Knorr Family Adventures

Last year Andrei studied Bad Soden am Taunus and it means we ALL studied about it to help Andrei get ready for his test, I thought I would share the information we’ve learned since it's kind of neat.  We really do enjoy our area with everything it has to offer. Brief history: 1191 – first mention of Soden anywhere “Sode” means salt/soda production and for extremely long time the town was known for its salt/soda with the main purchaser being Frankfurt.   In 1812 the salt production shut down since Frankfurt went elsewhere to shop for their needs and the fire broke out in the factories. 1701 – Frankfurt doctor discovered spring water is good for health and Soden became known as a spa town.   At this point (2018), we unfortunately do not have any spring water pools but we do have an awesome pool. 1839 – Wiesbaden and Frankfurt train line was created.  Wiesbaden in the capital of Hessen and is only about 30 minutes away from us by car 1843 – train station in Bad Soden wa

Last part of our Spain trip with my friend was Toledo.  It was highly recommended by many people as a must see when in Madrid.  As with many other things - things did not go exactly according to plan!  We did not buy tickets in advance because when we looked online, it seemed like the trains were going nearly every hour so we figured we'd just show up and buy tickets.  We did show up,  but buying the tickets was much harder as the train station has several different ticket offices and it took us a while to find the right one and of course by the time we found it, the train we wanted to take left and we had to wait  for the next one.  We decided to grab some brunch and nearly missed our train because the platform was pretty hard to find (as stupid as that sounds!). The train trip was nice and short and when we got off the train, there were several tourist busses from which we picked one that seemed the best for us and took us to the scenic parts of Toledo and then left us in th

For the 3rd year in a row boys participated in Lauf für Mehrsprachigkeit a couple of Sundays ago.  Thankfully the weather was pretty nice this year and Ilya's school while sponsoring the event, did not participate in the entertainment section of the run.  In the past years they played on flute, danced and singed and while it was fun, it was pretty long and the stage is a bit small and gets crowded. Last year Anton participated in the Bambini run which was 200 meters but this year he got upgraded to the elementary school-age run which is 900 meters and he ran that together with Andrei.  Ilya got upgraded from 900 meters to 3 km.  The upgrades for both of the kids were my decisions and I have to say that everything was successful. Andrei and Anton run together and I told Andrei to keep an eye on his brother in case Anton has problems with breathing.  Anton ran most of the way but told us that he walked a little bit in the middle.  Running is not Andrei's thing AT ALL so putti

Prior to Madrid , my "undisclosed friend" and I went to Barcelona (short and easy flight for me).  We stayed in hotel which had great reviews and great location, but the room itself was extremely dark despite a window.  It was also lacking WiFi.  My friend did not take appreciate that :)  I arrived kind of late at night so we just grabbed dinner and it was delicious!  The pictures are a small sample of what we got - tapas and easy to share.  Sangrias were had as well and they were huge! The following day we starting exploring Barcelona and started with a walk through the Food Market and grabbing a bag of salami-style meats for morning snack. After that we decided to wonder the streets and look at Gaudi buildings.  Gaudi buildings are hard to miss in Barcelona because 1) they are odd-looking and 2) there are crowds of people standing in front of them taking pictures.  We, of course, joined those crowds :)  We only went inside one of the buildings and hon