after explaining it he didn't believe us that it's not a plane. In the end he found a compromise: "A submarine is a plane". The funny thing on a playground in Paris is that there are nearly no 100% caucasian kids as the city is so international. That's very nice.
  
• In Paris the current craze among youngsters it Tektonik, quite similar to Krocha. Mehdi (the father of Meline and Claire, the two girls) taught his daughters how to dance Tektonik. So I guess a) teenagers dress and dance crazily everywhere and b) fathers do stupid things to their children everywhere :)
• Nicolas Sarkozy is quite a funny president, at least for outsiders :) He is living a luxury life with a new model wife and swearing at the public. He's even known as "President Bling-Bling" in France.
  
• The room we slept in was one of the girl's room. So the walls and curtains were pink and we had Lion King bedclothes :) Originally the room was intended for Matthias and Florian but Florian said he won't sleep in a pink room. Matthias just remarked on the bed clothes that Lion King 5 doesn't exist because we had characters from Lion King 2 on the sheets. That's actually something that really bothers him: why Lion King stops after the third film, because five is his favourite number.
• Third day: Disneyland. Our friends lent us their car to get there and gave us a lot of insider info about where to park and where to buy tickets, which easily saved us an hour of time. Haunted mansion was one of Florian's favourite attractions. He assured me inside that he wasn't scared and only held me tightly because he wanted to cuddle. At Thunder mountain we queued for one hour and when we finally got to the end the "adventure was interrupted due to technical reasons". After 30 more minutes waiting we left because Florian needed to pee and they still hadn't fixed it, so that was the end of the "adventure" :( Matthias was too small for Disneyland. He was scared at nearly every attraction even at the Lion King musical.
• Our friends had a plastic lion that immediately turned into Matthias' favourite French animal becaus he carried it around nearly without any interruption for the whole week.
• IKEA unites. At the house they had many similar furniture, plates, cups, etc. One particular thing were coloured plastic boxes for storing toys. Matthias recognized a red one where we keep the plastic animals in at home and said: "Look there are animals inside" When I opened it unfortunately they didn't have any in there :)
• Meline and Claire got along very well with Florian and Matthias. So even when kids don't speak the same language they can find ways to communicate.
• Marie France (the mother of the girls) had bought a rabbit for them. Matthias fell in love with the rabbit and always wanted to hold, feed or carress it. I think we have to buy a rabbit as well now.
• Traffic in Paris is a lot worse than in Vienna but then they have more inhabitants in one city than the whole of Austria.
• On the last evening we had a barbecue where other couples with kids came over. Funny enough all couples were mixed with one partner being Asian. After dinner we parked all kids in front of the TV watching Lion King. Television really is magic as all of them were quiet and glued to the screen (even ours who didn't understand French, but I guess knew the story well enough).
• Today back in Baden we spent a nice afternoon in the garden as the weather was very sunny and hot.