T.T.N.B. Family Adventure

Last Sunday was Jana’s birthday and we had a little family get together as she will have her ‘proper’ party in a couple of weeks time.

Birgit organised a lovely afternoon tea (well, ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’ actually) at her house and her haldf sister Ktrin also cam eand brought her son Stefen who is between Tessa and Jana in age.

Jana turned 11 years old, which makes her and Tessa exactly a year apart from each other.

We had lots and lots of cake, as one would expect at a German ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’ gathering and it Jana’s Opa who lives in Warsaw was part of it all for some time, thanks to Skype.  The lap top with him ‘on it’ was set up next to the table and this way he could participate in his granddaughter’s birthday, thanks to technology.

We only took a couple of photos that day and here they are…

Tessa, Jana and Ben enjoying birthday cake.

Birgit and Katrin with Birgit’s yummy Mandarin Torte.

Opa Bogdan part of it all thanks to technology, even though he was in Warsaw.

Ben in birthday cake chocolate heaven.

In Auckland I usually go for a walk in the mornings with my friend and neighbour Prue.  We usually leave at 6:15am and do one round of Cornwall Park.  We have managed to keep it up through most of winter this year, which we are pleased with.  Here I can’t really leave at six, firstly because I haven’t got anyone waiting at the letter box to go with me (which is the motivating factor to get out of bed when it is pitch black and cold outside) and secondly because I shouldn’t really leave the kids here by themselves.

So I walk to school with the boys and once I have dropped them off, which is at 7:40am on a good day and 7:45am, when the bell goes, on the not so good days, I continue walking randomly all around the neighbourhood.

I have discovered some pretty streets and am still amazed how close we are here to a rural feel.  Since last week I keep the same route, mainly because it is very pleasant and so I will share some pictures with you.

This morning was one of those really foggy days when the fog doesn’t really lift until close to midday.

I start off through this little forest area which is just past the school and then along the main road.

Doesn’t the path look mysteries with all that mist?

After about ten to fifteen minutes I turn off the main road into ‘Der Gruene Weg’ ‘The Green Lane’, which totally lives up to its name.  The first bit is private houses, then a couple of farms, a couple of stables and paddocks,

This building has two families in it. It’s called ‘Doppelhaushaelfte’ a double house half and I think they are quite a common concept in England as well where they are called semi detached house.

The horses having their breakfast of hay (at last I think that’s what they are eating, could of course be bacon and eggs for all I know).

then some more housing, then a country road

The children love the mole hills and wonder how many moles it takes to make all those hills.

Even the fields are neat and tidy!

This is one of the farms and more horses.

and more housing after that.  All within thirty minutes of the school. I then turn round and take a slightly different route back and am out for an hour all together.  I am really enjoying those morning walks.

I have noticed that many houses are not separated by fencing but rather hedging.  There seem to be some precision hedge cutters around this area…check these out…

I particularly like the birch hedge as it show cases the season so nicely.

Wow, this one was done with nail clippers I think.

Sharp designer corners are all part of the skill level on display.

Two species of plants intertwined to form a walk way, crikey.

I couldn’t help but notice lots of garden ornaments as well…

Ok, so this one shows the wood peckers what to do, in case they are having a blond morning…

I think this one tells us that a Harry Potter fan lives at this address.

Ahm, ok, not my favourite, not even a lake in sight.  Wrong season, too, looks too much like spring. And are those weeds I can see?

I have never understood ‘little windmills in gardens’ and what’s with the sheep? By the way, I actually saw some real sheep on our way to Ostsee last weekend.

Ha ha, this is kind of funny.

What the … ???

This is beyond bad…even though it was a dog groomers gate…

I don’t think I have actually seen a weed yet, anywhere…either they don’t grow here (which could be entirely possible as I haven’t actually seen anyone gardening either) or people are out gardening on the weekend when I don’t do the walks, or perhaps when I am back home doing my sit ups?  Look this is one of those totally weed free gardens…Prue you would love it!

Small section of an entirely weed free garden…there are lots of these around, lots!

Oh, and the vast majority of drive ways seem totally leave free, too (not to mention kids’s toys, garden hoses, ladders, rubbish bins, yesterday’s afternoon tea plates and odd pieces of clothing and dead cars, the kind of stuff one tends to see when passing our drive way!)

Spotless, even the bins are lined up in the back (do you think it’s coincidental that they are in height order???)

There is one house I have spotted where the garden looks a bit like 32 Maungakiekie Ave…

Yup, that looks more familiar, this one might actually be unoccupied….I should check tomorrow.

And then look what I saw…

A little house just for the rubbish bins. I so want one of those. Andrew please can we have one of those???

Today I seem to have gone a little over board with photos…perhaps making up for the other day when I didn’t have any photos at all.  I promise to be more selective next time.

