Knorr Family Adventures

All over the my F acebook feed, I am reading about the school year ending .   Meanwhile, we still have about 6 weeks of school left. So I figured I'd do some more random notes but this time they all have to do with differences we have notices between American and German schooling . - First and most obvious one is that German kids have much sho rter summer breaks.  It's only about 6 weeks long .  However, there are longer vacations throu ghout the year.  For example, E aster is 2 weeks long and win t er break is about 4 weeks long.   -There are no crayons here - as in they do not exist.   Everybody uses pencils and markers, even 3 year olds.   This is more than ok by me since I grew up in Russia and crayons didn’t exist there either , b ut still different f rom USA. - Back in the beginning of the school year I had a conversation with a teacher who explained to me that I have to make sure that pencils are of the appropriate length. ...

Pilsen is a town in Czech Republic that we passed on our way from Frankfurt to Prague.  It's located less than 60 miles away from Prague.  We stopped to wonder around the town because reading about it seemed like a worthwhile stop.  It did not disappoint.  We stopped by a bookstore where Ilya found a book that he really wanted - Kang Fu Panda coloring and sticker book in Czech.  Czech has a decent amount of similarities to Russian language but is definitely different enough that some of the time I have NO clue what it says.   On the way back from Prague we stopped in Pilsen again and this time we visited Museum of Demarcation Line.   It was extremely interesting to say the least.  I use the word museum loosely since it’s basically a depot of vehicles used in World War II including over 150 tanks and armored vehicles.   A lot of the equipment is Soviet but definitely some German stuff plus some American Jeeps.  Did...

Second day in Berlin was a bit less adventurous.   We visited DDR Museum which had a decent amount of things basically from my childhood.   It had an apartment set up in the style of 80s with chachkies like egg holder, telephone,etc.     The boys loved it because the museum is interactive – you can climb into a car, turn the knobs on the stove,   use the typewriter!  They had no idea what a cassette player is Notice the pictures on the wall behind - Marx and Lenin Then we wondered around Berlin down to the Tiergarten where we found a large playground.   Tiergarten is somewhat equivalent to Central Park in NYC with a minor difference of Tiergarten dating back to 16th century.  On the playground there was a large group of refugee kids playing so we got talking to adults with them.   Apparently, there is a charity organization that takes kids from the refugee camps and brings them to playgrounds.   The supervisors...

In Berlin we rented a house which was about 20-25 minutes away from Check Point Charlie.   The house itself was interesting; it had 2 bedrooms upstairs where the boys slept (Andrei and Anton shared a bed) and Ilya got his own room.   We slept in the bedroom downstairs which opened up to the living room.   It honestly felt like a summer house for inner city Berliners.   The best part was the yard.   It was large enough for us to play soccer. The entire time we were in Berlin the weather was absolutely beautiful.   On the first day, we left the house around 10AM and came back around 6PM having walked the entire time.   We started with Check Point Charlie and Berlin Wall museum.   The museum was very small but very informative and very crowded.   The problem we encountered is trying to explain to boys how the wall came to be and how it went down.   It’s just not something that they seem to understand.   Then we stopped for lunch ...

A couple of weekends ago was a holiday weekend in Germany, so decided to fill a gap on our map and headed out to Berlin with a stopover in Dresden.    We booked 2 rooms at Holiday Inn in Zwickau because having 5 people makes you over the limit for a double room.   Well, the hotel was super nice and gave us 3 rooms; 2 adjoining and one right across the hall.   Andrei and Ilya got to sleep in their own room and loved it.   Dresden was lovely but cold; thankfully, I remembered our   trip to Amsterdam last year and took hats and gloves.     Dresden is lovely touristy city – it has lots of walking streets and during this particular times it was busy but not crazy.   We found   a nice place to eat and were serviced pretty quickly which is always a good thing when eating out with 3 active busy boys.   After lunch we decided to go on a horse drawn carriage ride and fun was had by all.   The ride itself is about 30 minutes ...