We interrupt this (not-so-) regularly scheduled blog to discuss having your kids home from school for an extended period of time. Friends, I am HERE for you. I know you probably think that because we homeschool, we are already on top of this. Let me tell you here and now that it isn’t the case. I am, however, far closer to knowing how to handle this now than I was before our time in Leuven. Living in Belgium, away from our usual social outlets such as Treehouse (twice weekly enrichment program) and jiu jitsu and field trips with friends, we got pretty good at being on our own. We still went to grocery stores and on fun outings, but there were a LOT of days in our apartment trying to keep the kids quiet. So, if you’re worried about needing to “school the kids at home” for a few weeks, I would be happy to tell you a few things that worked well for us. This list is written in the mindset that you are a working parent, and thus, you will need time to do your own work in addition to teaching your kids.

First up, if you don’t have a subscription to Curiosity Stream, it is the best $3 I spend in any given month. There are a ton of documentaries on there – plenty of nature and wildlife exploration, as well as history lessons. The videos vary in length and there are lots of series on there. If you need the kids to give you a little space while you are on a conference call or trying to balance your financial statements, this is where I’d start. My kids love Curiosity Stream. Isaac’s favorite has been the series called Speed that covers travel by land, sea, air, and space. Laine wants to watch Wild Horses of the Marshes this week. Their videos are appropriate for a variety of ages. My kids are in elementary school, but I frequently watch videos for my own interest.

My next suggestion: read to them. I’ll try not to overstate this one, but I’ll tell you that it’s the single best thing you can do for your kids. It improves their vocabulary, it helps them to hear how words are supposed to sound, and it builds your common language within your family. Do you hate reading aloud? Audiobooks are your best friends. You can borrow from your library through Overdrive/Libby or Hoopla. You can buy on Audible. Or, even better than Audible, you can use Libro.fm which will give a small percentage of their profits to your local bookstore. Austinites, I’m using this to support Lark & Owl in Georgetown. If your kids don’t want to sit still to listen and you need a mental break, I found that listening while I was prepping lunch and all of us were eating worked really well. Some of our recent favorite audiobooks have been Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and its related titles, The Land of Stories series (though I had to slow the speed on that because Chris Colfer reads at a gallop), and Dragon Rider which was read by Brendan Frasier. We love fantasy stories, so these are all of that ilk. We don’t write book reports on the books we read together, but we do discuss them and ponder what will happen next or what has been surprising about the story so far. If you have other titles with lots of action and adventure, please share them with me!

Games. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you’ll have seen me use the hashtag #gameschooling. If you want to get totally overwhelmed with ideas, I encourage you to search it. I have one kid who can self-entertain and one who cannot. The one who doesn’t enjoy keeping themself busy playing single-player logic games such as Cat Stax, IQ Twist, Rush Hour, and Cat Crimes. Note: we do not own a cat. This may buy you a bit of time, but I’ll tell you our kids are generally more eager to play games if I’m joining in. It will also generally only work for a couple of days. Puzzles may also work if your kids are old enough to work them on their own. Or you can buy those PennyPress books from the grocery store and have them do word searches.

If your kids like workbooks, I have one who really enjoys Brain Quest workbooks. I have another who only writes under duress. Use what works best for your family. I used the Summer books because they were good confidence builders. I use them to reiterate what the kids have already learned, but I don’t use them as a primary learning tool.

There’s a list of museums you can tour from home if you’re interested. We haven’t done any of the virtual tours yet, but I’m looking forward to checking out the Rijksmuseum this week because we missed it while we were in Amsterdam.

If your kids are interested in learning to code, a free online resource for that is Kodu. Isaac has been taking an Outschool class to learn some tricks, but he made tremendous progress on his own just playing with the software. I also highly recommend Outschool for an amazing range of classes. Laine’s taken a 1-hour class on Drawing Cute Ponies and Isaac’s wrapping up a 6-week class on Video Game Design. The classes offered vary in length and cost, but we’ve been pleased with the ones we’ve done so far. Laine’s enrolled in a class on The Love of Cake Decorating next weekend. I am likely going to stay nearby for the cake decorating, but they have not needed my help for anything beyond starting the Zoom classroom thus far.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. If you’re looking for information on how to cover math or reading at home, I’m happy to help with that if you send me a message. I tried to keep this list to things the kids can do on their own.

If you are also a homeschool parent, what things might you add to this list? Maybe we can help a few parents as they try navigating these waters.

A final note: don’t push an agenda. If your kids hate it and you’re fighting on school work, take a break. The relationships are so much more important than anything you may or may not teach them. These resources were shared to make life easier. If they don’t, don’t use them. Take what works and discard the rest. Bake brownies and watch a Coyote Peterson video on YouTube. Or have a dance party in your kitchen. Or hide in your closet for 2 minutes and savor a piece of chocolate. Give yourself grace during this time. This is a LOT of togetherness and there’s a decent chance your temper will snap at least once. It happens to all of us. I wish your family peace and health as we all get through this together.

*Final note: none of these links are affiliate links. I don’t get any money for sharing anything. I’m sharing what works for my family.

I wrote most of this post before we left Leuven. After countless delays, I’ve debated whether to post it and whether I should continue writing my blog and I’ve decided to do it. After all, I’m writing for my own enjoyment and no one has to read if they would rather not. 🙂 So, if you decide to continue our whirlwind European tour, join me as I finish sharing the remainder of our journey, even though I’ll be writing the rest of my posts Stateside.

At the end of August/beginning of September, we flew north to Denmark. Our long weekend in Copenhagen began with a bit more drama than expected. First we needed to be up and out of the apartment very early so we could drive to the other side of Brussels to a different airport (Charleroi). Then things with Ryanair went… differently… than hoped and we ended up with some large extra fees. Though not an auspicious start, we managed to make the most of the rest of our weekend.

We got a terrific feel for the layout of Copenhagen as we did a ton of walking. The weather was perfect for it! In Leuven, most of our farther destinations were reached by bicycle and there are LOTS of bikes in Copenhagen, but not Laine-sized bikes. We took advantage of the buses and trains, as well, because public transportation is remarkably easy in Europe.

Side note: for those familiar with Copenhagen, I will qualify this post by letting you know we did not go to Tivoli. We already had tickets to go to Efteling the next weekend, so Todd and I decided we didn’t need to visit theme parks 2 weekends in a row.