Good night all and good morning to the readers down under.

Tanja

PS Ben and Nick did a nice little presentation on New Zealand today, mostly in English and I translated and yes added bits here and there.  It did include You Tube clips of the All Blacks doing the Haka and Hayle Westenra singing the national anthem, which I might add not all German children know (the German one that is).

Today after school the children and I went to the local bath, which is called Ariba Bad.  Ariba Erlebniss Bad, to be precise.  ‘Erlebniss’ translates to ‘experience’ or even ‘adventure’.

For the Kiwis I should add that this is an indoor swimming pool/bath not outdoors like those kind of pools tend to be in NZ.

We had a really nice time and I can’t remember the last time I went down so many water slides in a couple of hours.  The longest slide there is 125m long!  I think it is the one that starts in the inside of the bath, but leads to the outside, with a rather strong current urging you along.  You will be pleased to hear that the water is heated.

There is a wave pool which comes on every half hour for ten minutes, outside that time frame it is a more relaxing pool, set in a rock like landscape with stone paving around it and lounge chairs to relax in.  Oh and the lights are slightly dimmer and have different colours, which also change when the waves start up.

Next door is a pool just for diving.  They have two 1m boards and one 3m board and they only open up either the 1m or the 3m ones.  The children were very excited to see those, none of them have ever jumped of a diving board and all of them tried out both heights!  Ben was hesitant on the 3m board the first time and in fact came back down without jumping, but then in true Ben fashion when I said it was time to go he made a quick decision to go up and he just jumped.  Needless to say he was very pleased with himself.

I liked the pool that started with a small area inside and then you had to swim through a divider to get to the outside.  Of course this pool was also heated and in fact it was a salt water pool and every so often the massage bubbles went on around the edge.  I guess in a way it was like a jumbo spa bath.  It was lovely being outside while dark (at 16:30/17:00) being in the warm water with the steam rising into the sky.

Actually I also really enjoyed the tyre slide.  You got to sit in an oversized tyre and went down a tunnel slide, which in parts was quite dark and your tyre turned round and round and went faster and faster.  Yeah, I liked that. I also ended up getting less water up my nostrils than on the 125m inside/outside slide.

There was a proper swimming pool with lengths etc, we never made it into that, there was a non swimmer pool, a whole area for toddlers with a variety of pools with playgrounds in them and also two or three indoor spa pools.

Sadly I didn’t even consider taking my camera with me, but luckily we had such a good time that we are planning to go back there on Thursday afternoon, so I shall take it then and share some pics with you.

Very tired now after all that sliding, off to bed.

Love to you all

Tanja

PS It’s gone quiet out there…is anyone listening to my ramblings???

so it’s Sunday morning and Tessa and Nick went down to the baker for fresh rolls and croissants while Ben and I set the table.

They got ‘the usual’, we had breakfast and then went for our walk.  THe boys on the scooters they borrowed from Birgit and Tessa on her bike.  I wanted to show the children one of the walks I had discovered during the week, which leads past very pretty some what rural houses, down a quiet street, past paddocks and horses and straight into a bit of light forest and a bat house station.  That looks like an oversized bird’s house hanging of a tree with a small opening that birds can not get through.  It was designed for the local ‘dwarf bat’ and we estimated that there would be 60 odd bats in there hibernating over winter.

So, we are half way there when Nick started complaining that his mouth hurts “like it does when I react to something”, we walked on and he started sneezing, at which point I thought ‘oh oh’.  We walked on though because he could just be getting a cold and we were just about there (the bat house) anyway.  Then he started coughing as if he was short of breath.  At this point I pointed out that it is important for him to have his medical bag with him WHERE EVER we go, even if we are not planning to eat anything.

Cutting a long story short, it became apparent that he was in deed reacting to something, so we sent Tessa back home on her bike and the house key to get his medicine, the antihistamine.  She met us half way back at which point Nick was itchy all over, nose completely blocked, eyes swollen and generally feeling miserable.

We got home twenty minutes later and this is what he looked like…

Oh dear…

He still managed to smile, what a good boy.

While he is feeling more energetic now (he can actually tell when the medicine kicks in, which is usually about twenty minutes later), he still looks swollen and a bit weird…we will see how long that lasts.  Have a birthday party to go to later …

Happy Birthday Jana!!

And yes, we have milk free cake to take with us 🙂

Oh, I stopped at the bakery and they claim that al ingredients were the same as usual…but the dough is delivered to them and they ‘just’ bake it there.  Will check on Monday when the usual crew is there…it needs to be brought to their attention, not that it will change anything now.  Well, what will change is what we can buy from there, no more croissants for now I think.

However we did discover that he can eat the ‘Berliner’ there, that’s a jam filled doughnut….let’s experiment with that….

