European Christmas 2017

Fresh off the plane and back in Germany - there isn't a better way to kick off Christmas than flying down the autobahn. First stop: Rothenburg ob der Tauber, the medieval gem in Bavaria. We met up with our good friends, The Jettners, and proceeded to the Christmas markets, enjoying shopping and mulled wine. We visited the Medieval Torture Museum again and did the night walk of the city.

Rothenburg at night

Our next stop was Nuremberg, home to Germany's largest Christmas market. The people here were plentiful and space was tight, but the vast size is something to marvel at. We ate and drank our way around the stalls, meeting up with a family from Qatar. Jared, Kris and I all watched Michigan State hand out some punishment on the basketball court.  After a day of fun, we rolled down to Munich and stayed put for a few days.  Munich offers multiple markets and we enjoyed the size and speed of the Marienplatz while also having fun with parades, musics, and drinks of fire at the medieval market.

On Christmas Eve we headed to Hofbrauhaus, the world famous beer hall, for a mid-afternoon dinner. The place was so busy we had to sit at multiple tables as we had nearly 20 people. It was loud and hectic, but the beer flowed like wine and the food and music made up for the discomfort.  After we headed to the hotel and did a gift exchange with all the friends who had joined and gotten gifts for each other from the markets.   The girls got pajamas and watched a movie.

On Christmas morning we awoke and did presents under the small tree we had purchased in the square.  Then we headed down to the Jettners room to do an exchange with them.  But after breakfast it was off to our favorite activity to do on Christmas: the water park. Since nothing else is open that day, what better way to spend it than ripping down slides, floating in lazy rivers, and soaking in hot tubs?  Our evening finished by reuniting with all of our friends at Augustiner Brauhaus for dinner.

The Walkers and the Jettners said goodbye and flew to Chamonix, France, to spend the week in the mountains.  A winter wonderland awaited, with gorgeous views of the mountains all around.  Evenings were spent walking the streets and tucking into pubs to keep warm while the day time was filled with activities. Skiing was a hit and we spent several days on the slopes, with Taelyn getting much better by then end.  She could even go down the largest and longest of hills and was keen to work on the ski jumps (and crashing).  Kaelia was more reserved and opted to sled - Sarah had no objections joining her.  Sledding was also fun and we found several great hills to go down around town. We ice skated at the foot of a mountain.

Our biggest disaster was trying to go tubing. On day one, we drove around following Google Maps to the site.  It took about an hour and we kept climbing up and up the mountain. It never felt right. When a road terminated on the ski slope and we had 5K left to drive, we knew it was not right. This place was on the mountain top.  There were no directions.  The next day we went to the hill via bus as the parking was insane.  Jammed a million people into a bus, we made about 70 stops from our house to the hill then got in a long line for the cable car to the top. We repeatedly asked about tubing and the operators called the top to be sure it was on; it was. We paid about 70 Euros to get a lift ticket and we were off.  When we reached the top, there were no indicators of where to go, no signs. Just a huge, white mountain top.  We asked and asked but no one knew or just didn't understand. The rudest French people we ever met were the ski instructors who could not be bothered by us.  So we started walking. After tramping through the snow with the kids for a long while, we thought we saw a park for tubing. It was down a long, ungroomed hill. Kris went ahead, ducked into a lodge-like structure and asked. He gave the thumbs up.  We battled down the hill in waist-deep snow, soaking ourselves (I only had on shoes - the last time I would make that mistake).  When we got there, tubes were piled together and buried in 4 feet of snow. The course to go down was ungroomed, the belt to the top was not visible, and it was clear that there was no tubing happening here. Soaked, cold, and tired, we headed down the mountain.  We took the kids inside a care for hot chocolate and we had a beer while Sarah battled with the operator for 30 min to get a refund for our wasted trip.  We headed home, gased. The Jettners wanted to ski. Hours later we saw them return, soaked from the rain, not happy. We might have made the better choice that day.

Another highlight was dog sledding. We met the dogs and hooked up the sleds for a 5km ride around the park at the foot of the mountains. It was a wonderful time, cruising along the snow with white mountains above, green trees, blue skies, and the sounds of the dogs barking. It is an expensive activity, but worth it 100%.

Kris and I also took in a hockey game watching the local team battle Grenoble. It was a fun experience and we were definitely one of the few non-locals there.  Most of the time this week was spent outside and the kids had snowball fights, built forts, and rolled snowmen.  We had a wonderful New Year's Eve. Nicole made a task for the kids for every hour (ex. have a tea party for the stuffed animals, do compliment cards, create a skit, etc.) and we all stayed up together for the New Year. Fireworks went off in the valley. I don't think I have made midnight on New Years in a long time!