Our first real stop after checking in to our AirBnB was the planetarium. The planetarium was a hit and we all learned a few things that still come up in dinner conversations months later. There was an amazing display about the life cycle of a star that Todd and I thoroughly enjoyed. Meanwhile, the kids had fun elsewhere. Isaac is happy to know that he’s made of stardust – and he knows specifically which elements. We have carbon, iron, oxygen, and others that date back to the Big Bang. The planetarium had an exciting interactive display to help explain all of this and both kids played there for quite a while. They also had a blast creating supernovas and black holes on the interactive floor display in the next room. Ha! See what I did there?

It was a perfect day to explore outside, so we walked from the planetarium up to Kastellet. It’s one of the best-preserved fortresses in Northern Europe. Much of the Kastellet (citadel) is open to the public as a park and tourist area, but there are certain rules to be observed as it is also home to some military activities.

The Kastellet has beautiful architecture inside. The long rows of the barracks are red and the Commander’s house is a warm yellow. My picture didn’t turn out, but you can find one here.

The thing Laine was most excited about during this trip was her chance to see The Little Mermaid. Shortly after we moved to Belgium, she got a book of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales. She’s read it over and over again – both to herself and by asking us to read occasionally – and is about to wear the book out. Her favorite story is still The Little Mermaid, despite her initial disappointment that Ariel doesn’t marry Eric (thanks, Disney).

We had a late lunch at a terrific restaurant right alongside the water. We had drinks and food at a long picnic table. Soaking up sunshine and people-watching along the water was a perfect way to spend an afternoon in Denmark. It was one of my favorite meals in Europe – a brilliantly sunny day with good food and my favorite people. Afterwards we watched a non-Texan dive into the water and go for a pretty substantial swim in the chilly, choppy waters.

The kids were eager to find a park and Copenhagen did not disappoint. Frankly, if we’d stayed for a week and gone to a different park each day, we still wouldn’t have run out of amazing outdoor play areas. Fælledparken had a fun playground of towers set back in the trees. There were several different ways to climb to the top – some more hair-raising than others – so that was exciting to watch. I was too nervous to take photos. The kids climbed and Isaac raced some other boys and I found another American mom to have a chat. The park boasts the largest skate park in Northern Europe, so we watched some really talented skaters practicing their best moves. To the seasoned travelers, the most unique aspect was this tree, where children had left their pacifiers with notes attached – the boys and girls received gifts in exchange for leaving their pacifiers. There are more of these trees in Denmark. Most of the them are real trees, but this one was put in place to protect the natural trees bordering this remarkable large park. Copenhagen was the only place in Europe where we saw this tradition, so it was pretty neat.

We retired early at the end of our first day in Denmark as we’d been up well before the sun. Which as an impressive statement in Belgium in early autumn. The views as we crossed the river on our way home offered a great opportunity to discuss the architecture. The buildings along the riverfront are impressive.

Our second day in Copenhagen, the weather was a little less promising, but we persevered and took a somewhat drizzly boat ride. We learned some of the city’s history and even more about some of the spectacular architecture. Copenhagen’s history dates back to at least the 11th century. As one would expect for a city with so much history, it’s colorful. Over 1/3 of the population died from the plague in 1711. Over 28% of the city was destroyed by fire in 1728 which caused the loss of nearly half of the city’s medieval section. The boat tour also led us under numerous bridges. Some were so low we were told to keep our hands down! Water, and crossing it, is a major part of life for the Danes in Copenhagen.

The city is beautiful, particularly from the water. The tour allowed us to hop on and off at certain stops, so we were able to take a playground break midway. We discovered the BLOX Legeplads at the rear of the Dansk Arkitektur Center. It had rained while we were moving about the city, so the playground was VERY wet. The kids, Isaac in particular, were not deterred.

You can see mesh behind Isaac in the photo above. It made for a fun way to climb to the top if you didn’t want to take the stairs or the grippy black stuff to either side of the slide. There were also some small trampolines embedded in the mesh, which added to the fun. The space featured a fantastic climbing structure – if you visit the link above you can see it in their images. It’s at least 2 stories high and almost like a maze to get to the top (or back to the bottom). There were chain-link fences all the way up both sides and it was just big enough to allow the kids in, but the openings were too narrow for me to climb in. The whole thing was probably only 3′ wide on the inside, but it was full of climbing spaces. I don’t have any photos to do it justice, but trust me it was cool!

In addition to the outdoor area, there was an indoor space with a STEM lab for kids to use. There were a couple of docents there, but the kids were able to explore and work on various projects. Some kids had started building a spaceship from cardboard – it was taller than me! There were some simple experiments set up to play with electrical connections, light, and a VR game that allowed you to color, as well as lots of other things. The best part is that the whole thing was free! One of Laine’s favorite parts was the sensory “chairs” in the hallway.

We ended our tour with a pølser (Danish hot dog) meal near Nyhavn where we originally boarded our boat tour. I had asked my friend Sebastian, who is Danish, what he recommended for our time in Copenhagen and this was on his list. Yum!

That evening, we decided we needed to add one more country to our list of places visited, so we hopped a train to Sweden. We were in Malmö long enough to take a short walking tour through the town and enjoy a delicious dinner. Afterwards, we strolled back through the town to the train station.

Overall, we had a fantastic stay in Denmark. We enjoyed some amazing food, walked roughly 20 miles (mostly kidding), and barely scratched the surface on the many amazing parks. This is how I’ll remember Copenhagen in my mind, though.

I’ve only ordered one thing online from the States since we moved here at the beginning of March. It was our homeschool curriculum. I ordered and had it shipped via UPS. After a few small glitches and a few large moments of panic, we finally received the package. The short version of the story: if you’re having something shipped overseas, pay the taxes online or they’ll show up at your door and ask for cash and they don’t accept credit cards. I am usually pretty good about keeping some cash on hand here in Europe, but I didn’t have any the first day he tried to deliver. Then I realized I could pay the invoice online. So I stalked and practically accosted our poor UPS driver the next time he came to deliver. There’s a pretty good chance the he thinks I’m completely nuts. There’s also a pretty good chance he’s not wrong…

A lot of homeschoolers use a school-year schedule. That doesn’t seem to work well for our family, so we homeschool year-round. This works well for us as we take breaks at different times. In Austin, we often take off the entire month between Thanksgiving and Christmas and then homeschool during the hot summer days instead. This year the flexibility has been quite a gift. We have done so much traveling that there’s no way the kids would thrive in a regular school environment. We “do school” on weekdays when we’re in Leuven and we take breaks whenever we travel.