Nick says “hello, my Mum is the best and yes I will carry my medical bag with me from now onwards, all the time!!!”

xxxx

Tanja

Today, Saturday, we drove an hour north to the Ostsee (hmm, being called The Eastsea I wonder if we drove north or east?  Should have a look on Google Maps…).  Anyway I was quite excited to see the coast because I had only once seen it before many years ago when I visited a friend there (who wasn’t a boy friend of course because there were no men before Andrew).

Going to the beach during winter to me meant packing a picnic lunch and hot drinks, expecting a deserted beach and a long cold walk.  So I had boiled eggs with me, gherkins, carrots, sandwiches and a freshly baked lemon cake. Ah, isn’t it funny how those previous experiences in life shape us and how things can be so different from what’s in our head?!?

We had a pleasant drive and I kept admiring those red brick homes and farm houses on the way.  The building style up here is so different from the south.  When we arrived it quickly became apparent that the coast here is very different from our coast in NZ, in particular the west coast (I am thinking ‘Piha’ here) which is the image that was in my head for a winter beach walk.

This place was a pretty little town with beautiful cafes and shops, a promenade type walkway parallel to the water line and far, far removed from our west coast.  It became apparent to me how much New Zealand and my twenty one years there have shaped me and how in these situations I truly feel like a visitor in Germany now.  That is probably particularly so up here where I have never actually lived during my life in Germany.

Birgit and Nick on the promenade.

In the end I could only see about 20 or 30 metres of the actual ocean as the fog was incredibly thick the entire day.  I really enjoyed the atmosphere this created as Aukland has only got about five days a year when it is foggy and then it only last about five minutes.  It was mystical and wintery and very ‘Harry Potter’ I thought.

The foggy beach.

We spent some time on the beach where the children played

There were no other children rolling in the sand I might add…

In summer one can rent those wicker beach baskets to sit in from the place in the back. I was really shocked to hear from Marek that during summer everyone entering the beach has to pay six Euro!

and then walked along the pier where we encountered seagulls and ravens.  Now that IS unusual for me to see in one vista.

Ravens on the beach…do you think they were sent from Hogswort’s??

Tessa got a nice warm hat today.

Nick throwing some crumbs in the air making the seagulls all excited.

…which I think Marek enjoyed at least as much as as the children did.

Ah, aren’t they all lovely together?

Birgit

After the walk we enjoyed the warmth of a cafe and we even saw our first Christmas tree in full decoration.

Somebody had too many pancakes.

Our first Christmas tree this year.

Have I mentioned I really like those red brick houses with the thatched rood??

Thank you Birigt, Marek, Ingrid and Gunda, who lent us her car so we could all make it up there together.  We had a really nice day and best of all the children fell into bed and straight to sleep as soon as we got home.  Actually the boys did, Tessa is still reading Harry Potter and it is 21:43…

Off to bed myself now, that might make her turn the light off as we share a room!

Good night

Tanja

PS Tessa, Nick, Ben and I had some of our picnic on the way up there as it was mid day and we were hungry, the rest came back with us and will be eaten for lunch tomorrow, even if I have to take them our for a picnic in the cold for it!!

Last Sunday we  went out for another Italian lunch.  I had Cannelloni al forno yummy!  That used to be my standard ‘Italian’ many years ago.  We had a nice time chatting and so the children got slightly bored and started going slightly crazy on the bench there.

We are all enjoying the meal and company.

Nick looks like he had too much to drink!

Helga we would like to thank you all for taking us out that day…most enjoyable!  Sadly Ingrid missed out on the ‘Grapa’ that the charming Italian waiter offered because of a misunderstanding.  She survived however…just!

It was a rainy day that Sunday and the children went a bit stir crazy once we got back to Birgit’s house.  All their energy ended up in a performance which was very amusing.

We even had a performance by Katy Perry…

Points for guessing who this is..

is called Esther and she stayed with us in Auckland for six weeks last year.  So last Friday, when we sat in the U-Bahn on our way home from the Dom, my phone rang and it was Esther announcing that she would come up for the weekend from Muenich.  For the Antipodeans…this is a six or seven hour train ride from Hamburg.  I must say though that Esther is nineteen and when else would you do crazy stuff like this for one night?  I think she might have partied through the night on Friday as her train was leaving at 5:00am on Saturday morning and we saw her just after lunch that day.  It was really nice seeing Esther again and the children thought it was great catching up with her, too.

Esther in Birgit’s lounge.

Esther is reading a bit of Harry Potter to Nick.

She only stayed for one night but managed to find a ride with the ‘Mitfahrer Zentrale’ (an agency where you can find drivers looking for passengers to take and share petrol cost) the next day around lunch time, rather than the train ride back at 5:00am (which had only cost her a pittance as she stumbled across a group of people selling a ticket at the train station because one of their mates had fallen ill).

Ah, to be young again….

Tanja