HOCHHEIM SPIELPARK

A couple of weeks ago, one of our friends from church invited us to go to this amazing park for a picnic. She warned me it was quite an awesome site to see, but I had no idea what she was really talking about.

How cool is this? Look at the picture below. This is the site you see driving down the road. That's the park on the top right hand side. First you see a huge pasture of crops just starting to grow, and then all of a sudden built along the length of a hill and extending skyward is this huge park with homemade wooden activities, fun areas to play and relax, as well as tall and sort-of scary rides...yet no rules. Like my friend said, "This park would totally not fly in the U.S. It would completely fail every safety test we have over there."

But that's what I love about it over here. There's this feeling of, "Use your common sense, idiot." (Kerstin, am I wrong?) In America I think we have too MANY restrictions. A couple people probably ruined it for everyone and now you have to have all these security rules and signs posted everywhere. Another example of using your common sense here: The Autobahns. I NEVER see the police. Never see people being pulled over. Yet there is hardly ever any speed limit posted. You would think everyone would be flying down the freeway. Yet everyone's driving the same speed we drive in the U.S. They don't have to have a speed limit to know that if you drive too fast, you could end up dead. Duh...

I digress... Can you tell I love this park? I'm so amazed by it. And again, these pictures don't do it any justice of how daunting, yet amazing it is.

Little Kids Area

First, the kids area. These things are train whistles made of pulleys and...can't remember what else. Similar to the system they use in a cuckoo clock. It's an air system that as you pull it up and down it makes a train whistle sound. Spencer loved listening to them as I was pumping it.

The wooden riding toys. Puts our plastic ones to shame. :) This snail one rolled so smoothly back and forth.

This part were the stair plateaus. The kids had a fun time jumping from one to another. I didn't get a good picture of them. They gave walking up the hill much more character.

The next picture shows all Spencer wanted to do for the first 20 minutes. Since we had been here before, this time around Spencer remembered the rocks and headed straight for them. Could care less about the swings behind him. He loved picking them up and watching them drop a few at a time. Then he buried his legs in them. It was cute.

Gettin to the Serious "Big Kids" Stuff

The Zipline

This view is from the bottom of the zipline! The zipline goes a good distance down the side of the hill.

Slide & Walkway

This part was built up the side of the hill. It's very steep down the side. The zipline goes down the hill towards the kiddie part, and the rest of it is up on the top of the hill (like you saw in the first pictures). Can anyone please check out the slide coming out from the top of the big pyramid rocket-type thing? Like I said, these pictures don't do it justice. Those of you know my fear of heights can only imagine that this was way too high for my comfort.

This is the walkway that goes around the edge of the hill. Made me nervous just looking at it.

Also, they had these big huge tan boulders down the side of one of the hills for people to sit on, eat lunch on, and just chit chat. Lots of people enjoying the day there. It kind of reminded me of rocks by the sea along a sea wall.

Tire Swing
This was a large tire pit that had a swing for it. The kids would hop on the swing and then bounce back and forth along the tires. I was surprised at how deep this pit was.

Spencer and I took our own little walks. This is when we found the totem poles, hammocks and bike racks that he tried walking under. Funny that I take it for granted that this is a skill they have to learn. How to bend just a little bit to get their head under.

Tire Bounce

This tire bounce system needed three people in order to work. Check out how it's all connected. The girls, along with their friend Grace, got it bouncing pretty high. Spencer LOVED it. In this picture, I got Spencer and Xoe catching some serious air.

Look how high Xoe is (in the green)! hahaha.

Rock Pit

This is another fun thing for the kids to do. It's a big huge rock pit where you can build stuff with all the rocks. Some little German kids were adding to a "well" that had already been started previously. The girls and Spencer went over to add a few rocks to it, and the youngest German boy went and took the rocks they had put on and threw them aside. Little bitter? You can see Xanthe looking at the kid like, "this is sheer comedy." She thought it was so funny that she then taunted him by walking around the well and randomly picking up a rock and setting it on. He followed behind her and would throw each one off. I finally, through laughter, had to tell her to stop teasing the kid. But mostly cuz his parents were coming to see what was going on and I didn't want to risk being yelled at in a language I don't understand yet. I'm a bad mom, I think. hehe. But it was quite funny.

Sandpit...

One thing I didn't catch on camera was the huge sandpit they have for kids to bring their toys to play. This sandpit puts American playground sandpits to shame. It was huge. Probably the size of a very large beach volleyball court in America.

Leaving.... We'll definitely be back. Did I mention that this is only about 10 minutes side-street-driving from our house? It's basically around the corner. Oh, and we can also bring our bikes and ride them along the trails that go all around this whole countryside.

Amazing, I tell you!