We pulled out all of the materials and the kids tried to read about half of the books while I tried to check everything off the packing list. There are a lot of books!!!

If you know me, you’ll know that I love to be organized. I love to be able to have a place for everything. This is one of the things I most enjoy about buying a boxed curriculum. All I have to do is sort this out and follow the directions.

We have chosen to use a literature-based curriculum, so we spend a LOT of our day reading. I hope the kids will someday look back on their days as homeschoolers and remember us snuggled up together with a good book (or 70). In addition to the “spine” of our BookShark curriculum, both kids are using Beast Academy Online for math (although they both enjoy reading the comic-book style textbooks, too). They are working on Keyboarding Without Tears so they can learn proper typing techniques. We are using All About Spelling to improve their spelling skills. Laine is about half-way through her final level of All About Reading. It will be bittersweet when she finishes that particular curriculum as she started it with the Pre-reading level several years ago and it’s been a big part of our homeschool for both of my kids.

Another of our favorite parts of the new school year is taking the first-day pictures. While my son isn’t always eager to be in front of the camera, this day we all had a lot of fun with it because the kids got to pose with their favorite toys and wear their favorite outfits… after I got the “official” shots. Give and take, right? Thank goodness I remembered to pack their school shirts back in February!

I also got them to take a few shots with the teacher. This is my fifth year guiding our homeschool and I am thankful for the time we’ve had. Homeschool has been the right answer for our family, particularly this year, and I hope we get to continue this for a long time to come.

Our school year is off to a great start. On the weeks when we finish everything we’re supposed to finish, we go out for a little treat on Friday afternoons to celebrate. We’re trying to fit in all of the Belgian waffles we can while we still can. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.

At the end of July, we caught up with some German friends in Munich! This was our second trip to Munich in as many months, but it was fun all over again. We had an *amazing* time catching up with our friends! Todd & I were friends with Christian & Elke before any of us had kids. We met for the first time in Munich when we crashed a party for Elke’s birthday. They later moved to Austin, where our families started growing and we all started camping together. They moved to California a few years ago and we’ve missed them tremendously. As we don’t seem to be able to coordinate a trip in the U.S. (something about jobs and 5 kids between 2 families), we managed to catch up in Europe this time, doubly amusing because none of us actually live in Germany…

Germany is one of our family’s favorite places to visit. I think the primary reason for this can be summed up in one phrase: beer gardens. Even if you don’t imbibe, there’s something to be said for eating at a picnic table while the kids run around and play on the playground instead of having to sit at the table while the boring adults chat on and on forever. Everyone wins! There are large pretzels, apfelschorle, good bratwursts, and plenty of space for the kids to roam and play while the grown-ups hang out. Thus, once we were checked in to our hotel for the evening, we were off to the beer garden for dinner and catching up with our friends.

The hotel turned out to be fun, as well. Our room had a large bed for Todd and me, plus two bunks. There was a (small) ball pit downstairs in reception, which was a great place for the kids to play during check in and check out. There was a foosball table. And the breakfasts were very good, so we didn’t have to hunt down food early in the mornings.

Our first full day in Munich, we headed to Olympic Park. Todd and I went there several years ago (the same year we crashed Elke’s birthday party), but we didn’t go to the top of the tower then as we did this year. The view from the top is unparalleled!

We headed to lunch once we’d finished enjoying the views from on high. Great news! At the top of the hill, we found the beer garden. While this one didn’t have a playground, there was a patch of forest close by, so the kids were able to explore there while the baby napped and the parents chatted.

The next day, we had a park play date. Christian and Elke arranged the fun and then offered to watch our kids while Todd and I did some shopping. I bought a new dirndl (I bought a used one 15 years ago and it’s worn out) and Todd finally bought lederhosen. Elke’s family left early to head to their next hotel destination. We were staying in Munich for an extra night, so we joined our other friends for dinner in Munich instead. If you guessed we found another beer garden, you’d be right! This one had 2 playgrounds so the kids were thrilled. We stayed out way too late with our new friends before catching the tram back to our hotel.

The following morning we had a leisurely breakfast in our hotel before packing up and moving on to follow Christian and Elke to the next destination. After figuring out how to navigate the partially-closed railway system, we found our way to a wonderful new hotel. This one is about a half-mile walk from the train station (but it’s out in the country and you can see it from the station). The best part? The beer garden is part of the hotel property! The kids saw their friends and scrambled over the fence to play while Todd and I checked in. Our friends were hosting a large group of local friends and we got to enjoy the party. The kids played all afternoon in the open field beside the tables. We took Laine and her friend Milena for a rock-climbing adventure in the woods behind the hotel. A full day of outdoor time led to some DEEP sleep that night!

We spent the last couple of days of our trip in Würzburg, which was absolutely beautiful. We had the chance to learn some of the city’s history from locals (it helps that we were traveling with them)! In particular, we learned that on 16 March 1945, about 90% of the city was destroyed in 17 minutes by fire bombing from 225 British Lancaster bombers during a World War II air raid. Many of the residents hid in the hillside caves during the raid.

All of the city’s churches, cathedrals, and other monuments were heavily damaged or destroyed. The city center, which mostly dated from medieval times, was totally destroyed and 5,000 people perished. Once the war had ended, the city was rebuilt reasonably quickly and primarily by women. It took about 20 years. (There are some areas of Europe that are still rebuilding even after 75 years). They tried to rebuild everything just as it had been before the war. Every year at the time the fire bombing occurred, the church bells in all of the local churches chime for 17 minutes.

We climbed to the top of the Marienberg Fortress for an amazing view of the city. There is a lovely garden at the top and the kids had a great time running around and preparing to fight battles on the garden steps. Thankfully there weren’t many visitors that day, so we didn’t have to worry about them disturbing other patrons.

While the view was lovely and the kids were entertained, we could see the rain coming in the distance, so it was time to move on. We found another beer garden for lunch. We hadn’t been in a beer garden for nearly 24 hours at that point, though, so we were overdue.

The beer garden where we lunched was down alongside the river. If you look closely at the photo above, you can see a lock on the near side of the river. This allows the barges to move back upstream. While we were at lunch, we got to see two barges in the locks with the water levels rising. The kids were unimpressed, but the adults were fascinated! As we were watching the lock flooding with water, I looked up to see dozens of people on the bridge overhead watching as well.

