It took us a while to recover from the big fall holiday, but we still managed to do a few things around Berlin this winter.
Lanternfest is a German and Austrian custom where little kids make lanterns and then march around the street with them singing songs about a saint's act of sharing and about their lanterns (St. Martin's Day on November 11th) . The place we live organized a night of lantern making, made us waffles, and hired a two piece band to lead the building's children all over the platz.
Hazel caught the music bug this year. She's been taking weekly piano lessons, had her first recital, and is songwriting with Dad.
She snagged an invite to a birthday party at the Museum of Sound. She spent the better part of three hours learning about various instruments and playing them all. She even got a chance to drop a beat from the kit and blow on the muschel.
Winter was a time of visitors. We received Jon from Seattle, Jorge from Los Angeles, and Jen's Parents. Everyone had food from Rogacki, an old school Berlin delikatessen/food court that has been around for about 100 years. Lots of beer, pickled fish, gherkins, sausage, kraut, and various interesting meat products.
We got a chance to get outside Berlin and see the nothern German forests as seen in such movies as Inglorious Basterds and The Grand Budapest Hotel. There was no real snow this season though, which was disappointing.
We spent Thanksgiving at the largest indoor water park in the world. It's housed in a former airplane hangar about 50km from Berlin. It wasn't a holiday in Germany, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves on Thursday. Hazel braved all of the water slides that she was (nearly) old enough to go on and did a great job getting big kids to carry her inner tube up many flights of stairs.
Once in a while, Jen leaves to give a talk. Here's Rostock Germany in November and Bath England in December
The Duetsches Technikmuseum Berlin has an huge collection of trains housed in the old Anhalter Bahnhof locamotive depot. Hazel was relieved that we she wasn't taken to another art museum.
Hazel performing an incantation at her favorite Vietnamese restaurant compelling Santa Klaus to 'gimea'; Playmobile; and a Hatchimal that can play music and walk and flap it's wings and copy me; a babydoll that opens eyes and comes with everyting that babies need. Whoopee cusion.
Ice skating (or ice walking as Hazel prefers)
Nikolaustag! Luckily a neighbor told us about Nikolaustag (St. Nicholas Day) the day before it happened. December 6th is Nikolaus Day and on the night of December 5th children polish their boots and leave one outside the front door for Nikolaus to fill with candy and gifts...if they were good. Apparently, all the children will talk about it at school, so participation is compulsory. Nikolaus also visited school on the 6th and handed out candy. So much candy.
Teeth were lost!
Hazel went to the opera. A children's opera in German. Hazel understood about 5 percent of what was said. Jen about zero.
We made Italian Christmas cookies with real live Italians!
Playdates, playdates, having lots of playdates ♫ ♪
Winterwelt at Potsdamer Platz. We started the holiday season a bit early with a quick trip to our first Christmas Market. We stayed long enough to have some hot chocolate and mulled wine. Then we got out of the cold. It's cold here.