Chamonix in Winter

The view from our living room

The Jettners departed and we had a few more days as a family in Chamonix. It was hard to leave and after a long, wet drive, we arrived in Zurich.  Our only purpose in coming here was to fly out, but we had a couple of days to kill.  The food and beer places were nice, but the cost of eating out in Zurich is so insane that it was a tough sell. We did an escape room and hit the pool, went for some runs, and took the kids to the playground. To say we did anything in the city would be a massive oversell.

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Christmas in Poland

We arrived in Krakow, Poland after an overnight flight with our friends, The Jettners (from South Africa/Saudi/Michigan). As a special Christmas treat, Justin hired a limo for a surprise and the group drove around town in style, sipping champagne. We ended at the Christmas Market in the main square, a village of stalls basked in Christmas lights across a square smelling of roasted meat, mulled wine, and with every trinket imaginable. After getting our fill of food, drink, and shopping, we headed out for a Mexican dinner, perfect for Poland.

Day 2 dawned with a trip to Park Wodny, an indoor waterpark.  We then celebrated Ari's birthday by going to a natural history museum (some live animals), and dinner at the recommended Del Papa. The next day we visited the Rynek Underground, a museum of a partially preserved medieval city under the town square. Our evening capped off with a trip to Maze Krakow, an exciting role-playing game where you are locked in a room.  You have 1 hour to find a bomb, disable it, and get out of the room. Using clues and items in the room, you must unlock doors, enter codes, and find secrets. It was like being in National Treasure.

Auschwitz was a haunting day. Sarah and I left the kids back and went on a tour, learning all about the atrocities of what people can do.  We saw whole rooms of luggage, shoes, pots, glass, and combs collected from victims.  The most disturbing was the one with human hair (no pictures allowed). More than a million people were killed at Auschwitz, and many of those at the largest camp Birkenau.  We elected to skip this second and more graphic portion of the tour having been distressed enough by what we already had seen. As the Nazis destroyed all of the gas chambers hoping to cover evidence in the final days of the war, we only saw a reconstructed crematorium.  Many women, children, and the elderly all arrived by trains after days of cramped, cold travel and were told they were going to shower. Instead they were gassed to death.  After walking around, we decided that these people were perhaps the lucky ones, as the survivors were subjected to horrible work conditions, malnourishment, medical experiments, and torture before eventually scumming to conditions, disease, starvation, or execution. Pictures shows people surviving perhaps 2-3 years like this, but many dying within 1-3 months. It was an atrocity never to be repeated.

Aside from many trips to the Christmas Market, we also found some great places to enjoy a beverage.  Beer Gallery is a fun little place with lots of Belgian beers.  Another amazing place we found was the House of Beer with a display wall of bottles acting as a menu. On a chance, we passed by the T.E.A. Time Brewery which sported a fun bar above an underground tavern. For another taste of the microbrew scene we headed to C.K. Brower, a cool looking bar with about 5 beers of their own.  I have to say, we were quite impressed with the level of craft brews in Poland. Another exciting option is the Wodka Cafe Bar. With more than 100 types of vodka on hand, you can sample any number of them for very cheap. Good luck.

On the way out of town we checked out the Wieliczka Saltmine, an underground network of caves carved out by 100+ years of mineral mining. While the history was exciting, perhaps the highlight was the girls being able to lick every wall in the place. We headed south to the mountains to visit Zakopane, Poland's Winter Capital.  Unfortunately, there was no snow. That did not stop us from doing everything we wanted, just a bit abridged. Our base was the beautiful Aprtament Glaumor 1, one of the better places we have found on booking.com.  Hitting the outdoors, skating is skating, and public rinks have bad ice no matter what. But when you get to do it with the mountains as a backdrop, it really doesn't matter the weather.  We also went dog sledding. With no snow, we actually went dog carting.  After meeting the dogs and getting to play with them a bit, we learned all about them. Then the dogs were hooked up to a cart and we took turns going around a small track with them pulling.

A similar experience was our trip on a horse-drawn sleigh. Large carts were pulled by horses and we ventured into the woods at night, Many stars glistened overhead and we stopped at the halfway point to have a drink - tea with vodka. We carted back, sipping wine from bottles and keeping warm, until we reached a lodge.  Nestled into a wood cabin with sausages roasted over a fire, we were entertained by traditionally dressed men playing instruments around the fire pit.

Skiing was in serious jeopardy with the weather but bits of machine-made snow coated the lower slopes of the hill, enough for a few days of ski lessons for the girls.  By the final day, Taelyn was going up and down on her own.  We also found some sleds and hit the slops for good winter fun.  While it wasn't ideal to miss out on snow at Christmas, we really lucked out by not having weather that was too cold to stop us from doing outdoor activities.