We did a short walking tour of the city after lunch, crossing the bridge into the city center. We were able to see the room in the Rathaus (town hall) where our friends were married before they moved to the States. We also peeked our heads in at the Residence, but decided not to pay to tour. The kids were ready for some fun. We found playgrounds for them and they got to let off a bit of steam.

That evening we returned to our hostel for some rest before catching a flight the next morning. They had a nice breakfast set up, so we ate there in the mornings. Isaac and Todd were able to squeeze in one last game of foosball in the lobby before we left.

Science museum love continued in Brussels! We visited The Museum of Natural Sciences to learn more about dinosaurs, mosasaurs, bears, and evolution.

Naturally, our first stop was the dinosaurs. There’s a fancy app and also a set of downloadable questions for kids. We started both and gave them up pretty quickly. You’d have to read nearly everything in the museum to be able to answer all of the questions and our kids didn’t want to “do school.”

Isaac watched a video at the foot of this display and was bubbling over with new info afterwards. Apparently T Rex wasn’t so much a predator as a vulture. It seems they preferred to eat meat that was already dead (carrion). That said, they did have some major battles. This particular dinosaur had several broken bones in various stages of healing, as well as a hole in the skull that was approximately the right size for another T Rex to have bitten it. The dinosaur survived the bite to the skull and was killed by something else.

Unbelievably, I managed not to take a picture of the iguanadons in the room. This is remarkable because they are all together in large glass cases, their bones are black, and they’re clearly the main draw of the room. One of the fascinating things about the display, however, is that as you’re walking through, you learn that the iguanadons, each modeled as standing on its two rear feet, would not actually have walked that way. And as you stand and look at them, you realize how massive the bones to the forelegs are, so they were clearly designed to help carry the dinosaur’s weight. Due to the fragile state of the bones, the museum is not able to modify the displays. If you’re interested to see more about this, there’s a quick video here from the museum itself.

These iguanadons were discovered in a coal mine, which helps to explain some of the darkening of the bones. The bones were also treated and sealed with a chemical which further darkened over time, making the bones appear black. As you walk down into the lower levels of the museum, you can see what the cave looked like and how the dinosaurs were found there.

The theory is that these dinosaurs were trapped by a flood or mud slide as it made its way through a swamp. The area of the coal mine was a low point, and thus, final resting place, for whatever dinosaurs had been caught by it.

In addition to all of the amazing dinosaurs, we also learned more about mosasaurs, which are Isaac’s favorite prehistoric creature. This is the second time we’ve been exposed to mosasaurs. The first time, we were on vacation in Big Bend National Park (which used to be completely underwater). Isaac would like me to note that mosasaurs are NOT dinosaurs. No marine dinosaurs have been discovered to date.

The fossil on display here is massive – I couldn’t photograph the whole thing. Seeing the skeleton was impressive – there was no fossil on display in Big Bend. The mosasaur had enormous teeth, a long body, strange flippers, and an exceptionally long tail.

The museum has a large area dedicated to the evolution of humankind. If you’ve read or watched any documentaries on this, you may be familiar with “Lucy.” It was very cool to see a replica of her skeleton. I remember watching a documentary on her several years ago when Isaac was a baby.

Our final stop in the museum was in a display on bears. There was some info on Theodore Roosevelt and the invention of the teddy bear. There were also some neat displays about bears in children’s books (e.g., Winnie the Pooh, Paddington, and Baloo from The Jungle Book). The kids enjoyed some of the interactive sections about how bears live and what they eat.

After a fun afternoon exploring the museum, we grabbed a few chocolate-covered waffles near the station and headed home to Leuven.

Schaerbeek, a suburb of Brussels, has an amazing train museum. We had the chance to go explore it one Sunday in July. They advise you to plan at least 1 1/2 hours for your tour. We took 4 hours and it was fantastic. There were lots of ways to engage the kids and my train-loving heart was thrilled.

The trip started on the right foot. We arrived at the station about 15 minutes before our trains was scheduled to depart. This is probably a new record for us. We’re usually lucky to have 7 minutes… We boarded the front of the train where the conductor and the engineer were on break. They heard us talking as Todd pointed at the open door to the driver’s seat. They driver invited the kids to come sit in her seat and see what it looks like to drive the train. Both kids were excited at the chance to do that and Laine was thrilled the driver was a woman.

One of the things we’ve learned to ask in every museum is whether they have an activity for kids. This museum had a fun treasure hunt. The kids were to find the letters associated with various types of food hidden throughout the museum. They would then use the fruits to spell out a phrase, find the treasure box, and claim their prize in the gift shop. Along with this, the food items were usually placed alongside some other activities the kids could choose to participate in. The first activity was to pretend you ran a food cart and draw what you would sell.

The first room was set up as the depot and had seating for Laine to draw. Around the perimeter of the room, there were models of over a dozen types of steam locomotives. Most were at a 1:10 scale, but this one was a bit larger and the most unusual:

The depot is the introduction to the train museum, but most of the museum is in a second building. We walked out through the back of the depot on our way to the rest of the museum.

Belgium is quite proud of its history with trains. Brussels was the first European capital to have a railway connection, which began May 5, 1835. At the time, Belgium had only been independent for 5 years. It seceded from The Netherlands in 1830.

There shall be established in the Kingdom a system of railways with Mechelen as its hub, extending eastward towards the Prussian frontier via Leuven, Liège, and Verviers, northward via Antwerp, westward to Ostend via Dendermonde, Ghent and Bruges and southward to Brussels and to the French border through Hainaut.

Act of 1 May 1834 ordering the creation of the Belgian State Railways

The Type 10 was designed by Jean-Baptiste Flamme of Belgium. Flamme was already famous in the steam locomotive world for another another invention. In 1905, he developed a technique to increase the efficiency of steam locomotives by means of super-heating. They heated the steam in the boiler to 425 degrees Celsius, so condensation no longer takes place. This allowed the locomotives to run faster and more efficiently, thus they soon were able to exceed 100 km/h (62 mph). Until the end of the steam era, virtually all locomotives were to be equipped with Flamme’s super-heaters. The Type 10 engine above included this new technology and was able to run at 120 km/h. It was the most powerful locomotive in that category. (All of this info was on placards within the museum).

