School, Ikea and Christmas :)

Ok, so not much to update this week. Had a great week back at school, though did miss the fun of holiday camps. Some pictures of the holiday camps should be going up on the school website soon. They also put up pictures of all the staff members :)

Last weekend I made the trek out to Ikea. It took more than an hour to get there because of having to make two transfers and walk for 20 minutes from the U-bahn station to the store. And more than two hours to get back!!! Next time I think I'll bike... And unfortunately there will be a next time. I bought a new duvet and extra cover, and managed to get the wrong size! If it wasn't for the crowds on a Saturday, I would be happy to go back. I always love walking around the show room looking at their little display houses. I saw some really good ones there (and some really not good ones...).

Yesterday did some shopping with a friend from school and her almost 3 year old, and then went back to their place for lunch. We enjoyed looking at all the Christmas stuff at Real. I feel like Christmas must be really soon, because there is SO much stuff out at the stores!! They have the most amazing Christmas chocolates and advent calendars. Already I can't wait for Christmas :) Plus I guess I'm also looking forward to my parents and sister visiting me - yippy!!!

And now to find some pictures...lets see here is one of the teepee we made during the holiday camps:

And one from the beginning of September when we went to Heidelberg for the day (stole it off a friend's facebook): Cara and I with Heidelberg castle in the background.

Word of the Day

Today when I walked to school you couldn't see very far ahead because there was so much fog! I don't think I have ever seen so much fog. In the morning we went for a walk in the forest and were talking about the German word for fog - my word of the day! We were also comparing pronunciations. In Hesse (the state Frankfurt is in) the -ig is pronounced more -ish. They also pronounce ich (I) almost as ish. We were seeing which of the kids said it which way. Most, not surprisingly, said them as -sh. Cara learned Germany in Bavaria and has a whole other way of pronouncing things!

A thank you plant from a kid in the camp. I have no clue what kind of plant it is, but it looks nice!

Autumn Colours

Yesterday was the last day on the week transit pass I bought for Haydn's visit, so I headed into Frankfurt after camp. I started with a nice walk to see some of the Autumn colours. I explored an areas I had not been to before - through the Goethe university Westend campus, Grüneburg Park, past the Palmengarten and along to Bockenheimer Warte. It was a lovely walk. Some nice buildings, nice autumn trees and even a peak into a "Koreanischer Garten." As I walked through the university I learned something new from the sign on a building. I walked past the "Wirtschaftswissenschaften" building. I just looked it up and that long word means economics! Wirtschaft is actually economic and the wissenschaften means sciences.

Grüneburg Park with the sun shining through the trees

Autumn in Frankfurt: A brightly coloured tree in front of a fancy sports car...

Once I got to Bockenheimer Warte (north west of Frankfurt) I decided to jump on the tram and take a tram tour of the city. I hopped on the 16 and travelled from Bockenheim to the Westend and down into Sachsenhausen. I went past the Frankfurt Fair, the Hauptbahnhof to the Südbahnhof. Here I had planned to get on the 14, only to find it wasn't running... So instead I took the U-bahn to Willy-Brandt-Platz. As I was waiting for the 11 tram I got to see the Occupy Frankfurt protest (right by the ECB and Euro sign):

Then I travelled east through the centre of Frankfurt, the Ostend and all the way to the eastern edge of the city. Once I got to some major roads and possibly a highway, I transferred onto the 12 to come back through Bornheim and the Nordend. By this time it was pretty dark. It was a fun loop through most areas of the city, arriving back at Konstablewache. Since I had time before the next S5 I wandered down the Zeil to Hauptwache. The sky was amazing. Not quite as blue as it turned out in the picture, but still quite something. 

Looking down the Zeil

This week has been going great. Cara and I have been having a lot of fun with our Food camp. It is very relaxed and we are able to do things like go into the forest and build bow and arrows or teepees. Today Cara was helping out in the city school so I was alone with our camp. We took a field trip to the grocery store. The kids seemed to really enjoy it, and we brought back fruit to make fruit skewers. Tomorrow afternoon we are all headed on the S-Bahn into the city to go to the Kinder Museum. That's after we make pizza for lunch!

Herbstferien

Finally, a minute to update what I have been up to lately. We have 2 weeks of holidays right now, and last week I took off to Amsterdam. I went with Sarah, Cara and Cara's friend Johanna. We had a great time exploring the city, even though it rained most of the time we were there. We enjoyed wandering around the canals and bridges, shopping, checking out museums and eating! We went to the Rijksmuseum (sadly much was closed for construction), Van Gogh Museum and I went to the Anne Frank Museum. On the day we left the sun finally came out and we were able to sit outside and enjoy some hot drinks.

