At Chika’s suggestion, we decided to do a little exploring outside the city limits to the lake areas around Berlin to Pfaueninsel, or Peacock Island. We enjoyed a great picnic, with some lovely peacocks joining us, but the rain cut our trip short. I guess we will have to return again.
With a tip from Kai’s fellow classmates, we decided to book a ski vacation over the long Easter weekend at a resort in the Czech Republic. We didn’t know what to expect — what the hotel would really be like, would there be snow, and even if the snow was there would the skiing be good? It turned out that all-in-all is was a great facility to get this family on the path to becoming a ski family. It was almost too simple — the ski rental was part of the hotel on the basement level and then right outside the door was a ski school and a small poma lift to connect to the larger mountain (although our mountain was not connected so some of the larger ski areas in the valley). After a few days of lessons (in addition to a few from his stay in Japan), Kai took off literally. I could barely keep up. Teo also made his way onto the skiis and with the help of Chika even did a full run from the top. I was hard to be up at the crack of dawn to go back to work again, but the pride I felt for how well the family did made it just a bit easier.
Thanks to a connection via the kindergarten coach, Kai is now part of a local youth soccer league Viktoria Mitte. It’s exciting to see week by week his skill improving. He really has come a long way.
This year mom and dad came to visit for Kai’s 5th birthday. It was a fantastic weekend celebration with lots of fun, food, family and friends and to me a little extra special to celebrate the first life milestone.
So I have been quite bad at keeping up the blog… Instagram has been a much easier way to get things communicated quickly and easily, I have not really spend much time here (and sadly not so much in the future either). Working with BMW means I am away from the master PC… Anyway, enough excuses. Time for some Kai!
It’s a bit sad to see that my last post was all the way back in August (what happened to September). I even have an iPhone now, so it’s pretty poor track record which I will need to fix. In the meantime, we have the exciting news of our new nephew/cousin William Logan Wolfson, whom I am hoping to see (and post about) soon.
But back to our story, it was a “million dollar day” (as WW#1 used to say) here in Berlin, so we needed to take advantage. While we had originally planned a short roadtrip to the west lakes of Wansee, we hit a snag at our favorite bagel place (Fine Bagel) as all the sweet bagels were still in the oven. We decided that there were plenty of lakes around close by, but not so many good bagels and thus camped at a local playground for the next 30 minutes until our goods were ready. Now fully prepared for our picnic, we headed to Treptow Park and Berlin Inslet (a small island in the middle of the river, accessible by a bridge). We enjoyed a nice picnic (with a few too many end of season bees) with our fresh bagels, and then decided on a paddleboat adventure on the spree. We were not sure how Teo would last, but he managed to stay inside the boat thanks to Chika’s watchful supervision.
Next time, maybe we will go for the motorboat 🙂
Mommy was under the weather, so it was a day with papa and the boys. They did great and we had a full day of playing and eating. I wouldn’t want to do it everyday, but once in a while it’s a special adventure.
What a trip! A great week at the beach celebrating mom and dad’s 70/75th birthdays with the family, pool parties at Michael and Melanies, dim sum in Philadelphia, and much much more. So rather than write all the details, I will let the pictures do the talking.
Wow. Things have been busy. But a few minutes to catch up on the family adventures. Work in Munich started at the beginning of June right after a long weekend for the boys. So we decided to head south en mass and do some extended Bavarian exploring. One city which had popped up on our radar was Salzburg, home to Mozart and just over the border from Germany. What a great city it was, especially for the kids. We stayed at a hotel about 20 km outside of town set in a beautiful country lake area. Even though the weather was rainy/overcast, we had been given fantastic big rooms at the hotel and enjoyed the indoor pool. The city was really nice as well, with a great toy museum for the boys. Munich was unfortunately impacted by some fever for Teo, but we did get to the famous Englisher Garten for some beer and fresh roasted mackerel. Overall a fantastic trip which is likely to be repeated.
