Up To The Mountains

Things are great if the whole world is a Wimmelbilderbuch full of mountains and cows and tractors and wild flowers and steep creeks to throw stones into....

...so we all went to Bergün right near where they shot the original Heidi movie. It was indeed the picture perfect kiddie vacation. We stayed at this fabulous former luxury hotel form the Art Deco that's now more of a family place. But the real kicker was of course the mountain hiking with Karl, who was quite a sport. Here he is trecking up the mountain with Opa Michael.




While I spent the hikes with a delightful little monkey on my back who serenaded me with little toddler songs and very excited imitations of actual conversation.



Karl did some major re-bonding with his cousin Max. The two egged each other on to some pretty wild dares, like walking on a slackline.



In hindsight the greatest thing Karl remembers from the trip though was hanging out with Omi.



Although the boys ganging up and recruiting adults for various entertainment services was of course a major part of the trip.



More on Fred's and Markus' hike to Himalayan heights, the lakeside open fire lunch, Oma's harmonica solom the boys' strumming session and the world's most picturesque trainline to follow....

T Minus 12 Hours

Well, since our last vacation is already six weeks behind us, it's time to embark on another leisurely voyage, we do live in Europa after all. So tomorrow it's off to the Swiss Alps for a week in the Kurhaus Bergün with Karl's and Henri's cousins Max and Anna Lynn. So in about twelve hours we gonna steer our trusty family vehicle onto the highway towards the mountains.

To kill the rainy Saturday I took the boys once more to their new favorite museum, the mobility museum filled with fancy vehicles and heavy machinery. Talking about mobility - starts to become a handful to take them both on an outing....




No, I'm not talkin about the Mad Maxesque outfit including dad's ski goggles Karls is sporting (which is a testament to a brief but momentous breakdown in defenses against three year olds' fashion requests due to chronic lack of sleep syndrome, which contrary to chronic fatigue syndrome is indeed curable by deciding boarding schools are the right path of education for offspring).

By the way, if you're lucky they have the same direction in mind...



...like their very favorite part of the mobility museum, the airbag and crashtest exhibit. And yes, I did select the photo because Henri looks like the cat that ate the canary which might be a preview of the facial expression he might display, when crashing (can we settle on denting?) the family car...



...they also have a great indoor playground with lots of creative toys having to do with mobility, so you can build a really long train...



....or take it apart.

Days Off

This Summer there's quite a few days without either daycare for Henri or Kindergarten for Karl. Inconveniently enough they're of course not the same days in both institutions, but the boys are happy to get some alone time here and there. Yesterday was one of those days and in preparation of our upcoming vacation in Switzerland Karl and I drove out to the gigantic Italian market to buy some bulk pasta and wine (which Karl is – according to the sales person – allowed to drink as well in only ten years time).



Cold cuts were on the shopping list as well and sampled excessively until we went to the Viktualienmarkt.



There we had our classic Maultaschensuppenlunch at the soup kitchen followed by some delicious strawberry ice cream.



Even more fun was to be had at the playground after we picked up Henri. That didn't only involve sitting in rotating tires, but a lot of running and screaming.



So this is the result when we got back home:

Barbarians At The Gate of Grandpa

So today we bumrushed grandpa's house in Seeshaupt (did anybody use the word "bumrush" since 1988? It does describe a certain assertive form of visit very well though). Henri was again quite taken by the various forms of nature found in the vicinity of the patio (Ants! Bugs! A caterpillar!). While Karl recruited grandpa for reading duty right away. But hold the cuteness! I promised you blatant disregard for community standards of decency. So here you go (lower part of image censored due to transatlantic conflict of legal standards). This is the moment Henri discovered the excursion boat circling the lake during summer months. And quite a discovery it was for the young man.



On the way back to the car Karl found a creek that had a junglish enough vibe to count as adventure...



...although the real adventure started, when grandpa drafted him for elderflower harvesting in the forresty back of the garden.