We see electric trains all the time as we travel across Europe. We also see the occasional diesel engine as it hauls freight. There are fences along all of the tracks, so we never get close to a train unless we’re in the station and standing on a raised platform. It’s easy to forget how big these trains are when you can’t stand too close to the tracks. But they’re big!

We were able to climb into the cab of several different types of steam engine in this room. There are so many gears and handles to pull that it’s a little overwhelming!

In addition to climbing into the cabs of the trains, we learned quite a bit about how the trains move along the tracks. There was a display to we could interact with to see how switches work. There were others to show how signals are used to indicate to the train driver whether it’s safe to continue on the tracks or another train is on the line ahead. We also learned that apparently all of the clocks in Belgium are synchronized because of the trains.

The entrance to the second “room” of trains is amazing. As we entered the first room, we came in from above and looked down on 4-5 engines below. Those trains were on tracks set on the floor. As we entered the next display, however, the trains were up on beds of rock as they are out in the real world. It was a little daunting to walk in and see this before us:

This section taught us a lot about the engineering behind steam engines. My dad loves steam engines, so I probably know more about them than the average accountant, but the displays were fantastic for teaching me the details on how it works.

The location of the second museum building is remarkable because it was built around the house where the train signal man used to live. This person had an interesting job as he was required to respond at any hour to pull down the crossing gates to keep cars/people off the road. The house itself was also remarkably small. It was a split-level home, so you entered on the level of the entryway and living room. You would go down 3-4 steps to get to the kitchen. Or you could go up about 8 steps to the bedroom. If you opened the door to the kitchen, you could see into the bedroom as well, as there was an open space. There was a display of a car that was reported to have been hit by a train to demonstrate why you should never try to run through the gates.

While the trains were responsible for connecting so much of Europe in positive ways, they were also responsible for transporting thousands upon thousands of people to concentration camps during the second World War. There was a powerful display to discuss how people were treated and what happened. It was moving and an important reminder that we must never let such a thing happen again.

On a more light-hearted note, we also got to see some of the ways trains were used to entertain people. Sometimes it meant traveling in a “comfortable” first class carriage. And some trains were prominently featured in movies.

Our last stop on the tour was an interactive display to allow you to drive the train. This was Isaac’s favorite part of the whole day. The driver needs to maintain certain speeds, stop in the correct location for a station, wait for the signal lights to allow the train to move on, and then safely steer through a maintenance area. One child drove and the other would work the train horn.

It made for a great Sunday! It was an added bonus that we took the train system back home at the end of the day. These are electric instead of steam-powered, but we learned a bit more about how much difference trains made in the lives of all Europeans and how they continue to improve our lives.

We’re taking fun birthday trips this year! Laine got to explore a real-life castle in Germany for her special day. Isaac chose a day at Delta Works in The Netherlands to celebrate his. For mine, we went to Amsterdam for a long weekend.

Amsterdam is only a few hours from Leuven by train. We rode up on Friday evening in time to check in, find dinner, and get a feel for the lay of the land. It gets dark there even later than here, so it was a great introduction to the city.

One of the first things we noticed in Amsterdam was the prevalence of the XXX symbol. In Amsterdam, it does NOT mean what you think it means. It actually kind of reminded me of the “lone stars” all over Texas. “Amsterdam’s coat of arms is pretty prevalent sight throughout the city. At its core is the ‘XXX’ symbol, which is actually three vertical St. Andrew’s Crosses, not (as some people assume) shorthand for the Red Light District. For the Amsterdam coat of arms, the three crosses are in white, atop a red shield with a black pale. St. Andrew was a fisherman who was martyred on an X-shaped cross in the 1st century AD, which is relevant to Amsterdam as the city’s symbol dates back to 1505 when it was a fishing town and all ships registered in Amsterdam flew this flag. In its most official form, the coat of arms is also decorated with the Imperial Crown of Austria and two golden lions.” Our tour guide later in the weekend told us that the crosses are supposed to indicate the 3 deadliest dangers to Old Amsterdam: fire, floods, and the Black Death. There is some dispute as to whether this is true, however, as the symbol was used by some families in 1505; before the plague hit Europe.

Our AirBnB was an incredibly beautiful space and I think it’s the best one we have had so far. We had terrific views from the balcony and the roof-top porch. We had plenty of space to spread out! The jarring part of it was opening the front door to see 35 very steep steps up to our “first” floor. Todd opted to leave the larger suitcase in the living room instead of carrying it up the next 17 steps to the bedrooms.

The apartment was really beautiful. The people who live here seem to enjoy traveling the world. There were some well-worn travel books on the shelves in the library (the kind you really use, not the kind you place on a coffee table). There was some lovely art from Africa, China, and a few other places. I wish I had taken a few more photos of the place. The master bath was incredible with a good shower (which is harder to find than you’d expect), a claw-foot bathtub, and really nice sinks. The apartment was a great place to use as a home base as it was well-located and very comfortable.

In addition to the lovely decor, they also left a chess board set up for us. Todd and Isaac played at least a half-dozen games while we stayed there. We’ll have to pull out our chess board when we return to Austin!

We had a sweet little balcony on the front of the apartment which overlooked the canal. The houseboats along the side of the canal are permanent residences. It is no longer possible to get a new space allotted along the canal, so the spaces are worth far more than the houseboats themselves. No new permits will be issued by the government, so this has caused an astronomical rise in the prices.

Once we’d had a chance to settle in, we headed out to find a dinner spot. We walked along the canal before finding a burger place which advertised they served local beers. Good news – it was not Heineken!

After a restful night in the apartment, we woke up to search for a breakfast restaurant. We were seated at a very large square table. There were seats for 12, so we joined a lively group of 6 other Americans at the table. We had a fantastic chat with them and swapped notes on the fun stuff everyone had planned. They were spending a couple of weeks touring various places in Europe. Apparently they take an annual European vacation together, so we took lots of notes on where else we should visit! When we got up to leave and pay our tab, we learned that they had paid for our meals. What a lovely surprise!