Bikes, canals and skinny buildings!

Church near Anne Frank's house

What the weather was like...

Cheese! This shop had amazing samples of cheese, chocolate and waffles :)

I AMsterdam sign: Johanna, Sarah, me and Cara

On top of the A

On the balcony of the amazing library.

We wanted to take this library back with us to Frankfurt. It was beautifully designed,seemed to have so many books and resources, and had a cafeteria with this balcony. 

Panoramic view of the city. The blueish building to the left is Nemo, the science centre.

Pretending to be in Spain (ie. somewhere warm) - enjoying tapas and sangria

Amsterdam bicycles, room for at least 3 people!

The skinny bridge

Night view

Check out the shite SUVs parking - apparently every year a certain number of cars fall into the canals...

Many bridges over the canals

A bike parking garage! I have no clue how you would ever find your bike in there

And the sun finally came out, as we headed to our train.

On Thursday, as we headed back to Frankfurt my Dad's cousin Haydn came to visit from England. He came for a weekend and so I got to play tourist in Frankfurt again. On Thursday I headed up to Friedrichsdorf to meet him for dinner at his hotel.

On Friday we had lunch at my place and then took a quick tour of my school. After that the sight seeing began. We say the main sights of Frankfurt (Römerberg, Dom, Main, Alte Oper, Zeil ... ) before a dinner at the Galeria Kaufhof cafeteria. We were there just as the sun was setting and were treated to an amazing sunset. The lower sky went bright orange. It looked very picturesque with the dark skyscrapers in front. 

Saturday we spend the afternoon first in the Archaeology museum and then the Goethe House museum. My favourite part of the Archaeology museum were the early 16th C frescoes in the Karmelite cloister. Haydn and I spend quite a while in there working on our German to figure out what each story was. The Goethe museum was also great. The building itself is a recreation of the one where Goethe grew up. The furnishings are all period pieces, with some of them having been original to the Goethe family. My favourite was the desk they had - one of the desks that opens up and has all kinds of organization draws and shelves :)

Sunday afternoon we took a short Main river tour. The boat cruise was an hour and took us both up and down the river. All the way they had announcements giving little bits of information about the landmarks and the city. The sun was shining and it was nice to be on the boat deck soaking up the warmth! 

Today I was back at work. While this week is still the Herbstferien, I have to work at the holiday camps. Cara and I are running a Food camp. We only have 4 students though! Today we learned about food around the world, healthy food and restaurant etiquette. We ended up with pretending to go to a restaurant :) Now the kids want to do it again, but with real food! Later in the week we will be baking and cooking, so will have to recreate our restaurant. 

Here comes Santa Claus

Ok, so I have been having trouble believing that it is already Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend and that the weather is getting colder, and then I walked into the grocery store and saw this:

Yes, these really are Santa and Christmas chocolates. On the display next to it there were advent calendars. On my way out I also noticed a display near the entrance with decorations. In Canada I use to get mad when stores had Christmas things out in November, but apparently they don't wait that long here. So instead I find it just kind of amusing. Christmas must really be a big deal - so excited for the Christmas markets! 

Brussels long weekend

Last weekend we had Monday off, as it was German Reunification Day . So Cara and I took off to Brussels to visit my friends Annie and Erin from Queen's. We had a blast. It was so nice to get away for the weekend and to explore a new city. The weather also was amazing. It was sunny all weekend and highs of about 28 degrees! It was like being on summer holiday again :) I took a gazillion photos, so it's taken me a while to go through them all and pick some to share. Here is a few to give you an idea of what we got up to on the weekend.

Saturday:
We got in Friday night and headed straight back to Erin's house. Saturday we were up early and ready to explore. Of course we started off the weekend with a trip to see the Grand Place and Manneken Pis. We wandered around some of the tourist areas around the Grand Place, and went into pretty much every chocolate store we saw! Cara and I had our first taste of Belgian Waffles. Yum yum yum!!! We found a great hole in the wall place that sold nutella waffles for 1,75 €.

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After some more wanderings around we met up with Annie for lunch. We headed a bit away from the tourist area to the Bourse (stock exchange) and an Irish pub for lunch. 

