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 ...

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...

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 ...

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 i...

This week has been rough.  Chris was away in Iceland so I am on my own and while it's usually not a problem this week has been a bit rougher than normal so here is a break down of what happened.  Needless to say no pictures :( Monday - I had an appointment with Ilya's Russian teacher at 7:30 in the morning which went well.  Ilya is doing a pretty good job in the class, he understand verbal communication but it's hard to find him books to read because his vocabulary is still lacking.  Anton has German class every Monday where I have to take him to the class at 9:35 and pick him up at 11:15 at which point he goes to kindergarten. During the class I took Chris to the airport.  Andrei had an eye check up and we waited for over an hour and then left because we had to go pick Anton and Ilya up.  That got rescheduled for another day in May but overall I need to find another eye doctor for the kids.  The receptionist did apologize which was nice because it'...

Since I have not had the chance to write anything about scouting, this seems like a good time since Andrei just transitioned from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.  We originally joined Cub Scouts because our friend worked it out so both boys can attend on the same day and because we thought it would be a good idea to get the boys into an American activity with American boys.  Ilya joined Wolfs and Andrei joined Arrow of Light so Ilya is the oldest in his den and Andrei is the youngest.  Ilya is really enjoying the Cub Scouts.  It really seems that getting the badges the the belt loops is a great motivator for him to read and do the assignments.  The requirements are very structured and organized so Ilya can do most of them on his own with a little guidance from me and an occasional drive to things like botanical garden.  The Wolfs have 5 requirement adventures and they include things like learning about American flag, learning about God (very open vague advent...

This was the last of stop of the March adventures and the friend I went with does not want to be disclosed but we had a blast.  We were in Madrid for 1,5 days so not a whole lot of time; however, Madrid was charming and really really cold.  After we checked into the hotel, we wondered throughout Madrid and made our way to Retiro Park.  It was fun - we weren't so tired yet and the weather was beautiful.  It's similar to many other European parks with the statues in the middle of well laid out paths and a lake in the middle. Look at the beautiful sky! After the park,we went to Prado Museum - it was the only museum we visited in Madrid, but there are many more for those with more time.  Prado Museum has free entrance 2 hours before it closes but you have to be ready to wait in line.  The line moves quickly but they do give each person a ticket and we probably waited for around 30-40 minutes which means once we got into museum we only had...