Knorr Family Adventures

We've been here for a year and it's been an exciting year at that. We arrived in the last week of October and settled into one month rental in a beautiful Bad Hamburg.  Things got off to a rocky start with Anton's first round of bronchitis and the boys started school . Before too long Anton had another bronchitis but thankfully by Christmas it was all good.  Our first Christmas was good and we decided to head out to Paris. We all had birthdays here and we love getting our boxes full of surprises every time, but miss our family very much. Last year, while convenient to have all the boys in the same school, wasn't ideal for any of the boys.  So this year we made a change and while it's not ideal for me the boys are going to 3 different schools and they seem to be happy and thriving.  The boys are still doing swimming and Ilya does an all around German sport - soccer.  We've been to emergency room way too many times for my taste - bronchitis and...

This is one of those lists: you "live in Germany when ..." - you can leave restaurant to go smoke outside or go to ATM and people wouldn't chase you down the street thinking you left without paying - no ice in your drinks - if you want flat (still) water, you have to specifically ask for it and you will pay for it (no free tap water).  If you just ask for water at the restaurant you will get fizzy stuff that my husband has learned to love but the rest of us not so much - you can go 90 mph on the autobahn and it will still free like you are the slowest car on the road.  In fact, it's really easy to get to fairly high speeds without realizing it - when you go to the grocery store you need to bring a coin and depending on the store it could either be 50 cents or 1 euro to get the cart.  You also have to bring your bags because otherwise you will have to pay 10 cents per plastic bag or just stuff everything in your trunk - expensive restaurant and...

We are fairly open minded when it comes to food so we really don't miss too many foods too often.  Lots of fruits and vegetables are seasonal here (strawberries and asparagus in the early summer, brussel sprouts in the winter ...) so you need to eat them when arrive because 3 months from now they'll be off the shelves until nearly a year later .  We have found several places that we can get things from - for example, sour cream (very important in our life)  can only be acquired at the Russian store; baking soda is at the Asian store (no, we were not looking for baking soda there but it caught Chris' eye).  However, there are things that are hard to find here and we highly appreciate the care packages!: ) When I recently walked through one of our local supermarkets, I snapped some pictures of "American" foods with prices. Take a look at the price for BBQ - 6.69! German barbecue sauce - 0.69 cents! Better but still ...