So there are three

Yesterday afternoon I heard the distinctive sound of little girls giggling.  I looked out the window and saw three girls cycling and scootering up the the path that goes towards the back of our apartment buildings.  I convinced LGG that we should go outside and we wandered out.

We went up the path and ran into a mom and four girls.  Unfortunately one girl was unhappy and the mother was comforting her.  The mom spoke a little English and she said that they were heading inside.  The mother also told me that they had been told that the little playground behind our building was only for the children that lived in the three connected apartment buildings.  I don't know if the other three girls had been playing with that girl and had been sent away from the playground or what.  When the mom told me that they were going inside, I thought she meant all of them.

LGG and I decided to go to the playground anyways.  There were people sitting on several of the ground floor apartments that face the playground and I said "Hallo" to one of them that had a family.  Then we realized that the three little girls had followed us to the playground and started playing.  I probably should have told them to go away, but my German is still not good enough for that.  At one point one of the little girls tried to talk to me, and at that point I asked the woman on the terrace for help.  I told her that I spoke only a little bit of German and since she didn't speak any English we decided to speak German slowly.  

It turns out that the three little girls were from the neighboring apartment building which did not have a playground.  The girls probably had started playing at the playground with one of the kids in the building, but then started coming over on their own.  I don't know if it's because of the noise or the liability issue, but it's been decided that the playground is only for the children of the apartment's residents.  Which makes sense, except that it's a shame that your child can't have a friend over to play at the playground.

Also I'm not sure what that means with us playing at other apartment playgrounds.  There are not that many official playgrounds nearby, but there are many apartment playgrounds in the vicinity.

Well, the useful fact that we learned from this was that there a total of three school-aged kids in the three connected buildings, all girls.  Maybe we'll get a chance to meet them again another time.