Native Germans who still live in Germany apparently (in general) hate cuckoo clocks. From things we read online, they think of them as touristy kitsch. I, on the other hand, could think of nothing I wanted more than to bring back a cuckoo clock from the trip.
If cuckoo clocks are touristy nonsense, then Max Krug is the theater of the absurd. They have dozens of choices: 1-day clocks with cuckoo, 1-day clocks with cuckoo + music, 8-day clocks with cuckoo, 8-day clocks with cuckoo + music, electronic cuckoos as well as traditional, little tiny cheap souvenir versions, and enormous hand carved gigantic things. One even has real water that is pumped over the mill wheel. The store itself is very small and packed with expensive, breakable things. This means that when you're a mother of three, with a backpack full of iPads and kleenex, it is also a nightmare of a place to try to do any hard thinking about what exact cuckoo clock nonsense you want to invest in.
So John's Mom was our hero and kept the three bickering kids outside. Hannah was being particularly obnoxious, and a German grandma...Germany has some of the world's most awesome Grandmas, I'm pretty sure...stopped and shook her finger in Hannah's face, giving her a German lecture on acting right in public. Hannah knew, despite the language differences, exactly what was going on and immediately stopped her baloney.
Where is that German Grandma when I need her on a daily basis? Now THERE's an idea for a clock...one where each hour a different Grandma pops out of a door and yells at the kids (in different languages) to quit acting like idiots. Sign me up!
Sorry, I got off track...
And here's the one we chose, six weeks later upon finally arriving (in perfect condition) in Doha:
Here's a video of what the cuckoo and music sounds like (Hannah's noise is a bonus):
And the answer, in case you're wondering is three weeks. To the day/hour. That's how long it took.
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