Knorr Family Adventures

We can all “thank” Germany for Daylight Savings Time – it was first implemented here in 1916 (April 30 to be exact) during World War I. Germany ranks 3 rd amongst countries with the highest recycling rate (1 st is Switzerland, 2 nd is Austria), and while ridiculous in the beginning it all makes sense now! The Gutenberg Bible was first published in Mainz, which is only 30 minutes away from us, in 1450s. Ulmer Munster is the world’s tallest cathedral at 161.53 meters or 530 feet; it is also about 3.5 hours away from us and is on our “to visit list.” The longest German word ever published has 79 letters.   And yes, German words are kind of crazy   - they just put words together deleting the space between them to make up a new word.   Or at least it feels that way! Germans invented gummy bears.   They are super popular here! German Autobahn has no speed limit only on 65% of it; all together it’s 11,000 kilometers. There are over 1,500 kids of wurst; w...

I thought I would separate out 2 special topics from our Italian vacation – food and beaches.   They are not related; yet, they stand out from the rest of the trip.   I can’t really explain it … Italian food … I guess I had little expectations but obviously we all know about the pasta, pizza, lasagna, tiramisu, etc.   We ate out a lot during this trip because we mostly stayed at hotels and because we moved around so much.   Many hotels we stayed at had breakfast included or at least offered for a very reasonable price.   90% of the time it was croissants, breads with fruit spreads, some cheeses including mozzarella, and maybe some meats.   Not bad but a little too much of the same after 14 days on the road, and don’t get me wrong – it’s not like we have 25 different breakfasts at home but having the choice of cereal and eggs was very welcome when we got home.    Lunch and dinner both seem to be fairly large meals in Italy; but here ...

Between the months of April and October (more or less) we travel a lot and I don’t always have time to sit down and write about it despite the fact that I want to since I know we are going to forget things.   Traveling is both fun and tiring; but we know that one of the reasons we moved here is to see places that we would never be able to do otherwise.   Case in point – Chris had a business trip to Paris and I drove down with the boys on Friday night (after school) to spend the weekend.   I am thinking it’s not something we’d be able to do if we lived in the States.    Having said that - our Italian vacation was amazing, and I don’t think I would do it justice in one little paragraph.   However, here are the highlights.   We wanted to hit all the major attractions – Venice, Florence, Rome, Pompeii, and Milan.   We also knew that we have 3 active boys who can only do churches, museums, and statues for so long.   Our solution was rat...

Come October and we will be in Germany for 2 years and I can honestly say that time has flown by insanely quick!  We are very much adjusted to life here but since Chris has business trips every couple of months, he makes our Target trips for us and I have to live through him :) Here is a list that Chris went with this time: glue sticks, coloring pencils and pencil eraser caps - it's back to school sales in America; here it's back to school season without the sales.  Pack of coloring pencils runs upward 8 euros; same for glue sticks.  And I mentioned before, there are not crayons but coloring pencils are used a lot.   low sodium soy sauce - doesn't really exist here and it's hard to go back to regular once you've been using low sodium maple syrup - totally exists here, a little hard to find though and the containers are so small that we usually need to use an entire one for breakfast   chocolate chips - Chris prefers to use chips when making panca...

Picking up where I left off about a month ago, maybe more... Our transit from Tallinn to Helsinki was in style!   We took a 2.5 hour ferry but because Chris has been with me on the boats/ships before, he actually booked a room where we can lay down in case things went south for me.   Yeah, me and sea travel have been known to have some issues :( Anyway, it was really nice to have that because the seating on the ferry is first come, first serve and people end up sitting absolutely everywhere.   What was also weird was the amount of alcohol people were bringing from Estonia to Finland – cases and cases of beer! When we arrived in Helsinki and checked into our hotel, we knew to start looking for dinner right away (it was about 9PM).   After some wondering, we found a nice Finnish place and had Finnish taster platter with Finnish cheese, meatball and some other random things.   It was alright, but nothing like the Estonian food.   The wine...