We left breakfast at exactly the right time to be able to catch the next boat tour along the canals. Those boat drivers are incredible! Despite remarkably tight turns and lots of traffic, everyone seems to work it out. We learned a lot from the boat tour and we all enjoyed it immensely. The kids had a separate audio tour from the adults and they had a great time learning to be “fresh water pirates.” We had a unique view of the architecture from down in the canals. It is possible to tell whether you’re in the industrial/working section of the city or the residential area based on the height of the canal walls. The lower walls are used in the industrial sections to ease the loading and unloading of boats. The higher walls in the residential sections meant there was less likely to be damage from flooding. In addition to that, we learned about the hooks on the front of each building. These hooks were used to load in/load out of the homes and warehouses as people moved their goods or furniture.

We spent a terrific afternoon at Nemo; the science museum. The bridge leading into it reminded Laine of Austin’s Pennybacker Bridge, so she was quite excited to walk across it.

There was a water clock directly inside the front door that was fascinating to watch. We saw a fantastic chain reaction that took up 2 floors! There was an area to discover how hormones impact our bodies. Another for how personal space works. A social experiment on racism…

One place where we spent a lot of time was a special demonstration about bicycles. There was a really cool display set up with all sorts of small model bicycles to coast down a conveyor ramp. Some bikes had larger front wheels or larger back wheels or long center beams. The idea was to test them to see which was the most stable. I think Isaac could have stayed there for hours watching the perpetual motion of those bikes going downhill. Meanwhile, Laine, Todd, and I drew bicycles on paper and then had the opportunity to “ride” them through the magic of technology. I think we did pretty well!

Once we left the “Fantastische Fietsen” area, we found a great section on our solar system. Isaac’s favorite thing about this was the demo for how Earth’s atmosphere protects us. He and several other kids ran around with shields over their heads to help deflect any meteors which might threaten our safety here on Earth.

We studied a bit about optical illusions and how our eyes work. We also looked at how a machine can use “eyes” to sort items through another great demo. Laine used different colored balls to load a truck with items which had to placed by color to simulate how machines can do this.

As we were preparing to exit the building to find the penultimate Women’s World Cup game, we came across the giant bubbles, so we had to try one last experiment before we left for the evening.

We found a small bar where we were able to watch the soccer match between Sweden and England. The bartender warned us that the screen was small, but Isaac and I were happy to watch, all the same.

That night we had another fantastic dinner at a nearby restaurant. The kids were toast by the time we finished, so we put them to bed and enjoyed the late-night sunset (around 11:00 p.m.) without them.

On our last day in Amsterdam, we toured the Van Gogh Museum. They offered a search mission for the kids and our kids had a lot of fun trying to find all of the items and solve all of the quizzes. It made the art museum a bit more engaging for the kids and Todd. I could have stayed for another hour, so I was plenty engaged! The kids earned prizes – a postcard of their favorite piece of Van Gogh’s artwork. One of the cleverest ideas in the museum was a touchable replica of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. One of the original versions of Sunflowers is on display in the museum, but there are others around the globe. The special exhibit compared the differences among the 4 masterpieces of the same name. But it was made more meaningful to the kids as they could feel it first. And because I’ve never been allowed to touch the art in an art museum, I also thought it was amazing!

As we left the museum, we stopped in the nearby plaza for stroopwafels! They were so delicious. They are remarkably thin waffles. Once they have finished baking on the special griddle, they are sliced in half across the width. A caramel syrup is spread around the middle of the waffle and then the top is placed back on it. Laine and I are fans!

Our final major adventure in Amsterdam was watching the US Women’s National Team beat The Netherlands in the Women’s World Cup (soccer) finals. It was a great game and US team made us proud. We clapped little golf claps so as not to be rude to all the other people in the restaurant. But we were all pretty giddy walking down the street afterwards!

Our last day in Amsterdam, Todd had to fly back to Austin for a work trip. The kids and I packed the enormous suitcase and our backpacks before making our way back to the train station. I made the kids wait at the top of the staircase while I carried the bag down because I was afraid that if I tripped and let go of the bag they’d be seriously injured. Thankfully, I needn’t have worried as we all made it down safe and sound without leaving a suitcase-sized hole in the front door. We caught the trains back to Leuven without incident and got Belgian waffles to celebrate my birthday.

Back in April, a friend introduced us to an amazing zoo: Pairi Daiza. When we visited the first time, we traded in our day passes for season tickets. Now we’ve been to the zoo 3 times. The second time, we went by ourselves on a Sunday afternoon.

There are a lot of things I love about the zoo. The spaces for the animals all feel large. There’s plenty of room for the animals to move around. Most of them also feel accessible, though, such as walking through the Australian area with nothing between you and the animals. Another way they break up the spaces is with architecture. Each area has buildings around and through it to help it resemble the specific part of the world where the animals originate.

The architecture definitely adds to the experience, but the animals are the star of the show. Unless you ask my kids. They might say the epic playground is actually the star! There are enormous bird nests above the playground, though, and the storks love them, so it still feels like a part of the zoo.

One of the animals first animals we visited was the otters. They’re so lively! There are 3 in the enclosure at Pairi Daiza and they would run across the ground, dive in the water, swim across, and climb out to do it again. They looked like they were having a wonderful time. Their space has a glass front to it, so even as they swam under water, we were still able to see them when they approached the glass. After observing them from beside the enclosure, we climbed up for a different perspective.

The treehouse above was intriguing, but off limits. We were wondering whether we could get in and instead worked our way over to the bird enclosures.

There was a vast array of different types of birds. It was breathtaking! But one of the coolest features is the rope bridge. You can see it ascending in the background of the photo above.

The rope bridge goes up inside the netting for the bird enclosure. You get an incredible view below of the birds. It’s a little wobbly, too, which adds to the adventure. The foot bridge is one direction, so once you start up, you’re committed to finishing. There’s a gate at the top as you exit the bird enclosure. Then you wander down from there and end up on the opposite side of the park’s creek.

Upon our descent, we decided to head for the Asian animals. Again, the architecture helps you to shift your mindset about where these animals are native.

The red panda is native to the Himalayas and southwestern China. It’s also downright adorable. There are only about 10,000 in the wild, so they are on the endangered species list.

These pandas are only distantly related to the giant pandas with which we’re all familiar. Their faces remind me more of a raccoon than a giant panda, though. They’re fantastic climbers and are known to descend trees head first!

The long covered walkways meander through this area of the zoo. It’s a great way to allow a lot of people to see the animals at the same time, but it doesn’t feel overwhelming. At least as a person walking… I have no idea how the red panda feels about it.

We walked deeper into the China area to see the giant pandas.

