Saturday-3rd Place

I'm writing after watching Germany win 3rd place in the world cup, so excuse the typo's :)
Over the last few days I've been surprised at how many words we use that are german: supermarket, kalt = cold, klinik = clinic, fur = for, kindergarden, there were more, but I cannot remember them now, climate sounds like climate, however I don't know how they spell it. Chemie is chemistry and biologie is biology. Most science words are the same, but lots of nous and verbs are the same as well. There is only one that confuses my brain; that is schnell or quickly (hurry), it sounds like snail to me so I always think it should mean slowly.
I'll move on.
We went to the Botanical gardens today, garten botanic. I had wanted to see what the names were to the native plants, but I was deterred by the hot weather (wetter). We started off in the greenhouses hosting rainforest plants and from there we were too hot to take much else in. Tara was sleeping in her stoller (kindercart), as it was nap time, 12:30, and we were trying to enjoy lavender, and asteraceae families. We decided on returning when it is kalt and enjoying the greenhouse sauna. I wonder if they call it a sauna?
My other biology excitement today was watching a group of birds on the rooftop, all the rooftops here have 'gardens' or native species habitats on them. I was admiring this tundra looking expanse, when I happened to see five or six birds that seemed to be working together to flush out insects. The birds were too far away to see what species they were, my thoughts drifted to dolphins hearding a school (schule) of fish. I watched until Tara took my focus elsewhere.
On the family: we skyped with Pam and Dale and with Corinne, Jante and Ethan; it was nice to talk to family and 'show' them around our new apartment.
If anyone has any knowledge of the flora or fauna of the area, please let me know. I've googled it, but have not found a great site.
Tomorrow we are thinking of going to the next closest town, Weimar, it is known for being the center of philosophy in Germany!

Oh, my last comment: we got lost today looking for the botanical gardens, and this was due to the fact that all the maps we have been given are somehow printed with North not being up. This is confusing to Americans, anyone reading this think this is a normal way to print a map?