You can tell how sunny it was outside! After we headed north west of the city to Mini Europe. This is a model Europe, with models from each European Union country. All but one of the models has been built to 1/25 scale (Vesuvius was too big so they made it to a smaller scale) and there are something like 300 models in the park. It was a great trip through Europe in under 3 hours. I took so many pictures, and have so many new places I want to go. It was nice to see some familiar buildings, like the Eiffel Tower, but also many that I had not heard of. I should mention that is was a great afternoon, except for trying to get into the park. We bought our tickets and then there was a line up afterwards. They had some stupid huge mascot that everyone was having their picture taken with. When we got to the front we asked one of the people if we could not have our picture taken and they said yes, but then the mascot and camera person attacked us as we walked past! Ok, not attacked, but they definitely were grabbing us, saying it was their job and they had to take our picture. Finally we got the message across that we meant no when we said it. I'm glad we did because at the end of the park they had all of the pictures printed out and made into key chains, just in case you wanted to buy them. Way to try and guilt you into giving them more money!

Where we were!!

A view of one part of the park. If I had turned around you would have been able to see the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben

Dutch mills! This is for you Papa :)

British parliament and Big Ben

Bath Royal Crescent. I was there a couple years ago! 

Arc de Triomphe - can you see Annie and Erin? (And me and Cara?)

Porto, Portugal!! I will be spending a weekend here in the middle of November :)

Another place I will hopefully be visiting. I am hoping to go at Christmas with Christie

Some of the models had parts that moved. The mills could be turned by a wheel, there were boats that went around in circles, etc. For the Berlin Wall behind the Brandenburg Gates, the yellow bulldozer on the right knocked a section down. 

Somewhere I would love to visit. This is the Porta Nigra in Trier (to the west of Frankfurt). It was built by the Romans in about 180 CE. It was then turned into a church in the 11th century. 

After all that trekking around in the sun we headed back for a bit of a rest and some dinner. Later in the evening we had some drinks with Erin's housemates before heading into the city for Nuit Blanche. Nuit Blanche happens in many cities across the world, and is basically an all night arts festival. (see wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuit_Blanche). 

Belgian beer and wine and applewine from Frankfurt

All of us minus one housemate (taking the photo)

We enjoyed wandering around the centre of the city looking at the various art installations and exhibits going on. Some were inside some outside. There were lots of people out. This was definitely true when we went to take the night bus back to Erin's. It was so crowded that we barely made it on, and I spent most of the trip squished against the door. It was a nice tour of the city though as we wound around back south east of the centre where Erin lives. 

These sculptures of people were made of wax, and then being melted by a current going through the wires

Grand Place lit up at night

Sunday:

After a bit of a later start on Sunday we again headed towards the centre of Brussels. Erin took us to the arches in the Parc du Cinquantenaire. Here we got to watch the people running in the Brussels Marathon and Half Marathon. We even saw one of the teachers from Erin's school. 

As it was so beautiful out we walked along the avenue running from the arches straight into the city centre. We were following the runners, so cheered them on along the way. We walked past the royal palace on our way to Erin's favourite place. 

Right by the Notre Dame du Sablon church there is a little park with a fountain. You can sit almost completely surrounded by the garden. All you can see is a little bit of the wonderful architecture of the church and royal palace. A perfect place to sit and relax. 

Next we headed back to the Grand Place again to meet up with Annie. This time we found a small cafe for lunch and then explored more of the city (and chocolate stores!). 

One of the many murals on the side of a building from the comic Tin Tin

Guides! (of some sort). We saw multiple groups over the weekend, and I had to take a photo of this group singing. As they sung they marched around and from a group into a circle

Galerie St. Hubert. Shops and cafes on the main level and apartments above

Little Italy - there were a bunch of these cute streets. I love the different buildings beside each other and the narrow, pedestrian only streets that are half covered with restaurant tables

We had a quiet evening as Erin and Annie had to go back to school on Monday. Cara and I took a walk around Erin's neighbourhood. 

Monday:

Cara and I took ourselves off the the Basilica du Sacre Coeur. A large church, one of the largest in the world (top 10 I think). We walked up the 240 stairs to the view point at 52.8 m. It was a bit disappointing because when we got there we couldn't even see the city that well because of the sun and smog. The church and area were modeled after Paris. The basilica was originally going to look much more like the Sacre Coeur in Paris and it sits at the intersection of roads similar to the Arc de Triomphe. 

Next we walked along one of the boulevards because taking the metro south of the Grand Place to meet Marie-O for lunch. She was a Belgian exchange student that my aunt arranged to have stay with my family for a short while, 5 years ago. She now lives in Brussels and thanks to facebook we arranged to meet for lunch. It was great to catch up with her and hear what she is now up to. We met in the Saint Gilles area in front of the church of Saint Gilles. 

We then walked back to the Grand Place. We had to end our weekend with a view of the Manneken Pis dressed up:

and of course another waffle! We sat in the Grand Place, watched tourists and ate nutella waffles. We had such a great time in Brussels. I can't wait now for Annie and Erin (and maybe some housemates!) to visit us in Frankfurt :)