Giant pandas are considered vulnerable, but not endangered. Pandas, both the red and giant varieties, have a “false thumb,” which is actually part of its wrist. This allows the panda to more easily grasp and shred bamboo stalks.

As you walk through the space above, many of the Buddhas have a swastika on them. Needless to say, that can be a bit jarring if you’re used to having a certain association with the symbol. Thus, there are signs to explain this. I am going to quote their signs so I don’t accidentally communicate the wrong thing:

Swastika is a word from Sanskrit and means “what brings happiness.” This decorative or symbolic sign is one of the oldest in humanity. The symbol originated more than 10,000 years ago and spread throughout the world, through different cultures; especially in India and the Far East, where this sign is very often used in the iconography of local religions.
In India this sign stands for the rotation of the universe. In China and Tibet it evokes eternity. Buddha sometimes wears it on the chest or forehead.
In Japanese Zen Buddhism, the symbol stands for the “seal of the mind of Buddha.” It is therefore always a favorable sign.
Attention!
The swastika from Hinduism or Buddhism should certainly not be confused with the swastika of the Nazis.
There are in fact two variants of this sign in different eras and cultures.
The left-turning variant: the most used in the Far East.
The right-turning version: widely used in India. It is this latter variant, turned at an angle of 45 degrees, that was chosen as a sign of the Nazi regime. The symbol was consequently an unfavorable sign!

– Pairi Daiza

On our next visit to Pairi Daiza, we met our friends again. We were all very excited because a new section had just opened and it was the first weekend to see it. Laine’s been eagerly awaiting this particular opening for weeks! It is intended to feature some of her favorite animals, wolves. The section is for animals from North America! They’ve called it The Final Frontier. They have some “seaside” houses which I mentally picture in San Francisco. They also used signs from the U.S.’s National Park Service, which is delightful. We love the national parks!

It was a fantastic area to walk around. They did a terrific job making it feel like the northwest areas of the U.S. and southern Canada. There are trees native to that area and the habitats feel, somehow, more like the American/Canadian border and Pacific Northwest. I was concerned that it would feel campy, but they really got it right.

In another space, brown and black bears share an enclosure. It’s a large area with running water and room to sprawl. I think they need more trees, but the area is new and trees take some time to grow. They also need the bears to leave them alone and you could see where a few of the “unwrapped” trees had already been used for claw-sharpening in the other section. Those trees aren’t going to survive.

We saw a Smokey the Bear sign, as well, which reminded me of 1980’s commercials. I’ll bet many of you remember them, too! It was kind of funny because one of our friends is an Italian who lives in France and I did a terrible job trying to sound like Smokey the Bear.

We found some of the wolves! Laine was very excited to see them. There was a new wolf baby for one “family,” and they weren’t ready for visitors yet. The rest of the wolves were resting in the shade on a hot day.

There’s a brand new hotel that’s opened right here. We were actually standing on its roof as I took the photo above. The rooms have windows that look out onto the wolf/bear enclosure – right at ground level. That seemed like an incredibly neat idea before we learned that the rooms cost 1,000 Euros/night!

The sea lions were one of the most exciting exhibits on this trip. They were my favorite because they seemed to be playing for all of us to see. They would swim right up to the edge of the glass, turn, and swim away upside down before flipping over to gracefully swim back toward us. Over and over again – so peaceful! I would have missed this entirely if Isaac hadn’t shown me where we could walk under the deck to see the water. The hippo enclosure and the otter enclosure have this same feature and it’s wonderful!

This was the last sign we saw before exiting the North American area. It was really cool because we remember reading these same warnings in Big Bend National Park in Texas a couple of years ago!

The kids were excited to see a real reindeer. This guy was hanging out in the shade to try to stay cool. The mother and young reindeer were around the corner having a drink of water.

The reindeer were still working on losing their winter coats and this guy had grown some enormous antlers! Both males and females grow antlers, but the female in this area did not have any. Hers begin to grow later than his. These antlers are still covered in their velvety outer layer. As the year wears on, the antlers will shed this layer and harden. I am very curious about how much these things weigh!

At the end of a fun day, the girls were our tour guides and helped us map our way to the exit.

Despite the fact that we spend an inordinate amount of time traveling, we genuinely love our little city. We live right in the heart of “downtown,” which is utterly comical if you’re to compare it to say, any city in the U.S. Our garage door is the very last spot on the street before it turns into a pedestrian zone. The next street up from us (1/2 block) is a retail center. It’s all pedestrians from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Other than those times, the only cars allowed on there are those going to shops to make deliveries, street sweepers, and garbage trucks.

Here’s the thing about garbage collection, though. There is a LOT of it. We have 5 different containers for trash in our house:

1. the blue bag: plastic bottles, cans, and aluminum products (collected every 2 weeks)
2. the pink bag: almost every other type of plastic (collected every 3 weeks)
3. the green bag: all food scraps (collected every Friday)
4. the cardboard/paper recycling bin (collected every 2 weeks, provided you have gathered it into a cardboard box and sealed that box)
5. the brown bag: all other trash (collected every Tuesday)

Pop quiz! Did you realize I didn’t list a particular type of trash? Go ahead and read over the list again. I’ll wait.

Did you figure out I didn’t mention glass? That’s because we don’t actually have a container for glass. We rinse out the bottles and set them aside. Glass is not collected for us. We have to take it away ourselves. Glass recycling is more complex. If it’s a particular type of beer bottle, it can be turned in via machine at the grocery store. The machine tallies the total number of bottles and we get a receipt. We present the receipt to the cashier at checkout and they treat it as a coupon for 10 cents/bottle. The beer producers here expect to receive a certain number of bottles back each month, so they don’t order new bottles as often as they would otherwise. Wine bottles and all other glass, however, have to be taken somewhere else. There are various collection centers throughout the city and the closest to us is about a block from our grocery store, so we generally detour on the way to shop. There we separate the glass between clear and colored glass and drop it into the appropriate container. I don’t know what the schedule is for collecting glass, but you can hear it loud and clear when they do!