I guess there is no better bonding with a three year old than teaching him an activity that combines three age inappropriate activities into one, i.e. climbing a high ladder, using a sharp object on top of aforementioned ladder, and using aforementioned sharp object to mutilate plants. It wasn't just the thrill of danger, Karl loves to make himself useful these days (could this phase please last something like a few decades, please?). So doing some actual harvesting of a plant that will be turned into elderflower syrup was a real kicker. They had a real mission - cut 25 elderflowers and put them into a jug of water to turn into syrup in three days. Karl got to take a bottle of syrup from the last batch home. Aaaah, the pride, when he showed off the bounty of an afternoon spent in dangerous altitudes. I guess we'll be seeing quite a bit of homemade elderflower syrup consumed in the coming weeks (what is that then? Halfmoonshine?)



The rest of the evening was crowned with an asparagus dinner and some wrestling matches with grandpa, some of the promised property damage and lotsa noise that made Henri kinda nervous. Nooo, he only looks like he's calling mom to get him outta there.

Monkey Business

Fred went to her teenage stomping grounds in Bensheim to attend a high school reunion, which sounded like it has the potential for quite some severe fun. If I'm a grass widower, does that make the boys grass orphans for the weekend? Well, with three guys home alone monkey business is of course the M.O.. So what better place to start than the zoo.



Karl was all old pro, leaning back, watching his brother freak out, because with every visit Henri now realizes that there is quite a wild world out there that has to be squealed and giggled at. Look! Gators! Fishes! And yes, of course - monkeys! Karl in turn is becoming more and more the perfect big brother, watching out for Henri, giving him ice-cream, because daddy tries to get away with giving baby just fruit. First signs of ganging up style bonding have been observed for a while now. Just when we were about to gear up for a big wilding session at the playground a unseasonally cold shower brought the afternoon to a thundering halt though. So it was back to the clubhouse, as our apartment is now called (think "National Lampoon’s Animal House"). Yup, monkey business is the name of the game. You gotta choose your monkey wisely though. Karl and Henri watched in awe how the Orang Utan matron disciplined a rowdy youngin' (kinda mangling his limbs to turn him into a bundle of remorse and using large patches of his skin as handles). So we decided to settle on the gang of adolescent chimps who tore their compound apart. Well of course if things go out of hand there are two things to get Karl's and Henri's attention. Stories in any form or media for Karl, food for Henri. They shared both as a an appetizer. They got to watch two episodes of "Sandmännchen", the classic toddler show that's been on TV since the 50. Quite harmless fare I'd say, thrilling enough to keep the Kreye brothers mesmerized for ten minutes though.



More rowdy behavior, intentional and unintentional property damage and blatant disregard for community standards of decency tomorrow.

Spatz

Andrian had this very same toy when he was a kid. So he was at least as excited as Karl to try out the Spatz glider the other day.



Henri wasn't allowed to play with the glider, so he played his triola at home.



Nice pics, right? That's because now there's finally a serious digital SLR camera in the house. But due to schlepping issues the day-to-day snapshots will still be taken with my little sure shot Fuji.

Father's Day

I had to go to Vienna for a gig with our office band, made kinda sense, since today was father's day, which is a holiday. It is some Christian holiday everybody forgot about, since the deeper meaning of father's day is that all dads are allowed to go out with their buddies and get mad drunk in broad daylight. Lacking drinking buddies that's not really an option for me around here. But taking the early train home I was definitley looking forward to still spend a full day with the boys despite the adolescent obligations as a musician. Fred took the boys to pick me up from the train. Karl of course was thrilled to check out some bullet trains, talks to some train drivers, sneak into some departing trains some minutes before their departure. Henri on the other hand took his dad's return from a 16 hour trip a bit more in stride.

He was quite eager to check out dad's horn though. Karl still hates the sound of it, but Henri seems to be much more into it. Here you see where the sound went, since Karl's embouchure so far produces mainly windy sounds.




In the afternoon we checked out the traffic museum outlet of the Deutsches Museum we hadn't seen yet.



Three hangar sized halls packed with cars, trains and machinery of course did the trick to keep the mood up for the rest of the day. Karl was very intrigued by a demonstration model that lets you speed up the wheel of a bullet train and turn on the breaks to bring it to a halt, which he demonstrated in detail to his younger brother. Most of the time he really enjoys his big brother role. When he discovered an old horse carriage you're allowed to sit in, he invited Henri in and made sure, little brother is feeling comfortable and sits in a safe distance to the exit. We'll remind him of his gleeful stance towards brotherhood next time he has a hissy fit, because Henri plays Godzilla to Karl's Lego Tokyo.