Erlebnisfeld der Sinne, Nuremberg

On Friday 5 July we went to the Erlebnisfeld der Sinne with our cousin Simon and his mum, our aunt Manuela. It is a large outdoor area with fun science stuff. around this area was a park and lots of people were riding bikes. 

For example they had a spinning globe, made from rock, floating on top of another rock just by having a thin layer of water in between. They had prisms, a diagonal house that looked totally normal from the outside, but once you were inside, you keep on crashing into the walls. There were balance boards, balance beams, a huge swing with two seats opposite each other - one person swings and the other one gets pulled, too.

Inside a big tent there were lots of smelly jars, and you had to guess what they were (some smelled nice, and some were disgusting!). Tizi, Simon and Yasha smelled them. On the other side you had to feel objects under a table, inside boxes and inside jars and guess what they were. Tizian and Simon just felt them and pulled the objects out without guessing. In one of the smaller tents we watched a presentation about light - the adults liked it but we thought it was boring.

Across a swinging bridge there was an area with a hamster wheel, a globe that did not move, a kaleidoscope, a long jump area, something about colours etc. We crossed back to the other side via a ferry that had no engine! It was attached to a bridge upstream by a long rope, and by moving some triangular thing under water the current of the river Pegnitz moved the ferry from one side to the other.

We will add photos when we can get them off the other camera.

I wish we could have a place like this in New Zealand!

Tuesday, 2 July 2013

Today we took the bus to Erlangen. Mum and Dad had gone to school there, and Dad has also worked there. We went to really big shopping malls with mannequins. Yasha played around with them and a hand came off! We also admired some well preserved old buildings. Some of them were 300 or 400 years old. The most exciting thing was a huge store that sold the best lollies in the world, jelly beans, frogs and crocodiles - yum! I got the frogs and crocodiles. Here are some pictures for you. From Tizian

We are in Germany!

Sorry that we haven't been writing our blogposts! We have only been able to get on the internet at our Oma Ilse's place, not anywhere else.

Our journey was very long, we took the car to Auckland, then we took a plane to Kuala Lumpur, then another plane to Frankfurt (that is in Germany), a train to Nuremberg and the car to Neunkirchen am Brand. Our grandma and grandpa were very happy to see us, it had been 3 or 4 years since they had seen us.

Journey

On the way to Auckland we saw something that looked like a satellite or a UFO - it actually was a helicopter.

The plane was pretty good because we got our own tv where we could watch movies or play games. The food was good but they had some weird things, too, like dried fish - waahh! The toilets were mini, and whenever you flushed it sounded like a vacuum.

When we stopped in Kuala Lumpur they had horizontal escalators, Tizi and I went round and round in circles on it. It was the middle of the night and still very hot. When we went back on the plane, mum got searched for the second time but not us.

Taran liked Kuala Lumpur best, because in Auckland and Frankfurt we only got 30 min free wifi, and in KL 3h free wifi. He didn't like that there was no way to charge his iPad on the plane, but there was a plug on the train.

The train was powered by electricity. Or seats were facing the front until the train changed direction. There were thousands of solar panels in fields and on roofs. We also saw massive wind turbines, they looked like mutated fans without the covers! They must be using a lot of power here in Germany to need that many!

In Nuremberg our aunt and uncle picked us up and drove us to our grandparent's house. On the way we saw hundreds and thousands of bikes - over half the population of Germany rides bikes - as well as lots of cars. Nuremberg has gargantuous city walls from the middle ages, and Neunkirchen has some, too.

Our first day

We arrived at lunchtime and Oma had lunch ready for us - sausages, yum! In the afternoon we went to the next town, called Dormitz. Our cousin Simon was a magician in their Circus Performance. We met up with him and his big brother Marius, who gave us a tour of their school. Mum was wrong, they do wear Crocs and they have unicycles, too! We sat in the very front row, the performance was quite good. It was all in German, everybody there speaks German, we didn't understand everything but most of it. We are getting better at speaking German, too. After the show we had dinner there, it was delicious! We went home soon after that and had a really good sleep.

The first weekend

The weather was pretty miserable, quite like our winter except there was no frost. Still, we found the most amazing ice cream place and destroyed our cones in seconds. Later our cousins came over and we exchanged presents - ours were lots of yummy sweets and some books etc. We gave them each a rugby ball, a cap and a t-shirt, also a Monopoly NZ Edition.

On Sunday the weather improved and we went to a cool playground. Later we visited our cousins at their house. We played cops and robbers, played with Lego and on their Nintendos.

Monday

Mum and Dad went shopping with us, we got new t-shirts and shoes. Later we visited our Oma Ilse, who also lives in Kerikeri. In Germany she stays in the basement of her old house (our uncle Stefan stays in the rest of the house). We are getting lots of yummy food and sweets everywhere - Mum is worried she will get too big from all this food (she did not let me write too fat)! Oma has the internet - yippieh!

On Wednesday is Taran's birthday, he will be 13 (...)

That's it for today! from Yasha

PS: The photos go in the wrong order, you need to look at them from the bottom - sorry!

Suitcase

We started to pack our suitcases. I have packed clothes, togs, my crocs - Mum thinks they don't know crocs in Germany. I still have to pack entertainment (books, my mp3 player, the iPad, some teddies, my diary). We will have to leave really early on Thursday morning, and Mum says we won't get to our grandma's house until Friday lunchtime which is 10pm on Friday in New Zealand!

Maybe you want to know why their time is different and why it is summer there:

The earth is sort of a ball, and New Zealand and Germany are on opposite sides, so when the sun is shining on New Zealand, there is no sun on Germany so it's night and the other way around. But also, Germany is on the Northern Hemisphere, that is the upper half of that ball, and NZ on the Southern Hemisphere, that is the lower half of the ball. When it's summer up top, it's winter down below and the other way around.
So when the bell goes and school starts for you on a Monday morning, it's still 10:30pm on Sunday in Germany - and we get a sleep in, too!

Here is a picture from the town where we will stay at, it's called Neunkirchen am Brand. My Mum and Dad grew up there.


We have added a new page with important words in German - tell us what other words you want to know in German and we will add them.

Countdown!

Only 10 more days of school until our holiday! We haven't even started packing yet, so we should get a move on! We will need to take:

• clothes for summer (because it is summer there)
• togs (because we will go to the pools - there are no beaches where we go)
• entertainment
• presents

We're going to miss school - boohoo - not! But mum has said she might send us to school in Germany!! I told her holidays are for holidays, and she said that my friends don't get 5 weeks of holidays but still I think it's a dumb idea. She says we will see...

Our blog is started!

With less than four weeks until we leave, we have just set up our travel blog! We plan to share some of the (hopefully) amazing things we will see while we are away. Check back regularly to see what we have been up to!

From the Five Kernz