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On the way home we had a long layover in Berlin.  We embarked on a whirlwind tour, heading over to Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate, and the Berlin Wall.

European Christmas 2013

Desperate to get a more traditional feel to Christmas (yet unwilling to pony up for the flight to the US), we decided we would hit up Central Europe for a taste of cold weather and Christmas cheer.

Our visit to Budapest was amazing. Let’s skip past the drive where we waited for 45 min to get into the city then drove past our place and had to do a 30 min over and back across the Danube River to find it. Another 45 min to park the car and the good times could start. We rented an apartment perfectly located – city (Pest) center and just 50 feet from a tram line, meaning we never were outside too long for transport. We stayed at the Green Dream Apartment at a rate about ½ of the going cost of a smaller place. We could see the Buda Palace, Parliament, and the Danube River from the entrance, meaning running was amazing along the river and on the island. It also didn’t hurt to have a bakery in front and a Belgian beer place in the back.

Our first stop was the Terror House which shows video, audio, photographs, and artifacts from Nazi and post-war communist activity. Three stories of museum, complete with jails and execution stands in the basement, remind us all of the horrible actions committed by man this century. We were appalled, not only by the history but also our ignorance that these atrocities happened in the past 60 years and we had no idea they occurred.

Perhaps the key thing we wanted to do in Budapest was go ice skating in the park. Of course it mean crappy skates and terrible ice, but a chance to cruise the largest outdoor rink in Europe. The rink is situated in front of Vajdahunyad Castle, a building crafted in a combination of historical Hungary architecture into a single eclectic palace featuring styles from the Middle Ages to the 18th century: Romanesque, Gothic Renaissance, Baroque buildings. The crisp air of a European winter with the a castle as a backdrop while Christmas song play throughout the park, does it get any more festive than that? Amazing. For dinner, the four of us braved the cold and walked 2km to the Iguana Mexican restaurant. Why would someone go into a Mexican place in Hungary? Because all the people inside were Hungarians and they have amazing food! We sipped on beers and cocktails (the girls had hot chocolate) and we munched burritos, enchiladas, fried ice cream, and sopapillas.

The other main purpose of the venture to Budapest was to hit the Christmas market in Vörösmarty Square. Sparking lights and stalls of vendors provide ample views while munching on töki pompos (oven-baked dough), delicious kürtöskalács (a cone-shaped sweet hollow pastry), sipping hot mulled wine, and guzzling sour cherry beer. Holiday music was piped in overhead and it was everything we hoped for in a market.

Prague takes the cake as an amazing city. Unbelievable architecture, cobble-stone streets, art, music, parks. From the walk across the Charles Bridge to looking at the Astronomical Clock, Prague offers sights around every corner worth a photo. Our first day was spent at the Prague Castle, which was only a 5 min train ride away yet took 45 minutes (the castle is between two metro stops and we couldn’t figure out which was shorter for the kids so spent a lot of time going back and forth). Situated high on the hill, it overlooks all of Prague and is spectacularly huge. We did the “short tour” and saw many amazing rooms, churches, and chapels. The girls grabbed hot dogs from a street vender while we opted for a traditional lunch.

The night market, post-Christmas, did not disappoint! Live music in the square and sparkling lights on the gigantic tree set the mood. People wander shops, munching on kielbasa, potato dishes, cinnamon rolls, and sip grog, mulled wine, cider, and beer. Horse-drawn carriages transport people to and from the square and the smell of cinnamon mixes with pine for a truly Christmas feel.

We decided to skip on the absinthe as it is taboo and a tourist trap. Luckily, there was plenty of delicious beer. The Czechs have the market cornered on solid beer. I am a fan of Belgian and German brews, but these Czech brewskies are climbing quickly in my book. Lights, darks, wheat; they all rock. The highlight was the Prague Beer Museum.

Much of our time was spent in little visited Bratislava, Slovakia. Not much to look at, this quaint little city acts as a launching pad to many of the other destination. Less than a couple of house to Prague and Budapest and just 45 minutes to Vienna, this was an ideal location. Plus, just one mile from the house we stayed in was a gigantic park with hundreds of kilometers of trail. With a fireplace and a backyard, it was all we could have hoped for. Our days were spent running on the trails, playing at the playground, and popping over the boarder to Hungary to a beautiful local restaurant along the river. We sampled traditional goulash, wandered the grounds, and checked out the farm animals on site. Our evenings were spent at the local Christmas markets, or sitting in front of the fire and watching holiday movies.

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