Alright, enough trash talk. Part of the fun of living here is the sheer number of celebrations. The Flemish people celebrate everything. It’s wonderful! A couple of weeks ago, there was a mid-week holiday for a Celebration of Flemish Community and it’s celebrated annually. Usually these celebrations involve rerouting the main bus route into downtown and blocking the streets with vendors and fun. I believe the buses run on a different street at least once every 2 weeks and more in the summertime. Last week, there was a sand volleyball tournament in the plaza closest to us, so they relocated half of the Friday market into the street and rerouted the buses to accommodate the vendors/shoppers. The volleyball tournament was set up for 3-4 days, which means that a lot of people took time off work to compete in it. They also had bounce houses and ice cream stands set up around the perimeter, so the kids and I stopped to check it out when we went to the market last week.

The volleyball tournament was part of Het Groot Verlof (The Great Leave) which takes place through July and August every summer. This festival means there’s a party every weekend. On Friday evenings, 2 stages are set up in 2 different, but nearby, plazas. There are 2 concerts. We live about 2 blocks from the second one, which fires up at 10:30 p.m. (as it finally gets dark) and goes for a couple of hours. Even with all the windows open, however, it’s still not very loud and you have to listen hard to hear the music from this distance. It’s perfect! The other amazing part is that by Saturday morning, the stages are down and the plazas are cleared of all debris. You’d never know there had been an event!

In addition to the music and sand volleyball, there are fun days set up in the park. The kids and I went a couple of weeks ago as we waited for Todd to get back from Austin. There was a band (think big band) playing show tunes and 80’s American music, plus there were cold drinks and ice cream, and a bounce house for the kids. Everyone had a great time: Laine and I on the lawn while Isaac bounced.

There are a lot of random parades here. We usually find out about them because we accidentally stumble into the sidelines of one. They’re fascinating in their uniqueness. They are incredibly esoteric, so we don’t “get” some of them. But they’re lively and fun!

Elsewhere, we got to see street performers, balloon artists, and numerous bounce houses. And all of it took place within a few blocks of our apartment. We started at one end of the celebration and worked our way around in a semi-circle surrounding our apartment building.

On days when there aren’t major celebrations in front of our door, we go to parks and explore. We have learned we can get fresh milk from a machine at one of the parks just outside the city’s inner ring. We’ve gotten quite spoiled from the delicious milk and now no one wants “store bought” milk. This will be a major adjustment when we return to Austin.

The kids are familiar enough with Leuven to navigate on their own. It’s been exciting to see how much they’ve grown living here.

The last stop on our tour of Germany was Munich. We checked into our AirBnB upon arrival to ditch our bags. Of all the places we stayed, this one was decidedly our least favorite. But there were beds for everyone and it was close to the train station, so it was okay.

We started our Munich tour at the Marienplatz, of course. The clock has a Glockenspiel from 1908, which is really neat if you see it in action. The plaza is always packed with people and there are all sorts of things to see. It has been the city’s main square since 1158! Laine befriended a “statue” as we walked through the square.

We moved on from the plaza for a bite to eat in the shadow of the Frauenkirche (Cathedral of Our Dear Lady) with its twin onion-shaped domes. It is currently undergoing maintenance, so we were not able to climb the stairs to the top. They should offer quite a view at they are 323 feet high and the tallest places in the city center.

After our meal, we did take a brief look around the inside of the church. The interior of the church had high ceilings and lots of natural light. The organ was also pretty impressive to view from down below. The construction of this building began in 1468 and it was finished in only 20 years! That’s pretty impressive for a building of this size. The towers were almost completed in 1488 but had temporary roofing which began to leak. They were finally replaced with the onion domes in 1525. The original plans called for pointed spires, but these were a less expensive alternative. As you would expect, there was severe damage to the building during World War II. The final reconstruction from that finished in 1994.

There is one other feature of note in the cathedral. Near the entrance to the building, there is a black foot-shaped mark in the floor. It is said to be the Devil’s footprint. If you step into the mark, you cannot see any of the side windows of the church. From 1622 until 1860, you also couldn’t see the window above the altar because there was a large wooden altar covering it. There are numerous legends on this, but the one inside the church says that the devil himself walked into the building before it was consecrated. Seeing that there were no windows, he stamped his foot in delight that the building would be ugly and useless. That is why the mark is there. He then took one step forward and saw all of the beautiful windows. In a furious rage, he created a great wind to try to blow the building down, but he did not succeed. The wind, however, continues to whip around the building even today. It is said that it will continue thus until the Devil himself comes to reclaim it.

That evening, we decided to go to the Augustiner BraüMünchen for dinner and drinks. Augustiner was established in 1328 and is Munich’s oldest independent brewery. More importantly for us, however, the playground was terrific! The kids got to climb all over the wooden structures and slides. They also made a few new friends with other American kids playing, as well. We introduced the kids to apfelschorle – apple juice mixed with mineral water. The Americans at the next table stopped by to ask about the kids’ “beers.”

We had a great dinner, but the kids favorite part of the meal was definitely the ginormous pretzels. Isaac is eager to return to Munich next month for another one…

We stayed out a *tiny* bit too late that night. We decided that our second day in Munich needed to be a bit tame so we could recover from our whirlwind trip. Enter: the bus tours. We took 2 of them in one day and they were just the ticket. Our first stop was Nymphenburg Palace. It was the main summer residence of the former rulers of Bavaria (southern Germany) and the House of Wittelsbach. I recommend you look at the photos in the link to get a feel for the scale of the grounds.

We walked the grounds for a while and peered in through the windows, but we didn’t do a full tour. The grounds were beautiful and there were people everywhere at work. It made me curious about the number of employees they must have on staff.

Once we finished our bus tours, we decided to head to one of the other most famous places in Munich: Hofbräuhaus. One of the things I find fascinating about German beers is their adherence to the Bavarian beer purity law. The law was enacted in Munich in 1487. It was then expanded to all of Bavaria in 1516 and still stands today. The original law allowed for only water, barley, and hops. The basic law now declares that only malted grains, hops, water and yeast are permitted.

In addition to serving great beers, Hofbräuhaus also offers an interesting look at Munich’s history. It has served many famous people throughout the years, including Mozart (who supposedly wrote an opera after his visit) and Vladimir Lenin (just before World War I he lived in Munich). It was also the first meeting place of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists in February 1920. You can actually still see the swastikas on the ceiling if you look closely at the Bavarian flags.

Some members of our group were definitely not ready for a history lesson. She got in a nice nap before fortifying herself with an apfelschorle and a large pretzel.

The next day, we said goodbye to Todd’s parents at the airport. It was so wonderful to get to share this trip with them! We flew back to Brussels as they flew home to Maryland.