Knorr Family Adventures

It's hard to believe but we've been living in Germany for 6 months now.  Feels like a good time to evaluate where we stand.  Life is definitely getting easier for everybody.  Kids are currently on a 2-week Easter break but when they go back to school on April 13, we are going to upset our routine again because I finally found a sports complex where the older boys will take swimming classes on Wednesdays.  They had one class and it's interesting to see how different things are.  The first stroke taught in Germany is breast stroke which was the last stroke that they boys learned at the Y.  Nevertheless, Andrei is going to be in a pretty high level class while Ilya is "an advanced beginner" until he learns the breast stroke.  After that, he might skip some levels where they work on freestyle since that's the one he already knows.  We are also going to check out track and field at the same complex, and see if the boys like that. We now have pediatri...

Last Sunday we took a trip to Wiesbaden.  It's a capital of Hesse which is where we currently live.  Wiesbaden has a pretty cool history and it has a lot of that old-world charm.  During WWII was only bombed on 66 days and while Frankfurt was nearly destroyed, only 18% homes were destroyed. Wiesbaden was first mentioned in 6AD.  The oldest building is the city hall and it's from 1609 and 1610.  However, in 1648, only 40 people were left in the city after the 30 year war.   Most of the current magnificance is from 1815 when  Wiesbaden became a capital of Nassau, which was a a independent duchy (state) between 1806 and 1866.  Throughout it's history Wiesbaden has been an important city where at different times it has been a royal palace or unofficial summer residence for Kaiser or just a place where the Russian nobility came to vacation. Jewish memorial, all along that really long wall are the names of people and where they peri...

We all had a lot of fun last weekend so wanted to share some pictures.  On Friday night, after dinner, we biked (Anton), scooter-ed (Ilya), roller bladed (Andrei) and walked (Chris and I) to the local ice cream place.  We've had ice cream at  couple of different place by now and all of them have been amazing.  We had regular chocolate, DARK chocolate, vanilla, raspberry and stracciatella ice creams going from youngest to the oldest :)  Then on Saturday we took the boys to the rock climbing place.  They let the boys run around a bit but officially you have to be 8 years old to do that.  You  can see in the pictures that Anton got a hang of it with some help from this brothers.  And lastly on Sunday we went to Hesse capital  Wiesbaden which is only 20 minutes away from us and spent the morning there but in the afternoon we all went biking.  Wiesbaden will be a whole separate post coming up in the next couple of days. ...

Since we moved to Germany, adjustment to food situation has been interesting.  The only thing we have not been able to find in German supermarkets is sour cream that we like.   The vanilla ice cream hasn't exactly been great either way but it's passable.  There is no Costco or Sam's and the supermarkets don't have the massive packages of anything so we've adjusted to more or less shopping twice a week, usually on Friday and then again on Monday or Tuesday.  Also, our fridge/freezer size prohibits us getting lots of food :)  The supermarkets are closed on Sunday and that means that whatever we have is what's eaten over the weekend.  It's also been an interesting adjustment to not buy frozen vegetables.  While they do exist in theory, they just don't taste good!  An upside to that is when we get to try new foods.  If I see something that's reasonably priced that we have never tried before, then we give it a shot.  We tried physalis this ...

Valentines Day here is really non-existent here in Germany.  However, the huge event here is Carnival and it took place on the same weekend as Valentines Day.   From what we learned the preparations start on 11/11 at 11:11 but most of it is behind the scenes with the big parades going on all around Germany the weekend before Ash Wednesday.  We also learned about an interesting tradition where on Thursday before the parade the women are allowed to cut men ties in half.  Apparently, it's a big thing here and you don't need to know the guy or ask him anything.  You can just carry scissors and come up to any man wearing a tie and cut it.  Some people tried to go to court, I guess, in the past, but it was ruled against since it's "a cultural thing".  Anyway, Ilya had a Carnival celebration at the Russian school and Chris went with him.  They also had Carnival at school but we don't have any pictures from that unfortunately.